r--it came round again to that--under no
obligation whatever. It was a matter of equal ease, moreover, her
letting Mrs. Lowder take a tone. She might have taken twenty--they
would have spoiled nothing.

"You must stay on with us; you _can,_ you know, in any position you
like; any, any, _any,_ my dear child"--and her emphasis went deep. "You
must make your home with us; and it's really open to you to make the
most beautiful one in the world. You mustn't be under a mistake--under
any of any sort; and you must let us all think for you a little, take
care of you and watch over you. Above all you must help me with Kate,
and you must stay a little _for_ her; nothing for a long time has
happened to me so good as that you and she should have become friends.
It's beautiful; it's great; it's everything. What makes it perfect is
that it should have come about through our dear delightful Susie,
restored to me, after so many years, by such a miracle. No--that's more
charming to me than even your hitting it off with Kate. God has been
good to one--positively; for I couldn't, at my age, have made a new
friend--undertaken, I mean, out of whole cloth, the real thing. It's
like changing one's bankers--after fifty: one doesn't do that. That's
why Susie has been kept for me, as you seem to keep people in your
wonderful country, in lavender and pink paper--coming back at last as
straight as out of a fairy-tale and with you as an attendant fairy."
Milly hereupon replied appreciatively that such a description of
herself made her feel as if pink paper were her dress and lavender its
trimming; but Aunt Maud was not to be deterred by a weak joke from
keeping it up. Her interlocutress could feel besides that she kept it
up in perfect sincerity. She was somehow at this hour a very happy
woman, and a part of her happiness might precisely have been that her
affections and her views were moving as never before in concert.
Unquestionably she loved Susie; but she also loved Kate and loved Lord
Mark, loved their funny old host and hostess, loved every one within
range, down to the very servant who came to receive Milly's empty
iceplate--down, for that matter, to Milly herself, who was, while she
talked, really conscious of the enveloping flap of a protective mantle,
a shelter with the weight of an eastern carpet. An eastern carpet, for
wishing-purposes of one's own, was a thing to be on rather than under;
still, however, if the girl should fail of breat