dy to exclaim with a
high flush, or a vivid blush--one didn't distinguish the embarrassment
from the joy--"Why, Miss Theale: fancy!" and "Why, Miss Theale: what
luck!"

Miss Theale had meanwhile the sense that for him too, on Kate's part,
something wonderful and unspoken was determinant; and this although,
distinctly, his companion had no more looked at him with a hint than he
had looked at her with a question. He had looked and he was looking
only at Milly herself, ever so pleasantly and considerately--she scarce
knew what to call it; but without prejudice to her consciousness, all
the same, that women got out of predicaments better than men. The
predicament of course wasn't definite or phraseable--and the way they
let all phrasing pass was presently to recur to our young woman as a
characteristic triumph of the civilised state; but she took it for
granted, insistently, with a small private flare of passion, because
the one thing she could think of to do for him was to show him how she
eased him off. She would really, tired and nervous, have been much
disconcerted, were it not that the opportunity in question had saved
her. It was what had saved her most, what had made her, after the first
few seconds, almost as brave for Kate as Kate was for her, had made her
only ask herself what their friend would like of her. That he was at
the end of three minutes, without the least complicated reference, so
smoothly "their" friend was just the effect of their all being
sublimely civilised. The flash in which he saw this was, for Milly,
fairly inspiring--to that degree in fact that she was even now, on such
a plane, yearning to be supreme. It took, no doubt, a big dose of
inspiration to treat as not funny--or at least as not unpleasant--the
anomaly, for Kate, that _she_ knew their gentleman, and for herself,
that Kate was spending the morning with him; but everything continued
to make for this after Milly had tasted of her draught. She was to
wonder in subsequent reflection what in the world they had actually
said, since they had made such a success of what they didn't say; the
sweetness of the draught for the time, at any rate, was to feel success
assured. What depended on this for Mr. Densher was all obscurity to
her, and she perhaps but invented the image of his need as a short cut
to service. Whatever were the facts, their perfect manners, all round,
saw them through. The finest part of Milly's own inspiration, it may
further