cloaks, curiously, only thinkable as one. " Hand
some? Well, if you choose to say so." It was the
mother who had spoken, who herself added, after a
pause during which Milly took the reference as to a
picture: "In the English style." The three pair
of eyes had converged, and their possessors had for
an instant rested, with the effect of a drop of the
subject, on this last characterisation with that, too,
of a gloom not less mute in one of the daughters than
murmured in the other. Milly's heart went out to
them while they turned their backs; she said to her
self that they ought to have known her, that there
was something between them they might have beau
tifully put together. But she had lost them also
they were cold; they left her in her weak wonder
as to what they had been looking at. The " hand
some " disposed her to turn all the more that the
"English style " would be the English school, which
she liked; only she saw, before moving, by the array
on the side facing her, that she was in fact among
small Dutch pictures. The action of this was again
appreciable the dim surmise that it wouldn't then
be by a picture that the spring in the three ladies had
been pressed. It was at all events time she should
go, and she turned as she got on her feet. She had
had behind her one of the entrances and various vis
itors who had come in while she sat, visitors single
and in pairs by one of the former of whom she felt
her eyes suddenly held.

This was a gentleman in the middle of the place,

[[318]]

p317 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p318w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p319

v?