explaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supreme
pointless quaver that had turned, the next instant, to an intensity of
interrogative stillness, upon his general goodwill. His large, settled
face, though firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; he
looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, half like a general and
half like a bishop, and she was soon sure that, within some such
handsome range, what it would show her would be what was good, what was
best for her. She had established, in other words, in this time-saving
way, a relation with it; and the relation was the special trophy that,
for the hour, she bore off. It was like an absolute possession, a new
resource altogether, something done up in the softest silk and tucked
away under the arm of memory. She hadn't had it when she went in, and
she had it when she came out; she had it there under her cloak, but
dissimulated, invisibly carried, when smiling, smiling, she again faced
Kate Croy. That young lady had of course awaited her in another room,
where, as the great man was to absent himself, no one else was in
attendance; and she rose for her with such a face of sympathy as might
have graced the vestibule of a dentist. "Is it out?" she seemed to ask
as if it had been a question of a tooth; and Milly indeed kept her in
no suspense at all.

"He's a dear. I'm to come again."

"But what does he say?"

Milly was almost gay. "That I'm not to worry about anything in the
world, and that if I'll be a good girl and do exactly what he tells me,
he'll take care of me for ever and ever."

Kate wondered as if things scarce fitted. "But does he allow then that
you're ill?"

"I don't know what he allows, and I don't care. I shall know, and
whatever it is it will be enough. He knows all about me, and I like it.
I don't hate it a bit."

Still, however, Kate stared. "But could he, in so few minutes, ask you
enough----?"

"He asked me scarcely anything--he doesn't need to do anything so
stupid," Milly said. "He can tell. He knows," she repeated; "and when I
go back--for he'll have thought me over a little--it will be all right."

Kate, after a moment, made the best of this. "Then when are we to come?"

It just pulled her friend up, for even while they talked--at least it
was one of the reasons--she stood there suddenly, irrelevantly, in the
light of her _other_ identity, the identity she would have for Mr.
Densher. This was always, from one inst