tions, there were questions; but they were so much more
together than they were anything else. Kate uttered for a while no word
of refutation of Aunt Maud's "big" diplomacy, and they left it there,
as they would have left any other fine product, for a monument to her
powers. But, Densher related further, he had had in other respects too
the car of Juggernaut to face; he omitted nothing from his account of
his visit, least of all the way Aunt Maud had frankly at last--though
indeed only under artful pressure--fallen foul of his very type, his
want of the right marks, his foreign accidents, his queer antecedents.
She had told him he was but half a Briton, which, he granted Kate,
would have been dreadful if he hadn't so let himself in for it.

"I was really curious, you see," he explained, "to find out from her
what sort of queer creature, what sort of social anomaly, in the light
of such conventions as hers, such an education as mine makes one pass
for."

Kate said nothing for a little; but then, "Why should you care?" she
asked.

"Oh," he laughed, "I like her so much; and then, for a man of my trade,
her views, her spirit, are essentially a thing to get hold of; they
belong to the great public mind that we meet at every turn and that we
must keep setting up 'codes' with. Besides," he added, "I want to
please her personally."

"Ah, yes, we must please her personally!" his companion echoed; and the
words may represent all their definite recognition, at the time, of
Densher's politic gain. They had in fact between this and his start for
New York many matters to handle, and the question he now touched upon
came up for Kate above all. She looked at him as if he had really told
her aunt more of his immediate personal story than he had ever told
herself. That, if it were so, was an accident, and it put him, for half
an hour, on as much of the picture of his early years abroad, his
migratory parents, his Swiss schools, his German university, as she had
easy attention for. A man, he intimated, a man of their world, would
have spotted him straight as to many of these points; a man of their
world, so far as they had a world, would have been through the English
mill. But it was none the less charming to make his confession to a
woman; women had, in fact, for such differences, so much more
imagination. Kate showed at present all his case could require; when
she had had it from beginning to end she declared that she now made out