brance of the distinctness of Kate's promise, Milly,
the next thing, found her explanation in a truth that
had the merit of being general. If Susie, at this
crisis, suspiciously spared her, it was really that
Susie was always suspiciously sparing her yet oc
casionally, too, with portentous and exceptional
mercies. The girl was conscious of how she dropped
at times into inscrutable, impenetrable deferences
attitudes that, though without at all intending it,
made a difference for familiarity, for the ease of in
timacy. It was as if she recalled herself to manners,
to the law of court-etiquette which last note above
all helped our young woman to a just appreciation.
It was definite for her, even if not quite solid, that
to treat her as a princess was a positive need of her
companion's mind; wherefore she couldn't help it if
this lady had her transcendent view of the way the
class in question were treated. Susan had read his
tory, had read Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon;
she had high-lights as to the special allowances made
for the class, and, since she saw them, when young,
as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironic and in
finitely refined, one must take it for amusing if she
inclined to an indulgence verily Byzantine. If one
could only be Byzantine! wasn't that what she in
sidiously led one on to sigh? Milly tried to oblige
her for it really placed Susan herself so handsome
ly to be Byzantine now. The great ladies of that
race it would be somewhere in Gibbon weren t,
apparently, questioned about their mysteries. But

[[279]]

p278 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p279w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p280

v?