ould
figure as large, as honourably unselfish, on the day they should take
effect. She would impose her will, but her will would be only that a
person or two shouldn't lose a benefit by not submitting if they could
be made to submit. To Milly, as so much younger, such far views
couldn't be imputed: there was nobody she was supposable as interested
for. It was too soon, since she wasn't interested for herself. Even the
richest woman, at her age, lacked motive, and Milly's motive doubtless
had plenty of time to arrive. She was meanwhile beautiful, simple,
sublime without it--whether missing it and vaguely reaching out for it
or not; and with it, for that matter, in the event, would really be
these things just as much. Only then she might very well have, like
Aunt Maud, a manner. Such were the connections, at all events, in which
the colloquy of our two ladies freshly flickered up--in which it came
round that the elder asked the younger if she had herself, in the
afternoon, named Mr. Densher as an acquaintance.

"Oh no--I said nothing of having seen him. I remembered," the girl
explained, "Mrs. Lowder's wish."

"But that," her friend observed after a moment, "was for silence to
Kate."

"Yes--but Mrs. Condrip would immediately have told Kate."

"Why so?--since she must dislike to talk about him."

"Mrs. Condrip must?" Milly thought. "What she would like most is that
her sister should be brought to think ill of him; and if anything she
can tell her will help that--" But Milly dropped suddenly here, as if
her companion would see.

Her companion's interest, however, was all for what she herself saw.
"You mean she'll immediately speak?" Mrs. Stringham gathered that this
was what Milly meant, but it left still a question. "How will it be
against him that you know him?"

"Oh, I don't know. It won't be so much one's knowing him as one's
having kept it out of sight."

"Ah," said Mrs. Stringham, as if for comfort, _"you_ haven't kept it
out of sight. Isn't it much rather Miss Croy herself who has?"

"It isn't my acquaintance with him," Milly smiled, "that she has
dissimulated."

"She has dissimulated only her own? Well then, the responsibility's
hers."

"Ah but," said the girl, not perhaps with marked consequence, "she has
a right to do as she likes."

"Then so, my dear, have you!" smiled Susan Shepherd.

Milly looked at her as if she were almost venerably simple, but also as
if this were what one loved her for. "W