high retreat; she smiled from her lookout, in the silence
that was only the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds, as she caught the
truth that you could easily accept people when you wanted them so to be
delivered to you. When Aunt Maud wished them despatched, it was not to
be done by deputy; it was clearly always a matter reserved for her own
hand. But what made the girl wonder most was the implications of so
much diplomacy in respect to her own value. What view might she take of
her position in the light of this appearance that her companion feared
so, as yet, to upset her? It was as if Densher were accepted partly
under the dread that if he hadn't been she would act in resentment.
Hadn't her aunt considered the danger that she would in that case have
broken off, have seceded? The danger was exaggerated--she would have
done nothing so gross; but that, it seemed, was the way Mrs. Lowder saw
her and believed her to be reckoned with. What importance therefore did
she really attach to her, what strange interest could she take on their
keeping on terms? Her father and her sister had their answer to
this--even without knowing how the question struck her; they saw the
lady of Lancaster Gate as panting to make her fortune, and the
explanation of that appetite was that, on the accident of a nearer view
than she had before enjoyed, she had been charmed, been dazzled. They
approved, they admired in her one of the belated fancies of rich,
capricious, violent old women--the more marked, moreover, because the
result of no plot; and they piled up the possible results for the
person concerned. Kate knew what to think of her own power thus to
carry by storm; she saw herself as handsome, no doubt, but as hard, and
felt herself as clever but as cold; and as so much too imperfectly
ambitious, furthermore, that it was a pity, for a quiet life, she
couldn't settle to be either finely or stupidly indifferent. Her
intelligence sometimes kept her still--too still--but her want of it
was restless; so that she got the good, it seemed to her, of neither
extreme. She saw herself at present, none the less, in a situation, and
even her sad, disillusioned mother, dying, but with Aunt Maud
interviewing the nurse on the stairs, had not failed to remind her that
it was of the essence of situations to be, under Providence, worked.
The dear woman had died in the belief that she was actually working the
one then produced.

Kate took one of her walks with Den