Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/372

 XXXIV

was to remain for several days under the deep impression of this inclusive passage, so luckily prolonged from moment to moment, but interrupted, at its climax, as may be said, by the entrance of Aunt Maud, who found them standing together near the fire. The bearings of the colloquy, however, sharp as they were, were less sharp to his intelligence, strangely enough, than those of a talk with Mrs. Lowder alone for which she soon gave him—or for which perhaps rather Kate gave him—full occasion. What had happened on her at last joining them was to conduce, he could immediately see, to her desiring to have him to herself. Kate and he, no doubt, at the opening of the door, had fallen apart with a certain suddenness, so that she had turned her hard fine eyes from one to the other; but the effect of this lost itself, to his mind, the next minute, in the effect of his companion's rare alertness. She instantly spoke to her aunt of what had first been uppermost for herself, inviting her thereby intimately to join them, and doing it the more happily also, no doubt, because the fact that she resentfully named gave her ample support. "Had you quite understood, my dear, that it's full three weeks?" And she effaced herself as if to leave Mrs. Lowder to deal from 362