The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 by Henry James

  THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

  BY HENRY JAMES

  VOLUME I

  NEW YORK

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  1902

  Copyright, 1902, by

  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  ----

  Published, August, 1902

  TROW DIRECTORY

  PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

  NEW YORK

  BOOK FIRST

  THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

  I

  She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept herunconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, inthe glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritationthat had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place,moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazedcloth that gave at once--she had tried it--the sense of the slipperyand of the sticky. She had looked at the sallow prints on the walls andat the lonely magazine, a year old, that combined, with a small lamp incoloured glass and a knitted white centre-piece wanting in freshness,to enhance the effect of the purplish cloth on the principal table; shehad above all, from time to time, taken a brief stand on the smallbalcony to which the pair of long windows gave access. The vulgarlittle street, in this view, offered scant relief from the vulgarlittle room; its main office was to suggest to her that the narrowblack house-fronts, adjusted to a standard that would have been loweven for backs, constituted quite the publicity implied by suchprivacies. One felt them in the room exactly as one felt the room--thehundred like it or worse--in the street. Each time she turned in again,each time, in her impatience, she gave him up, it was to sound to adeeper depth, while she tasted the faint, flat emanation of things, thefailure of fortune and of honour. If she continued to wait it wasreally, in a manner, that she might not add the shame of fear, ofindividual, personal collapse, to all the other shames. To feel thestreet, to feel the room, to feel the table-cloth and the centre-pieceand the lamp, gave her a small, salutary sense, at least, of neithershirking nor lying. This whole vision was the worst thing yet--asincluding, in particular, the interview for which she had preparedherself; and for what had she come but for the worst? She tried to besad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't besad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame andchalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in thesemerciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings?

  Her father's life, her sister's, her own, that of her two lostbrothers--the whole history of their house had the effect of some fineflorid, voluminous phrase, say even a musical, that dropped first intowords, into notes, without sense, and then, hanging unfinished, into nowords, no notes at all. Why should a set of people have been put inmotion, on such a scale and with such an air of being equipped for aprofitable journey, only to break down without an accident, to stretchthemselves in the wayside dust without a reason? The answer to thesequestions was not in Chirk Street, but the questions themselvesbristled there, and the girl's repeated pause before the mirror and thechimney-place might have represented her nearest approach to an escapefrom them. Was it not in fact the partial escape from this "worst" inwhich she was steeped to be able to make herself out again as agreeableto see? She stared into the tarnished glass too hard indeed to bestaring at her beauty alone. She readjusted the poise of her black,closely-feathered hat; retouched, beneath it, the thick fall of herdusky hair; kept her eyes, aslant, no less on her beautiful avertedthan on her beautiful presented oval. She was dressed altogether inblack, which gave an even tone, by contrast, to her clear face and madeher hair more harmoniously dark. Outside, on the balcony, her eyesshowed as blue; within, at the mirror, they showed almost as black. Shewas handsome, but the degree of it was not sustained by items and aids;a circumstance moreover playing its part at almost any time in theimpression she produced. The impression was one that remained, but asregards the sources of it no sum in addition would have made up thetotal. She had stature without height, grace without motion, presencewithout mass. Slender and simple, frequently soundless, she was somehowalways in the line of the eye--she counted singularly for its pleasure.More "dressed," often, with fewer accessories, than other women, orless dressed, should occasion require, with more, she probably couldnot have given the key to these felicities. They were mysteries ofwhich her friends were conscious--those friends whose generalexplanation was to say that she was clever, whether or no it were takenby the world as the cause or as the effect of her charm. If she sawmore things than her fine face in the dull glass of her father'slodgings, she might have seen that, after all, she was not herself afact in the collapse. She didn't judge herself cheap, she didn't makefor misery. Personally, at least, she was not chalk-marked for theauction. She hadn't given up yet, and the broken sentence, if she wasthe last word, would end with a sort of meaning. There was a minuteduring which, though her eyes were fixed, she quite visibly lostherself in the thought of the way she might still pull things round hadshe only been a man. It was the name, above all, she would take inhand--the precious name she so liked and that, in spite of the harm herwretched father had done it, was not yet past praying for. She loved itin fact the more tenderly for that bleeding wound. But what could apenniless girl do with it but let it go?

