I shall try for everything. That," she wound up, "is how I see
myself, and how I see you quite as much, acting for them."

"For 'them'?" and the young man strongly, extravagantly marked his
coldness. "Thank you!"

"Don't you care for them?"

"Why should I? What are they to me but a serious nuisance?"

As soon as he had permitted himself this qualification of the
unfortunate persons she so perversely cherished, he repented of his
roughness--and partly because he expected a flash from her. But it was
one of her finest sides that she sometimes flashed with a mere mild
glow. "I don't see why you don't make out a little more that if we
avoid stupidity we may do _all._ We may keep her."

He stared. "Make her pension us?"

"Well, wait at least till we have seen."

He thought. "Seen what can be got out of her?"

Kate for a moment said nothing. "After all I never asked her; never,
when our troubles were at the worst, appealed to her nor went near her.
She fixed upon me herself, settled on me with her wonderful gilded
claws."

"You speak," Densher observed, "as if she were a vulture."

"Call it an eagle--with a gilded beak as well, and with wings for great
flights. If she's a thing of the air, in short--say at once a
balloon--I never myself got into her car. I was her choice."

It had really, her sketch of the affair, a high colour and a great
style; at all of which he gazed a minute as at a picture by a master.
"What she must see in you!"

"Wonders!" And, speaking it loud, she stood straight up. "Everything.
There it is."

Yes, there it was, and as she remained before him he continued to face
it. "So that what you mean is that I'm to do my part in somehow
squaring her?"

"See her, see her," Kate said with impatience.

"And grovel to her?"

"Ah, do what you like!" And she walked in her impatience away.

IV

His eyes had followed her at this time quite long enough, before he
overtook her, to make out more than ever, in the poise of her head, the
pride of her step--he didn't know what best to call it--a part, at
least, of Mrs. Lowder's reasons. He consciously winced while he figured
his presenting himself as a reason opposed to these; though, at the
same moment, with the source of Aunt Maud's inspiration thus before
him, he was prepared to conform, by almost any abject attitude or
profitable compromise, to his companion's easy injunction. He would do
as _she_ liked--his own liking might come off as it woul