THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
be imputed: there was nobody she was supposable as interested for. It was too soon, since she wasn't interested for herself. Even the richest woman, at her age, lacked motive, and Milly's motive doubtless had plenty of time to arrive. She was meanwhile beautiful, simple, sublime without it—whether missing it and vaguely reaching out for it or not; and with it, for that matter, in the event, would really be these things just as much. Only then she might very well have, like Aunt Maud, a manner. Such were the connections, at all events, in which the colloquy of our two ladies freshly flickered up—in which it came round that the elder asked the younger if she had herself, in the afternoon, named Mr. Densher as an acquaintance.
"Oh no—I said nothing of having seen him. I remembered," the girl explained, "Mrs. Lowder's wish."
"But that," her friend observed after a moment, "was for silence to Kate."
"Yes—but Mrs. Condrip would immediately have told Kate."
"Why so?—since she must dislike to talk about him."
"Mrs. Condrip must?" Milly thought. "What she would like most is that her sister should be brought to think ill of him; and if anything she can tell her will help that———" But Milly dropped suddenly here, as if her companion would see.
Her companion's interest, however, was all for
217
