she was
dead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that had
nothing to do with her. "I shall never be better than this."

He smiled for her at the portrait. "Than she? You'd scarce need to be
better, for surely that's well enough. But you _are,_ one feels, as it
happens, better; because, splendid as she is, one doubts if she was
good."

He hadn't understood. She was before the picture, but she had turned to
him, and she didn't care if, for the minute, he noticed her tears. It
was probably as good a moment as she should ever have with him. It was
perhaps as good a moment as she should have with any one, or have in
any connection whatever. "I mean that everything this afternoon has
been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be
so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it."

Though he still didn't understand her he was as nice as if he had; he
didn't ask for insistence, and that was just a part of his looking
after her. He simply protected her now from herself, and there was a
world of practice in it. "Oh, we must talk about these things!"

Ah, they had already done that, she knew, as much as she ever would;
and she was shaking her head at her pale sister the next moment with a
world, on her side, of slowness. "I wish I could see the resemblance.
Of course her complexion's green," she laughed; "but mine's several
shades greener."

"It's down to the very hands," said Lord Mark.

"Her hands are large," Milly went on, "but mine are larger. Mine are
huge."

"Oh, you go her, all round, 'one better'--which is just what I said.
But you're a pair. You must surely catch it," he added as if it were
important to his character as a serious man not to appear to have
invented his plea.

"I don't know one never knows one's self. It's a funny fancy, and I
don't imagine it would have occurred----"

"I see it _has_ occurred"--he has already taken her up. She had her
back, as she faced the picture, to one of the doors of the room, which
was open, and on her turning, as he spoke, she saw that they were in
the presence of three other persons, also, as appeared, interested
inquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had just become aware
of her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the best
of it, that she was far from being first in the field. She had brought
a lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what Lord Mark was
showing Milly, and he took