you no opening? The only oddity," Aunt Maud
lucidly professed, " is for yourself. It's in her not
having spoken."

"Ah, there we are! " said Milly.

And she had uttered it, evidently, in a tone
that struck her friend. " Then it has troubled
you?"

But ah, the inquiry had only to be made to bring
the rare colour with fine inconsequence, to her face.
"Not, really, the least little bit! " And, quickly
feeling the need to abound in this sense, she was on
the point, to cut short, of declaring that she cared,
after all, no scrap how much she obliged. Only she
felt at this instant too the intervention of still other
things. Mrs. Lowder was, in the first place, already
beforehand, already affected as by the sudden vision
of her having herself pushed too far. Milly could
never judge from her face of her uppermost motive
it was so little, in its hard, smooth sheen, that kind
of human countenance. She looked hard when she
spoke fair; the only thing was that when she spoke
hard she likewise didn't look soft. Something, none
the less, had arisen in her now a full appreciable
tide, entering by the rupture of some bar. She an
nounced that if what she had asked was to prove in
the least a bore her young friend was not to dream
of it; making her young friend at the same time, by
the change in her tone, dream on the spot more pro
fusely. She spoke with a belated light, Milly could
apprehend she could always apprehend from

[[294]]

p293 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p294w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p295

v?