not sure she wants anybody else."

"Does she want you?"

"No, I can't say she does. She wants to go home."

"That's not a bad scheme. I should like to go home myself if I had one.
What would you have done with Clementina if you had got her, Jenny?"

"What would any one have done with her? Married her brilliantly, of
course."

"But you say she isn't sure she wishes to be married at all?"

Miss Milray stated the case of Clementina's divided mind, and her belief
that she would take Hinkle in the end, together with the fear that
she might take Gregory. "She's very odd," Miss Milray concluded. "She
puzzles me. Why did you ever send her to me?"

Milray laughed. "I don't know. I thought she would amuse you, and I
thought it would be a pleasure to her."

They began to talk of some affairs of their own, from which Miss
Milray returned to Clementina with the ache of an imperfectly satisfied
intention. If she had meant to urge her brother to seek justice for the
girl from Mrs. Lander, she was not so well pleased to have found justice
done already. But the will had been duly signed and witnessed before
the American vice-consul, and she must get what good she could out of an
accomplished fact. It was at least a consolation to know that it put
an end to her sister-in-law's patronage of the girl, and it would
be interesting to see Mrs. Milray adapt her behavior to Clementina's
fortunes. She did not really dislike her sister-in-law enough to do her
a wrong; she was only willing that she should do herself a wrong. But
one of the most disappointing things in all hostile operations is
that you never can know what the enemy would be at; and Mrs. Milray's
manoeuvres were sometimes dictated by such impulses that her strategy
was peculiarly baffling. The thought of her past unkindness to
Clementina may still have rankled in her, or she may simply have felt
the need of outdoing Miss Milray by an unapproachable benefaction. It is
certain that when Baron Belsky came to Venice a few weeks after her own
arrival, they began to pose at each other with reference to Clementina;
she with a measure of consciousness, he with the singleness of a nature
that was all pose. In his forbearance to win Clementina from Gregory he
had enjoyed the distinction of an unique suffering; and in allowing the
fact to impart itself to Mrs. Milray, he bathed in the warmth of her
flattering sympathy. Before she withdrew this, as she must when she got
tired of him,