  When her father at last appeared she became, as usual, instantly awareof the futility of any effort to hold him to anything. He had writtenher that he was ill, too ill to leave his room, and that he must seeher without delay; and if this had been, as was probable, the sketch ofa design, he was indifferent even to the moderate finish required fordeception. He had clearly wanted, for perversities that he calledreasons, to see her, just as she herself had sharpened for a talk; butshe now again felt, in the inevitability of the freedom he used withher, all the old ache, her poor mother's very own, that he couldn'ttouch you ever so lightly without setting up. No relation with himcould be so short or so superficial as not to be somehow to your hurt;and this, in the strangest way in the world, not because he desired itto be--feeling often, as he surely must, the profit for him of its notbeing--but because there was never a mistake for you that he couldleave unmade or a conviction of his impossibility in you that he couldapproach you without strengthening. He might have awaited her on thesofa in his sitting-room, or might have stayed in bed and received herin that situation. She was glad to be spared the sight of such_penetralia,_ but it would have reminded her a little less that therewas no truth in him. This was the weariness of every fresh meeting; hedealt out lies as he might the cards from the greasy old pack for thegame of diplomacy to which you were to sit down with him. Theinconvenience--as always happens in such cases--was not that you mindedwhat was false, but that you missed what was true. He might be ill, andit might suit you to know it, but no contact with him, for this, couldever be straight enough. Just so he even might die, but Kate fairlywondered on what evidence of his own she would some day have to believeit.

  He had not at present come down from his room, which she knew to beabove the one they were in: he had already been out of the house,though he would either, should she challenge him, deny it or present itas a proof of his extremity. She had, however, by this time, quiteceased to challenge him; not only, face to face with him, vainirritation dropped, but he breathed upon the tragic consciousness insuch a way that after a moment nothing of it was left. The difficultywas not less that he breathed in the same way upon the comic: shealmost believed that with this latter she might still have found afoothold for clinging to him. He had ceased to be amusing--he wasreally too inhuman. His perfect look, which had floated him so long,was practically perfect still; but one had long since for ever
yoccasion taken it for granted. Nothing could have better shown than theactual how right one had been. He looked exactly as much as usual--allpink and silver as to skin and hair, all straitness and starch as tofigure and dress--the man in the world least connected with anythingunpleasant. He was so particularly the English gentleman and thefortunate, settled, normal person. Seen at a foreign _table d'hote,_he suggested but one thing: "In what perfection England produces them!"He had kind, safe eyes, and a voice which, for all its clean fulness,told, in a manner, the happy history of its having never had once toraise itself. Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so towalk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him tochoose the pace. Those who knew him a little said, "How he doesdress!"--those who knew him better said, "How _does_ he?" The one straygleam of comedy just now in his daughter's eyes was the funny feelinghe momentarily made her have of being herself "looked up" by him insordid lodgings. For a minute after he came in it was as if the placewere her own and he the visitor with susceptibilities. He gave youfunny feelings, he had indescribable arts, that quite turned thetables: that had been always how he came to see her mother so long asher mother would see him. He came from places they had often not knownabout, but he patronised Lexham Gardens. Kate's only actual expressionof impatience, however, was "I'm glad you're so much better!"

  "I'm not so much better, my dear--I'm exceedingly unwell; the proof ofwhich is, precisely, that I've been out to the chemist's--that beastlyfellow at the corner." So Mr. Croy showed he could qualify the humblehand that assuaged him. "I'm taking something he has made up for me.It's just why I've sent for you--that you may see me as I really am."

  "Oh papa, it's long since I've ceased to see you otherwise than as youreally are! I think we've all arrived by this time at the right wordfor that: 'You're beautiful--_n'en parlons plus.'_ You're as beautifulas ever--you look lovely." He judged meanwhile her own appearance, asshe knew she could always trust him to do; recognising, estimating,sometimes disapproving, what she wore, showing her the interest hecontinued to take in her. He might really take none at all, yet shevirtually knew herself the creature in the world to whom he was leastindifferent. She had often enough wondered what on earth, at the passhe had reached, could give him pleasure, and she had come back, onthese occasions, to that. It gave him pleasure that she was handsome,that she was, in her way, a sensible value. It was at least as marked,nevertheless, that he derived none from similar conditions, so far asthey _were_ similar, in his other child. Poor Marian might be handsome,but he certainly didn't care. The hitch here, of course, was that, withwhatever beauty, her sister, widowed and almost in want, with fourbouncing children, was not a sensible value. She asked him, the nextthing, how long he had been in his actual quarters, though aware of howlittle it mattered, how little any answer he might make would probablyhave in common with the truth. She failed in fact to notice his answer,truthful or not, already occupied as she was with what she had on herown side to say to him. This was really what had made her wait--whatsuperseded the small remainder of her resentment at his constantpractical impertinence; the result of all of which was that, within aminute, she had brought it out. "Yes--even now I'm willing to go withyou. I don't know what you may have wished to say to me, and even ifyou hadn't written you would within a day or two have heard from me.Things have happened, and I've only waited, for seeing you, till Ishould be quite sure. I _am_ quite sure. I'll go with you."

