e name so given her. She met it on the instant as she
would have met the revealed truth; it lighted up the strange dusk in
which she lately had walked. _That_ was what was the matter with her.
She was a dove. Oh, _wasn't_ she?--it echoed within her as she became
aware of the sound, outside, of the return of their friends. There was,
the next thing, little enough doubt about it after Aunt Maud had been
two minutes in the room. She had come up, Mrs. Lowder, with
Susan--which she needn't have done, at that hour, instead of letting
Kate come down to her; so that Milly could be quite sure it was to
catch hold, in some way, of the loose end they had left. Well, the way
she did catch was simply to make the point that it didn't now in the
least matter. She had mounted the stairs for this, and she had her
moment again with her younger hostess while Kate, on the spot, as the
latter at the time noted, gave Susan Shepherd unwonted opportunities.
Kate was in other words, as Aunt Maud engaged her friend, listening
with the handsomest response to Mrs. Stringham's impression of the
scene they had just quitted. It was in the tone of the fondest
indulgence--almost, really, that of dove cooing to dove--that Mrs.
Lowder expressed to Milly the hope that it had all gone beautifully.
Her "all" had an ample benevolence; it soothed and simplified; she
spoke as if it were the two young women, not she and her comrade, who
had been facing the town together. But Milly's answer had prepared
itself while Aunt Maud was on the stair; she had felt in a rush all the
reasons that would make it the most dovelike; and she gave it, while
she was about it, as earnest, as candid. "I don't _think,_ dear lady,
he's here."

It gave her straightway the measure of the success she could have as a
dove: that was recorded in the long look of deep criticism, a look
without a word, that Mrs. Lowder poured forth. And the word, presently,
bettered it still. "Oh, you exquisite thing!" The luscious innuendo of
it, almost startling, lingered in the room, after the visitors had
gone, like an oversweet fragrance. But left alone with Mrs. Stringham
Milly continued to breathe it: she studied again the dovelike and so
set her companion to mere rich reporting that she averted all inquiry
into her own case.

That, with the new day, was once more her law--though she saw before
her, of course, as something of a complication, her need, each time, to
decide. She should have to be cle