gathered in, for their small session, at the hotel,
where the windows were still open to the high bal
conies and the flames of the candles, behind the pink
shades disposed as for the vigil of watchers were
motionless in the air in which the season lay dead.
What was presently settled among them was that
Milly, who betrayed on this occasion a preference
more marked than usual, should not hold herself
obliged to climb that evening the social stair, how
ever it might stretch to meet her, and that, Mrs.
Lowder and Mrs. Stringham facing the ordeal to
gether, Kate Croy should remain with her and await
their return. It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to
send Susan Shepherd forth; she saw her go with
complacency, liked, as it were, to put people off with
her, and noted with satisfaction, when she so moved
to the carriage, the further denudation a markedly
ebbing tide of her little benevolent back. If it
wasn't quite Aunt Maud's ideal, moreover, to take
out the new American girl's funny friend instead of
the new American girl herself, nothing could better
indicate the range of that lady's merit than the spirit
in which as at the present hour for instance she
made the best of the minor advantage. And she did
this with a broad, cheerful absence of illusion; she
did it confessing even as much to poor Susie be
cause, frankly, she was good-natured. When Mrs.
Stringham observed that her own light was too ab
jectly borrowed and that it was as a link alone,
fortunately not missing, that she was valued, Aunt

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p286 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p287w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p288

v?