denly, without its being in the least "led up to,"
broken ground on the subject of Mr. Densher, mentioned him with
impatience as a person in love with her sister. "She wished me, if I
cared for Kate, to know," Milly said--"for it would be quite too
dreadful, and one might do something."

Susie wondered. "Prevent anything coming of it? That's easily said. Do
what?"

Milly had a dim smile. "I think that what she would like is that I
should come a good deal to see her about it."

"And doesn't she suppose you've anything else to do?"

The girl had by this time clearly made it out. "Nothing but to admire
and make much of her sister--whom she doesn't, however, herself in the
least understand--and give up one's time, and everything else, to it."
It struck the elder friend that she spoke with an almost unprecedented
approach to sharpness; as if Mrs. Condrip had been rather specially
disconcerting. Never yet so much as just of late had Mrs. Stringham
seen her companion as exalted, and by the very play of something
within, into a vague golden air that left irritation below. That was
the great thing with Milly--it was her characteristic poetry; or at
least it was Susan Shepherd's. "But she made a point," the former
continued, "of my keeping what she says from Kate. I'm not to mention
that she has spoken."

"And why," Mrs. Stringham presently asked, "is Mr. Densher so dreadful?"

Milly had, she thought, an hesitation--something that suggested a
fuller talk with Mrs. Condrip than she inclined perhaps to report. "It
isn't so much he himself." Then the girl spoke a little as for the
romance of it; one could never tell, with her, where romance would come
in. "It's the state of his fortunes."

"And is that very bad?"

"He has no 'private means,' and no prospect of any. He has no income,
and no ability, according to Mrs. Condrip, to make one. He's as poor,
she calls it, as 'poverty,' and she says she knows what that is."

Again Mrs. Stringham considered, and it presently produced something.
"But isn't he brilliantly clever?"

Milly had also then an instant that was not quite fruitless. "I haven't
the least idea."

To which, for the time, Susie only answered "Oh!"--though by the end of
a minute she had followed it with a slightly musing "I see"; and that
in turn with: "It's quite what Maud Lowder thinks."

"That he'll never do anything?"

"No--quite the contrary: that he's exceptionally able."

"Oh yes; I know"--Milly ha