tely be mentioned,
however, that, quite apart from a remembrance of the distinctness of
Kate's promise, Milly, the next thing, found her explanation in a truth
that had the merit of being general. If Susie, at this crisis,
suspiciously spared her, it was really that Susie was always
suspiciously sparing her--yet occasionally, too, with portentous and
exceptional mercies. The girl was conscious of how she dropped at times
into inscrutable, impenetrable deferences--attitudes that, though
without at all intending it, made a difference for familiarity, for the
ease of intimacy. It was as if she recalled herself to manners, to the
law of court-etiquette--which last note above all helped our young
woman to a just appreciation. It was definite for her, even if not
quite solid, that to treat her as a princess was a positive need of her
companion's mind; wherefore she couldn't help it if this lady had her
transcendent view of the way the class in question were treated. Susan
had read history, had read Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon; she had
high-lights as to the special allowances made for the class, and, since
she saw them, when young, as effete and overtutored, inevitably ironic
and infinitely refined, one must take it for amusing if she inclined to
an indulgence verily Byzantine. If one _could_ only be
Byzantine!--wasn't _that_ what she insidiously led one on to sigh?
Milly tried to oblige her--for it really placed Susan herself so
handsomely to be Byzantine now. The great ladies of that race--it would
be somewhere in Gibbon--weren't, apparently, questioned about their
mysteries. But oh, poor Milly and hers! Susan at all events proved
scarce more inquisitive than if she had been a mosaic at Ravenna. Susan
was a porcelain monument to the odd moral that consideration might,
like cynicism, have abysses. Besides, the Puritan finally
disencumbered----! What starved generations wasn't Mrs. Stringham, in
fancy, going to make up for?

Kate Croy came straight to the hotel--came that evening shortly before
dinner; specifically and publicly moreover, in a hansom that, driven
apparently very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost with the
clatter of an accident, a "smash." Milly, alone, as happened, in the
great garnished void of their sitting-room, where, a little, really,
like a caged Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer,
long-drawn, almost sinister delay of night, an effect she yet
liked--Milly, at the sound, one