  It produced an effect. "Go with me where?"

  "Anywhere. I'll stay with you. Even here." She had taken off her glovesand, as if she had arrived with her plan, she sat down.

  Lionel Croy hung about in his disengaged way--hovered there as if, inconsequence of her words, looking for a pretext to back out easily: onwhich she immediately saw she had discounted, as it might be called,what he had himself been preparing. He wished her not to come to him,still less to settle with him, and had sent for her to give her up withsome style and state; a part of the beauty of which, however, was tohave been his sacrifice to her own detachment. There was no style, nostate, unless she wished to forsake him. His idea had accordingly beento surrender her to her wish with all nobleness; it had by no meansbeen to have positively to keep her off. She cared, however, not astraw for his embarrassment--feeling how little, on her own part, shewas moved by charity. She had seen him, first and last, in so manyattitudes that she could now deprive him quite without compunction ofthe luxury of a new one. Yet she felt the disconcerted gasp in his toneas he said: "Oh my child, I can never consent to that!"

  "What then are you going to do?"

  "I'm turning it over," said Lionel Croy. "You may imagine if I'm notthinking."

  "Haven't you thought then," his daughter asked, "of what I speak of? Imean of my being ready."

  Standing before her with his hands behind him and his legs a littleapart, he swayed slightly to and fro, inclined toward her as if risingon his toes. It had an effect of conscientious deliberation. "No. Ihaven't. I couldn't. I wouldn't." It was so respectable, a show thatshe felt afresh, and with the memory of their old despair, the despairat home, how little his appearance ever by any chance told about him.His plausibility had been the heaviest of her mother's crosses;inevitably so much more present to the world than whatever it was thatwas horrid--thank God they didn't really know!--that he had done. Hehad positively been, in his way, by the force of his particular type, aterrible husband not to live with; his type reflecting so invidiouslyon the woman who had found him distasteful. Had this thereby not keptdirectly present to Kate herself that it might, on some sides, prove nolight thing for her to leave uncompanioned a parent with such a faceand such a manner? Yet if there was much she neither knew nor dreamedof, it passed between them at this very moment that he was quitefamiliar with himself as the subject of such quandaries. If herecognised his younger daughter's happy aspect as a sensible value, hehad from the first still more exactly appraised his own. The greatwonder was not that in spite of everything his own had helped him; thegreat wonder was that it hadn't helped him more. However, it was, toits old, eternal, recurrent tune, helping him all the while; her dropinto patience with him showed how it was helping him at this moment.She saw the next instant precisely the line he would take. "Do youreally ask me to believe you've been making up your mind to that?"

  She had to consider her own line. "I don't think I care, papa, what youbelieve. I never, for that matter, think of you as believing anything;hardly more," she permitted herself to add, "than I ever think of youas yourself believed. I don't know you, father, you see."

  "And it's your idea that you may make that up?"

  "Oh dear, no; not at all. That's no part of the question. If I haven'tunderstood you by this time, I never shall, and it doesn't matter. Ithas seemed to me that you may be lived with, but not that you may beunderstood. Of course I've not the least idea how you get on."

  "I don't get on," Mr. Croy almost gaily replied.

  His daughter took in the place again, and it might well have seemed oddthat in so little to meet the eye there should be so much to show. Whatshowed was the ugliness--so positive and palpable that it was somehowsustaining. It was a medium, a setting, and to that extent, after all,a dreadful sign of life; so that it fairly put a point into her answer."Oh, I beg your pardon. You flourish."

  "Do you throw it up at me again," he pleasantly inquired, "that I'venot made away with myself?"

