Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/134

 "Ah, but we haven't the complaint."

"Have you never, dearest, been in love?" Susan Shepherd inquired.

"Yes, my child; but not by the doctor's direction."

Maud Manningham had spoken perforce with a break into momentary mirth, which operated—and happily too—as a challenge to her visitor's spirit. "Oh, of course we don't ask his leave to fall. But it's something to know he thinks it good for us."

"My dear woman," Mrs. Lowder cried, "it strikes me we know it without him. So that when that's all he has to tell us!"

"Ah," Mrs. Stringham interposed, "it isn't all. I feel Sir Luke will have more; he won't have put me off with anything inadequate. I'm to see him again; he as good as told me that he'll wish it. So it won't be for nothing."

"Then what will it be for? Do you mean he has somebody of his own to propose? Do you mean you told him nothing?"

Mrs. Stringham dealt with these questions. "I showed him I understood him. That was all I could do. I didn't feel at liberty to be explicit; but I felt, even though his visit so upset me, the comfort of what I had from you night before last."

"What I spoke to you of in the carriage when we had left her with Kate?"

"You had seen, apparently, in three minutes. And now that he's here, now that I've met him and had 124