has been trying. He won t," Kate firmly continued,
"make up his mind about me."

"Well," Milly smiled, " give him time."

Her friend met it in perfection. " One is doing
that one is. But one remains, all the same, but
one of his ideas."

"There's no harm in that," Milly returned, " if
you come out in the end as the best of them. What's
a man," she pursued, " especially an ambitious one,
without a variety of ideas?"

"No doubt. The more the merrier." And Kate
looked at her grandly. " One can but hope to come
out, and do nothing to prevent it."

All of which made for the impression, fantastic
or not, of the alibi. The splendour, the grandeur
were, for Milly, the bold ironic spirit behind it, so
interesting too in itself. What, moreover, was not
less interesting was the fact, as our young woman
noted it, that Kate confined her point to the difficul
ties, so far as she was concerned, raised only by Lord
Mark. She referred now to none that her own taste
might present; which circumstance again played its
little part. She was doing what she liked in respect
to another person, but she was in no way committed
to the other person, and her furthermore talking of
Lord Mark as not young and not true were only the
signs of her clear self-consciousness, were all in the
line of her slightly hard, but scarce the less graceful
extravagance. She didn't wish to show too much
her consent to be arranged for, but that was a differ-

[[306]]

p305 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p306w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p307

v?