Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/408

 lap, Kate considered what he had said. He had spoken immediately of what had happened at Sir Luke Strett's door. "She has let me know nothing. But that doesn't matter—if it's what you mean."

"It's part of what I mean," Densher said; but what he went on with, after a pause during which she waited, was apparently not the rest of that. "She had had, from Mrs. Stringham, her telegram; late last night. But to me the poor lady has not wired. The event," he added, "will have taken place yesterday, and Sir Luke, starting immediately, one can see, and travelling straight, will get back to-morrow morning. So that Mrs. Stringham, I judge, is left to face in some solitude the situation bequeathed to her. But of course," he wound up, "Sir Luke couldn't stay."

Her look at him might have had in it a vague betrayal of the sense that he was gaming time. "Was your telegram from Sir Luke?"

"No—I've had no telegram."

She wondered. "But not a letter?"

"Not from Mrs. Stringham—no." He failed again, however, to develop this—for which her forbearance from another question gave him occasion. From whom then had he heard? He might, at last confronted with her, really have been gaining time; and as if to show that she respected this impulse she made her inquiry different. "Should you like to go out to her—to Mrs. Stringham?"

About that at least he was clear. "Not at all. 398