  She treated the question as needing no reply; she sat there for realthings. "You know how all our anxieties, under mamma's will, have comeout. She had still less to leave than she feared. We don't know how welived. It all makes up about two hundred a year for Marian, and two forme, but I give up a hundred to Marian."

  "Oh, you weak thing!" her father kindly sighed.

  "For you and me together," she went on, "the other hundred would dosomething."

  "And what would do the rest?"

  "Can you yourself do nothing?" He gave her a look; then, slipping hishands into his pockets and turning away
, stood for a little at thewindow she had left open. She said nothing more--she had placed himthere with that question, and the silence lasted a minute, broken bythe call of an appealing costermonger, which came in with the mildMarch air, with the shabby sunshine, fearfully unbecoming to the room,and with the small homely hum of Chirk Street. Presently he movednearer, but as if her question had quite dropped. "I don't see what hasso suddenly wound you up."

  "I should have thought you might perhaps guess. Let me at any rate tellyou. Aunt Maud has made me a proposal. But she has also made me acondition. She wants to keep me."

  "And what in the world else _could_ she possibly want?"

  "Oh, I don't know--many things. I'm not so precious a capture," thegirl a little dryly explained. "No one has ever wanted to keep mebefore."

  Looking always what was proper, her father looked now still moresurprised than interested. "You've not had proposals?" He spoke as ifthat were incredible of Lionel Croy's daughter; as if indeed such anadmission scarce consorted, even in filial intimacy, with her highspirit and general form.

  "Not from rich relations. She's extremely kind to me, but it's time,she says, that we should understand each other."

  Mr. Croy fully assented. "Of course it is--high time; and I can quiteimagine what she means by it."

  "Are you very sure?"

  "Oh, perfectly. She means that she'll 'do' for you handsomely if you'llbreak off all relations with me. You speak of her condition. Hercondition's of course that."

  "Well then," said Kate, "it's what has wound me up. Here I am."

  He showed with a gesture how thoroughly he had taken it in; afterwhich, within a few seconds, he had, quite congruously, turned thesituation about. "Do you really suppose me in a position to justifyyour throwing yourself upon me?"

  She waited a little, but when she spoke it was clear. "Yes."

  "Well then, you're a bigger fool than I should have ventured to supposeyou."

  "Why so? You live. You flourish. You bloom."

  "Ah, how you've all always hated me!" he murmured with a pensive gazeagain at the window.

  "No one could be less of a mere cherished memory," she declared as ifshe had not heard him. "You're an actual person, if there ever was one.We agreed just now that you're beautiful. You strike me, you know,as--in your own way--much more firm on your feet than I am. Don't putit to me therefore as monstrous that the fact that we are, after all,parent and child should at present in some manner count for us. My ideahas been that it should have some effect for each of us. I don't atall, as I told you just now," she pursued, "make out your life; butwhatever it is I hereby offer you to accept it. And, on my side, I'lldo everything I can for you."

  "I see," said Lionel Croy. Then, with the sound of extreme relevance,"And what _can_ you?" She only, at this, hesitated, and he took up hersilence. "You can describe yourself--_to_ yourself--as, in a fineflight, giving up your aunt for me; but what good, I should like toknow, would your fine flight do me?" As she still said nothing hedeveloped a little. "We're not possessed of so much, at this charmingpass, please to remember, as that we can afford not to take hold of anyperch held out to us. I like the way you talk, my dear, about 'givingup!' One doesn't give up the use of a spoon because one's reduced toliving on broth. And your spoon, that is your aunt, please consider, ispartly mine as well." She rose now, as if in sight of the term of hereffort, in sight of the futility and the weariness of many things, andmoved back to the poor little glass with which she had communed before.She retouched here again the poise of her hat, and this brought to herfather's lips another remark in which impatience, however, had alreadybeen replaced by a funny flare of appreciation. "Oh, you're all right!Don't muddle yourself up with _me!"_

  His daughter turned round to him. "The condition Aunt Maud makes isthat I shall have absolutely nothing to do with you; never see you, norspeak, nor write to you, never go near you nor make you a sign, norhold any sort of communication with you. What she requires is that youshall simply cease to exist for me."

