tapestry, of tea-tables, in an assault of
reminders that this largeness of style was the sign of _appointed_
felicity. The largeness of style was the great containing vessel, while
everything else, the pleasant personal affluence, the easy, murmurous
welcome, the honoured age of illustrious host and hostess, all at once
so distinguished and so plain, so public and so shy, became but this or
that element of the infusion. The elements melted together and seasoned
the draught, the essence of which might have struck the girl as
distilled into the small cup of iced coffee she had vaguely accepted
from somebody, while a fuller flood, somehow, kept bearing her up--all
the freshness of response of her young life the freshness of the first
and only prime. What had perhaps brought on just now a kind of climax
was the fact of her appearing to make out, through Aunt Maud, what was
really the matter. It couldn't be less than a climax for a poor shaky
maiden to find it put to her of a sudden that she herself was the
matter--for that was positively what, on Mrs. Lowder's part, it came
to. Everything was great, of course, in great pictures, and it was
doubtless precisely a part of the brilliant life--since the brilliant
life, as one had faintly figured it, clearly _was_ humanly led--that
all impressions within its area partook of its brilliancy; still,
letting that pass, it fairly stamped an hour as with the official seal
for one to be able to take in so comfortably one's companion's broad
blandness. "You must stay among us--you must stay; anything else is
impossible and ridiculous; you don't know yet, no doubt--you can't; but
you will soon enough: you can stay in _any_ position." It had been as
the murmurous consecration to follow the murmurous welcome; and even if
it were but part of Aunt Maud's own spiritual ebriety--for the dear
woman, one could see, was spiritually "keeping" the day--it served to
Milly, then and afterwards, as a high-water mark of the imagination.

It was to be the end of the short parenthesis which had begun but the
other day at Lancaster Gate with Lord Mark's informing her that she was
a "success"--the key thus again struck; and though no distinct, no
numbered revelations had crowded in, there had, as we have seen, been
plenty of incident for the space and the time. There had been thrice as
much, and all gratuitous and genial--if, in portions, not exactly
hitherto _the_ revelation--as three unprepared weeks could