the clever one. A minute or two later the situation
had changed, and she knew it afterwards to have
been by the subtle operation of Kate. She was her
self saying that she was afraid she must go now if
Susie could be found; but she was sitting down on
the nearest seat to say it. The prospect, through
opened doors, stretched before her into other rooms,
down the vista of which Lord Mark was strolling
with Lady Aldershaw, who, close to him and much
intent, seemed to show from behind as peculiarly
expert. Lord Aldershaw, for his part, had been left
in the middle of the room, while Kate, with her back
to him, was standing before her with much sweetness
of manner. The sweetness was all for her; she had
the sense of the poor gentleman's having somehow
been handled as Lord Mark had handled his wife.
He dangled there, he shambled a little; then he be
thought himself of the Bronzino, before which, with
his eyeglass, he hovered. It drew from him an odd,
vague sound, not wholly distinct from a grunt, and
a "Humph most remarkable!" which lighted
Kate's face with amusement. The next moment he
had creaked away, over polished floors, after the
others, and Milly was feeling as if she had been rude.
But Lord Aldershaw was in every way a detail, and
Kate was saying to her that she hoped she wasn't
ill.

Thus it was that, aloft there in the great gilded
historic chamber and the presence of the pale per
sonage on the wall, whose eyes all the while seemed

[[246]]

p245 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p246w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p247

v?