oh, poor Milly and hers! Susan at all events proved
scarce more inquisitive than if she had been a mosaic
at Ravenna. Susan was a porcelain monument to
the odd moral that consideration might, like cyni
cism, have abysses. Besides, the Puritan finally
disencumbered! What starved generations
wasn't Mrs. Stringham, in fancy, going to make up
for?

Kate Croy came straight to the hotel came that
evening shortly before dinner; specifically and pub
licly moreover, in a hansom that, driven apparently
very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost
with the clatter of an accident, a " smash." Milly,
alone, as happened, in the great garnished void of
their sitting-room, where, a little, really, like a caged
Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer,
long-drawn, almost sinister delay of night, an effect
she yet liked Milly, at the sound, one of the French
windows standing open, passed out to the balcony
that overhung, with pretensions, the general en
trance, and so was in time for the look that Kate,
alighting, paying her cabman, happened to send up
to the front. The visitor moreover had a shilling
back to wait for, during which Milly, from the bal
cony, looked down at her, and a mute exchange, but
with smiles and nods, took place between them on
what had occurred in the morning. It was what
Kate had called for, and the tone was thus, almost
by accident, determined for Milly before her friend
came up. What was also, however, determined for

[[280]]

p279 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p280w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p281

v?