  He had always seemed--it was one of the marks of what they called the"unspeakable" in him--to walk a little more on his toes, as if forjauntiness, in the presence of offence. Nothing, however, was morewonderful than what he sometimes would take for offence, unless itmight be what he sometimes wouldn't. He walked at any rate on his toesnow. "A very proper requirement of your Aunt Maud, my dear--I don'thesitate to say it!" Yet as this, much as she had seen, left her silentat first from what might have been a sense of sickness, he had time togo on: "That's her condition then. But what are her promises? Just whatdoes she engage to do? You must work it, you know."

  "You mean make her feel," Kate asked after a moment, "how much I'mattached to you?"

  "Well, what a cruel, invidious treaty it is for you to sign. I'm a poorold dad to make a stand about giving up--I quite agree. But I'm not,after all, quite the old dad not to get something _for_ giving up."

  "Oh, I think her idea," said Kate almost gaily now, "is that I shallget a great deal."

  He met her with his inimitable amenity. "But does she give you theitems?"

  The girl went through the show. "More or less, I think. But many ofthem are things I dare say I may take for granted--things women can dofor each other and that you wouldn't understand."

  "There's nothing I understand so well, always, as the things I needn't!But what I want to do, you see," he went on, "is to put it to yourconscience that you've an admirable opportunity; and that it's moreoverone for which, after all, damn you, you've really to thank _me."_

  "I confess I don't see," Kate observed, "what my 'conscience' has to dowith it."

  "Then, my dear girl, you ought simply to be ashamed of yourself. Do youknow what you're a proof of, all you hard, hollow people together?" Heput the question with a charming air of sudden spiritual heat. "Of thedeplorably superficial morality of the age. The family sentiment, inour vulgarised, brutalised life, has gone utterly to pot. There was aday when a man like me--by which I mean a parent like me--would havebeen for a daughter like you a quite distinct value; what's called inthe business world, I believe, an 'asset.'" He continued sociably tomake it out. "I'm not talking only of what you might, with the rightfeeling do _for_ me, but of what you might--it's what I call youropportunity--do _with_ me. Unless indeed," he the next momentimperturbably threw off, "they come a good deal to the same thing. Yourduty as well as your chance, if you're capable of seeing it, is to useme. Show family feeling by seeing what I'm good for. If you had it as_I_ have it you'd see I'm still good--well, for a lot of things.There's in fact, my dear," Mr. Croy wound up, "a coach-and-four to begot out of me." His drop, or rather his climax, failed a little ofeffect, indeed, through an undue precipitation of memory. Something hisdaughter had said came back to him. "You've settled to give away halfyour little inheritance?"

  Her hesitation broke into laughter. "No--I haven't 'settled' anything."

  "But you mean, practically, to let Marian collar it?" They stood thereface to face, but she so denied herself to his challenge that he couldonly go on. "You've a view of three hundred a year for her in additionto what her husband left her with? Is _that,"_ the remote progenitor ofsuch wantonness audibly wondered, "your morality?"

  Kate found her answer without trouble. "Is it your idea that I shouldgive you everything?"

  The "everything" clearly struck him--to the point even of determiningthe tone of his reply. "Far from it. How can you ask that when I refusewhat you tell me you came to offer? Make of my idea what you can; Ithink I've sufficiently expressed it, and it's at any rate to take orto leave. It's the only one, I may nevertheless add; it's the basketwith all my eggs. It's my conception, in short, of your duty."

  The girl's tired smile watched the word as if it had taken on a smallgrotesque visibility. "You're wonderful on such subjects! I think Ishould leave you in no doubt," she pursued, "that if I were to sign myaunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to the letter."

  "Rather, my own love! It's just your honou
r that I appeal to. The onlyway to play the game _is_ to play it. There's no limit to what youraunt can do for you."

  "Do you mean in the way of marrying me?"

  "What else should I mean? Marry properly----"

  "And then?" Kate asked as he hung fire.

  "And then--well, I _will_ talk with you. I'll resume relations."

  She looked about her and picked up her parasol. "Because you're not soafraid of any one else in the world as you are of _her?_ My husband, ifI should marry, would be, at the worst, less of a terror? If that'swhat you mean, there may be something in it. But doesn't it depend alittle also on what you mean by my getting a proper one? However," Kateadded as she picked out the frill of her little umbrella, "I don'tsuppose your idea of him is _quite_ that he should persuade you to livewith us."

