lly everything. Now she knew not only that
she didn't dislike this--the state of being found out about; but that,
on the contrary, it was truly what she had come for, and that, for the
time at least, it would give her something firm to stand on. She struck
herself as aware, aware as she had never been, of really not having had
from the beginning anything firm. It would be strange for the firmness
to come, after all, from her learning in these agreeable conditions
that she was in some way doomed; but above all it would prove how
little she had hitherto had to hold her up. If she was now to be held
up by the mere process--since that was perhaps on the cards--of being
let down, this would only testify in turn to her queer little history.
_That_ sense of loosely rattling had been no process at all; and it was
ridiculously true that her thus sitting there to see her life put into
the scales represented her first approach to the taste of orderly
living. Such was Milly's romantic version--that her life, especially by
the fact of this second interview, _was_ put into the scales; and just
the best part of the relation established might have been, for that
matter, that the great grave charming man knew, had known at once, that
it was romantic, and in that measure allowed for it. Her only doubt,
her only fear, was whether he perhaps wouldn't even take advantage of
her being a little romantic to treat her as romantic altogether. This
doubtless was her danger with him; but she should see, and dangers in
general meanwhile dropped and dropped.

The very place, at the end of a few minutes, the commodious, "handsome"
room, far back in the fine old house, soundless from position, somewhat
sallow with years of celebrity, somewhat sombre even at midsummer--the
very place put on for her a look of custom and use, squared itself
solidly round her as with promises and certainties. She had come forth
to see the world, and this then was to be the world's light, the rich
dusk of a London "back," these the world's walls, those the world's
curtains and carpet. She should be intimate with the great bronze clock
and mantel-ornaments, conspicuously presented in gratitude and long
ago; she should be as one of the circle of eminent contemporaries,
photographed, engraved, signatured, and in particular framed and
glazed, who made up the rest of the decoration, and made up as well so
much of the human comfort; and while she thought of all the clean
truths,