THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
him. The man was seated in the very place in which, beside Mrs. Lowder's, he had looked to find Kate, and that was a sufficient identity. Meanwhile, at any rate, the door of the house had opened and Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was something at least that she wasn't Kate. She was herself, on the spot, in all her affluence; with presence of mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in the brougham, didn't matter and to prevent Sir Luke's butler, by a firm word thrown over her shoulder, from standing there to listen to her passage with the gentleman who had rung. "I'll tell Mr. Densher; you needn't wait!" And the passage, promptly and richly, took place on the steps.
"He arrives, travelling straight, to-morrow early. I could not come to learn."
"No more," said Densher simply, "could I. On my way," he added, "to Lancaster Gate."
"Sweet of you." She beamed on him dimly, and he saw her face was attuned. It made him, with what she had just before said, know all, and he took the thing in while he met the air of portentous, of almost functional, sympathy that had settled itself as her medium with him and that yet had now a fresh glow. "So you have had your message?"
He knew so well what she meant, and so equally with it what he "had had," no less than what he hadn't, that, with but the smallest hesitation, he strained the point. "Yes—my message."
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