  "Dear no--not a bit." He spoke as not resenting either the fear or thehope she imputed; met both imputations, in fact, with a sort ofintellectual relief. "I place the case for you wholly in your aunt'shands. I take her view, with my eyes shut; I accept in all confidenceany man she selects. If he's good enough for _her_--elephantine snob asshe is--he's good enough for me; and quite in spite of the fact thatshe'll be sure to select one who can be trusted to be nasty to me. Myonly interest is in your doing what she wants. You shan't be so beastlypoor, my darling," Mr. Croy declared, "if I can help it."

  "Well then, good-bye, papa," the girl said after a reflection on thisthat had perceptibly ended for her in a renunciation of further debate."Of course you understand that it may be for long."

  Her companion, hereupon, had one of his finest inspirations. "Why not,frankly, for ever? You must do me the justice to see that I don't dothings, that I've never done them, by halves--that if I offer you toefface myself, it's for the final, fatal sponge that I ask, wellsaturated and well applied."

  She turned her handsome, quiet face upon him at such length that itmight well have been for the last time. "I don't know what you're like."

  "No more do I, my dear. I've spent my life in trying, in vain, todiscover. Like nothing--more's the pity. If there had been many of us,and we could have found each other out, there's no knowing what wemightn't have done. But it doesn't matter now. Good-bye, love." Helooked even not sure of what she would wish him to suppose on thesubject of a kiss, yet also not embarrassed by his uncertainty.

  She forbore in fact for a moment longer to clear it up. "I wish therewere some one here who might serve--for any contingency--as a witnessthat I _have_ put it to you that I'm ready to come."

  "Would you like me," her father asked, "to call the landlady?"

  "You may not believe me," she pursued, "but I came really hoping youmight have found some way. I'm very sorry, at all events, to leave youunwell." He turned away from her, on this, and, as he had done before,took refuge, by the window, in a stare at the street. "Let me putit--unfortunately without a witness," she added after a moment, "thatthere's only one word you really need speak."

  When he took this up it was still with his back to her. "If I don'tstrike you as having already spoken it, our time has been singularlywasted."

  "I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt exactly to what she wantsof me in respect to you. She wants me to choose. Very well, I _will_choose. I'll wash my hands of her for you to just that tune."

  He at last brought himself round. "Do you know, dear, you make me sick?I've tried to be clear, and it isn't fair."

  But she passed this over; she was too visibly sincere. "Father!"

  "I don't quite see what's the matter with you," he said, "and if youcan't pull yourself together I'll--upon my honour--take you in hand.Put you into a cab and deliver you again safe at Lancaster Gate."

  She was really absent, distant. "Father."

  It was too much, and he met it sharply. "Well?"

  "Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it, there's a good you cando me and a help you can render."

  "Isn't it then exactly what I've been trying to make you feel?"

  "Yes," she answered patiently, "but so in the wrong way. I'm perfectlyhonest in what I say, and I know what I'm talking about. It isn't thatI'll pretend I could have believed a month ago in anything to call aidor support from you. The case is changed--that's what has happened; mydifficulty's a new one. But even now it's not a question of anything Ishould ask you in a way to 'do.' It's simply a question of your notturning me away--taking yourself out of my life. It's simply a questionof your saying: 'Yes then, since you will, we'll stand together. Wewon't worry in advance about how or where; we'll have a faith and finda way.' That's all--_that_ would be the good you'd do me. I should_have_ you, and it would be for my benefit. Do you see?"

  If he didn't it was not for want of looking at her hard. "The matterwith you is that you're in love, and that your aunt knows and--forreasons, I'm sure, perfect--hates and opposes it. Well she may! It's amatter in which I trust her with my eyes shut. Go, please." Though hespoke not in anger--rather in infinite sadness--he fairly turned herout. Before she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what hefelt, opened the door of the room. He had fairly, in his deepdisapproval, a generous compassion to spare. "I'm sorry for her,deluded woman, if she builds on you."

  Kate stood a moment in the draught. "She's not the person _I_ pitymost, for, deluded in many ways though she may be, she's not the personwho's most so. I mean," she explained, "if it's a question of what youcall building on me."

  He took it as if what she meant might be other than her description ofit. "You're deceiving _two_ persons then, Mrs. Lowder and somebodyelse?"

  She shook her head with detachment. "I've no intention of that sortwith respect to any one now--to Mrs. Lowder least of all. If you failme"--she seemed to make it out for herself--"that has the merit atleast that it simplifies. I shall go my way--as I see my way."

