Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/179

 from me that I should perhaps be able to look after you—well, rather better. Rather better, of course, than certain other persons in particular."

"Precisely—than Mrs. Lowder, than Miss Croy, even than Mrs. Stringham."

"Oh, Mrs. Stringham's all right!" Lord Mark promptly amended.

It amused her, even with what she had else to think of; and she could show him, at all events, how little, in spite of the hundred years, she had lost what he alluded to. The way he was with her at this moment made in fact the other moment so vivid as almost to start again the tears it had started at the time. "You could do so much for me, yes. I perfectly understood you."

"I wanted, you see," he all the same explained, "to fix your confidence; I mean, you know, in the right place."

"Well, Lord Mark, you did—it's just exactly now, my confidence, where you put it then. The only difference," said Milly, "is that I seem now to have no use for it. Besides," she then went on, "I do seem to feel you disposed to act in a way that would undermine it a little."

He took no more notice of these last words than if she had not said them, only watching her at present as with a gradual new light. "Are you really in any trouble?"

To this, on her side, she gave no heed. Making out his light was a little a light for herself. "Don't 169