riend's natural pity; it had
been a note, doubtless, of questionable taste, but it had quavered out
in spite of her; and he had not so much as cared to inquire "Why
'natural'?" Not that it wasn't really much better for her that he
shouldn't: explanations would in truth have taken her much too far.
Only she now perceived that, in comparison, her word about this other
person really "drew" him; and there were things in that, probably, many
things, as to which she would learn more and which glimmered there
already as part and parcel of that larger "real" with which, in her new
situation, she was to be beguiled. It was in fact at the very moment,
this element, not absent from what Lord Mark was further saying. "So
you're wrong, you see, as to our knowing all about each other. There
are cases where we break down. I at any rate give _her_ up--up, that
is, to you. You must do her for me--tell me, I mean, when you know
more. You'll notice," he pleasantly wound up, "that I've confidence in
you."

"Why shouldn't you have?" Milly asked, observing in this, as she
thought, a fine, though, for such a man, a surprisingly artless,
fatuity. It was as if there might have been a question of her
falsifying for the sake of her own show--that is of her honesty not
being proof against her desire to keep well with him herself. She
didn't, none the less, otherwise protest against his remark; there was
something else she was occupied in seeing. It was the handsome girl
alone, one of his own species and his own society, who had made him
feel uncertain; of his certainties about a mere little American, a
cheap exotic, imported almost wholesale, and whose habitat, with its
conditions of climate, growth, and cultivation, its immense profusion,
but its few varieties and thin development, he was perfectly satisfied.
The marvel was, too, that Milly understood his satisfaction--feeling
that she expressed the truth in presently saying: "Of course; I make
out that she must be difficult; just as I see that I myself must be
easy." And that was what, for all the rest of this occasion, remained
with her--as the most interesting thing that could remain. She was more
and more content herself to be easy; she would have been resigned, even
had it been brought straighter home to her, to passing for a cheap
exotic. Provisionally, at any rate, that protected her wish to keep
herself, with Lord Mark, in abeyance. They _had_ all affected her as
inevitably knowing each