  "Your way, you mean then, will be to marry some blackguard without apenny?"

  "You ask a great deal of satisfaction," she observed, "for the littleyou give."

  It brought him up again before her as with a sense that she was not tobe hustled; and, though he glared at her a little, this had long beenthe practical limit to his general power of objection. "If you're baseenough to incur your aunt's disgust, you're base enough for myargument. What, if you're not thinking of an utterly improper person,do your speeches to me signify? Who _is_ the beggarly sneak?" hedemanded as her response failed. Her response, when it came, was coldbut distinct. "He has every disposition to make the best of you. Heonly wants in fact to be kind to you."

  "Then he _must_ be an ass! And how in the world can you consider it toimprove him for me," her father pursued, "that he's also destitute andimpossible? There are asses and asses, even--the right and thewrong--and you appear to have carefully picked out one of the wrong.Your aunt knows _them,_ by good fortune; I perfectly trust, as I tellyou, her judgment for them; and you may take it from me once for allthat I won't hear of any one of whom _she_ won't." Which led up to hislast word. "If you should really defy us both----!"

  "Well, papa?"

  "Well, my sweet child, I think that--reduced to insignificance as youmay fondly believe me--I should still not be quite without some way ofmaking you regret it."

  She had a pause, a grave one, but not, as appeared, that she mightmeasure this danger. "If I shouldn't do it, you know, it wouldn't bebecause I'm afraid of you."

  "Oh, if you don't do it," he retorted, "you may be as bold as you like!"

  "Then you can do nothing at all for me?"

  He showed her, this time unmistakably--it was before her there on thelanding, at the top of the tortuous stairs and in the midst of thestrange smell that seemed to cling to them--how vain her appealremained. "I've never pretended to do more than my duty; I've given youthe best and the clearest advice." And then came up the spring thatmoved him. "If it only displeases you, you can go to Marian to beconsoled." What he couldn't forgive was her dividing with Marian herscant share of the provision their mother had been able to leave them.She should have divi
ded it with _him._

  II

  She had gone to Mrs. Lowder on her mother's death--gone with an effortthe strain and pain of which made her at present, as she recalled them,reflect on the long way she had travelled since then. There had beennothing else to do--not a penny in the other house, nothing but unpaidbills that had gathered thick while its mistress lay mortally ill, andthe admonition that there was nothing she must attempt to raise moneyon, since everything belonged to the "estate." How the estate wouldturn out at best presented itself as a mystery altogether gruesome; ithad proved, in fact, since then a residuum a trifle less scant than,with Marian, she had for some weeks feared; but the girl had had at thebeginning rather a wounded sense of its being watched on behalf ofMarian and her children. What on earth was it supposed that _she_wanted to do to it? She wanted in truth only to give up--to abandon herown interest, which she, no doubt, would already have done had not thepoint been subject to Aunt Maud's sharp intervention. Aunt Maud'sintervention was all sharp now, and the other point, the great one, wasthat it was to be, in this light, either all put up with or alldeclined. Yet at the winter's end, nevertheless, she could scarce havesaid what stand she conceived she had taken. It wouldn't be the firsttime she had seen herself obliged to accept with smothered irony otherpeople's interpretation of her conduct. She often ended by giving up tothem--it seemed really the way to live--the version that met theirconvenience.

