woman might have done--as
was done, precisely, by princesses who had public considerations to
observe and who came of age very early. If it was thus distinct to Mrs.
Stringham then that Mr. Densher had gone off somewhere else in
connection with his errand before her visit to New York, it had been
also not undiscoverable that he had come back for a day or two later
on, that is after her own second excursion--that he had in fine
reappeared on a single occasion on his way to the West: his way from
Washington as she believed, though he was out of sight at the time of
her joining her friend for their departure. It had not occurred to her
before to exaggerate--it had not occurred to her that she could; but
she seemed to become aware to-night that there had been just enough in
this relation to meet, to provoke, the free conception of a little more.

She presently put it that, at any rate, promise or no promise, Milly
would, at a pinch, be able, in London, to act on his permission to make
him a sign; to which Milly replied with readiness that her ability,
though evident, would be none the less quite wasted, inasmuch as the
gentleman would, to a certainty, be still in America. He had a great
deal to do there--which he would scarce have begun; and in fact she
might very well not have thought of London at all if she hadn't been
sure he wasn't yet near coming back. It was perceptible to her
companion that the moment our young woman had so far committed herself
she had a sense of having overstepped; which was not quite patched up
by her saying the next minute, possibly with a certain failure of
presence of mind, that the last thing she desired was the air of
running after him. Mrs. Stringham wondered privately what question
there could be of any such appearance--the danger of which thus
suddenly came up; but she said, for the time, nothing of it--she only
said other things: one of which was, for instance, that if Mr. Densher
was away he was away, and that this was the end of it; also that of
course they must be discreet at any price. But what was the measure of
discretion, and how was one to be sure? So it was that, as they sat
there, she produced her own case: _she_ had a possible tie with London,
which she desired as little to disown as she might wish to risk
presuming on it. She treated her companion, in short, for their
evening's end, to the story of Maud Manningham, the odd but interesting
English girl who had formed her speci