her?"

Milly hesitated. "Told her what?"

"Everything."

This, with the way he dropped it, again considerably moved her--made
her feel for a moment that, as a matter of course, she was a subject
for disclosures. But she quickly found her answer. "Oh, as for that,
you must ask _her."_

"Your clever companion?"

"Mrs. Lowder."

He replied to this that their hostess was a person with whom there were
certain liberties one never took, but that he was none the less fairly
upheld, inasmuch as she was for the most part kind to him and as,
should he be very good for a while, she would probably herself tell
him. "And I shall have, at any rate, in the meantime, the interest of
seeing what she does with you. That will teach me more or less, you
see, how much she knows."

Milly followed this--it was lucid; but it suggested something apart.
"How much does she know about _you?"_

"Nothing," said Lord Mark serenely. "But that doesn't matter--for what
she does with me." And then, as to anticipate Milly's question about
the nature of such doing: "This, for instance--turning me straight on
for _you."_

The girl thought. "And you mean she wouldn't if she did know----?"

He met it as if it were really a point. "No. I believe, to do her
justice, she still would. So you can be easy."

Milly had the next instant, then, acted on the permission. "Because
you're even at the worst the best thing she has?"

With this he was at last amused. "I was till you came. You're the best
now."

It was strange his words should have given her the sense of his
knowing, but it was positive that they did so, and to the extent of
making her believe them, though still with wonder. That, really, from
this first of their meetings, was what was most to abide with her: she
accepted almost helplessly, she surrendered to the inevitability of
being the sort of thing, as he might have said, that he at least
thoroughly believed he had, in going about, seen here enough of for all
practical purposes. Her submission was naturally, moreover, not to be
impaired by her learning later on that he had paid at short intervals,
though at a time apparently just previous to her own emergence from the
obscurity of extreme youth, three separate visits to New York, where
his nameable friends and his contrasted contacts had been numerous. His
impression, his recollection of the whole mixed quantity, was still
visibly rich. It had helped him to place her, and she was more an