Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/325

 all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what he had been feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all such petticoats! It was just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that, in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with his making an inquiry of his visitor that quite passed over her remark. "Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to our friend?"

"Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, "her friend also. But not a single word that I know of."

He had taken it for certain she hadn't—the thing being, after all, but a shade more strange than his having himself, for six weeks, with Milly, never mentioned the young lady in question. It was, for that matter, but a shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of which, and however inconsequently, he blushed, once more, for Kate's silence. He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he could get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been judging. "How did he manage to get at her? She had only—with what had passed between them before—to say she couldn't see him."

"Oh, she was disposed to kindness. She was easier," the good lady explained with a slight embarrassment, "than at the other time."

"Easier?"

"She was off her guard. There was a difference."

"Yes. But exactly not the difference."

"Exactly not the difference of her having to be 315