Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/251

 Milly's medical visitor. "She wants to be for him at her best. But she can't deceive him."

Densher had been looking too; which made him say in a moment: "And do you think you can? I mean, if he's to be with us here, about your sentiments. If Aunt Maud's so thick with him!"

Aunt Maud now occupied in fact a place at his side, and was visibly doing her best to entertain him, though this failed to prevent such a direction of his own eyes—determined, in the way such things happen, precisely by the attention of the others—as Densher became aware of and as Kate promptly noted. "He's looking at you. He wants to speak to you."

"So Mrs. Stringham," the young man laughed, "advised me he would."

"Then let him. Be right with him. I don't need," Kate went on in answer to the previous question, "to deceive him. Aunt Maud, if it's necessary, will do that. I mean that, knowing nothing about me, he can see me only as she sees me. She sees me now so well. He has nothing to do with me."

"Except to reprobate you," Densher suggested.

"For not caring for you? Perfectly. As a brilliant young man driven by it into your relation with Milly—as all that I leave you to him."

"Well," said Densher sincerely enough, "I think I can thank you for leaving me to some one easier perhaps with me than yourself." 241