furthermore, was that this might be, in cases, a happy understanding.
The worker in one connection was the worked in another; it was as broad
as it was long--with the wheels of the system, as might be seen,
wonderfully oiled. People could quite like each other in the midst of
it, as Aunt Maud, by every appearance, quite liked Lord Mark, and as
Lord Mark, it was to be hoped, liked Mrs. Lowder, since if he didn't he
was a greater brute than one could believe. She, Kate, had not yet, it
was true, made out what he was doing for her--besides which the dear
woman needed him, even at the most he could do, much less than she
imagined; so far as all of which went, moreover, there were plenty of
things on every side she had not yet made out. She believed, on the
whole, in any one Aunt Maud took up; and she gave it to Milly as worth
thinking of that, whatever wonderful people this young lady might meet
in the land, she would meet no more extraordinary woman. There were
greater celebrities by the million, and of course greater swells, but a
bigger _person,_ by Kate's view, and a larger natural handful every
way, would really be far to seek. When Milly inquired with interest if
Kate's belief in _her_ was primarily on the lines of what Mrs. Lowder
"took up," her interlocutress could handsomely say yes, since by the
same principle she believed in herself. Whom but Aunt Maud's niece,
pre-eminently, had Aunt Maud taken up, and who was thus more in the
current, with her, of working and of being worked? "You may ask," Kate
said, "what in the world I have to give; and that indeed is just what
I'm trying to learn. There must be something, for her to think she can
get it out of me. She _will_ get it--trust her; and then I shall see
what it is; which I beg you to believe I should never have found out
for myself." She declined to treat any question of Milly's own "paying"
power as discussable; that Milly would pay a hundred per cent.--and
even to the end, doubtless, through the nose--was just the beautiful
basis on which they found themselves.

These were fine facilities, pleasantries, ironies, all these luxuries
of gossip and philosophies of London and of life, and they became
quickly, between the pair, the common form of talk, Milly professing
herself delighted to know that something was to be done with her. If
the most remarkable woman in England was to do it, so much the better,
and if the most remarkable woman in England had them both in