  The tall, rich, heavy house at Lancaster Gate, on the other side of thePark and the long South Kensington stretches, had figured to her,through childhood, through girlhood, as the remotest limit of her vagueyoung world. It was further off and more occasional than anything elsein the comparatively compact circle in which she revolved, and seemed,by a rigour early marked, to be reached through long, straight,discouraging vistas, which kept lengthening and straightening, whereasalmost everything else in life was either, at the worst, round aboutCromwell Road, or, at the furthest, in the nearer parts of KensingtonGardens. Mrs. Lowder was her only "real" aunt, not the wife of anuncle, and had been thereby, both in ancient days and when the greatertrouble came, the person, of all persons, properly to make some sign;in accord with which our young woman's feeling was founded on theimpression, quite cherished for years, that the signs made across theinterval just mentioned had never been really in the note of thesituation. The main office of this relative, for the young Croys--apartfrom giving them their fixed measure of social greatness--had struckthem as being to form them to a conception of what they were not toexpect. When Kate came to think matters over with the aid of knowledge,she failed quite to see how Aunt Maud could have been different--shehad rather perceived by this time how many other things might havebeen; yet she also made out that if they had all consciously livedunder a liability to the chill breath of _ultima Thule_ they couldn't,either, on the facts, very well have done less. What in the eventappeared established was that if Mrs. Lowder had disliked them she hadyet not disliked them so much as they supposed. It had at any rate beenfor the purpose of showing how she struggled with her aversion that shesometimes came to see them, that she at regular periods invited them toher house, and in short, as it now looked, kept them along on the termsthat would best give her sister the perennial luxury of a grievance.This sister, poor Mrs. Croy, the girl knew, had always judged herresentfully, and had brought them up, Marian, the boys and herself, tothe idea of a particular attitude, for signs of the practice of whichthey watched each other with awe. The attitude was to make plain toAunt Maud, with the same regularity as her invitations, that theysufficed--thanks awfully--to themselves. But the ground of it, Katelived to discern, was that this was only because _she_ didn't sufficeto them. The little she offered was to be accepted under protest, yetnot, really, because it was excessive. It wounded them--there was therub!--because it fell short.

  The number of new things our young lady looked out on from the highsouth window that hung over the Park--this number was so great (thoughsome of the things were only old ones altered and, as the phrase was ofother matters, done up), that life at present turned to her view fromweek to week more and more the face of a striking and distinguishedstranger. She had reached a great age--for it quite seemed to her thatat twenty-five it was late to reconsider; and her most general sensewas a shade of regret that she had not known earlier. The world wasdifferent--whether for worse or for better--from her rudimentaryreadings, and it gave her the feeling of a wasted past. If she had onlyknown sooner she might have arranged herself more to meet it. She made,at all events, discoveries every day, some of which were about herselfand others about other persons. Two of these--one under each head--moreparticularly engaged, in alternation, her anxiety. She saw as she hadnever seen before how material things spoke to her. She saw, and sheblushed to see, that if, in contrast with some of its old aspects, lifenow affected her as a dress successfully "done up," this was exactly byreason of the trimmings and lace, was a matter of ribbons and silk andvelvet. She had a dire accessibility to pleasure from such sources. Sheliked the charming quarters her aunt had assigned her--liked themliterally more than she had in all her other days liked anything; andnothing could have been more uneasy than her suspicion of herrelative's view of this truth. Her relative was prodigious--she hadnever done her relative justice. These larger conditions all tasted ofher, from morning till night; but she was a person in respect to whomthe growth of acquaintance could only--strange as it might seem--keepyour heart in your mouth.

  The girl's second great discovery was that, so far from having been forMrs. Lowder a subject of superficial consideration, the blighted homein Lexham Gardens had haunted her nights and her days. Kate had spent,all winter, hours of observation that were not less pointed for beingspent alone; recent events, which her mourning explained, assured her ameasure of isolation, and it was in the isolation above all that herneighbour's influence worked. Sitting far downstairs Aunt Maud was yeta presence from which a sensitive niece could feel herself extremelyunder pressure. She knew herself now, the sensitive niece, as havingbeen marked from far back. She knew more than she could have told you,by the upstairs fire, in a whole dark December afternoon. She knew somuch that her knowledge was what fairly kept her there, making her attimes more endlessly between the small silk-covered sofa that stood forher in the firelight and the great grey map of Middlesex spread beneathher lookout. To go down, to forsake her refuge, was to meet some of herdiscoveries half-way, to have to face them or fly before them; whereasthey were at such a height only like the rumble of a far-off siegeheard in the provisioned citadel. She had almost liked, in these weeks,what had created her suspense and her stress: the loss of her mother,the submersion of her father, the discomfort of her sister, theconfirmation of their shrunken prospects, the certainty, in especial,of her having to recognise that, should she behave, as she called it,decently--that is still do something for others--she would be herselfwholly without supplies. She held that she had a right to sadness andstillness; she nursed them for their postponing power. What they mainlypostponed was the question of a surrender--though she could not yethave said exactly of what: a general surrender of everything--that wasat moments the way it presented itself--to Aunt Maud's looming"personality." It was by her personality that Aunt Maud was prodigious,and the great mass of it loomed because, in the thick, the foglike airof her arranged existence, there were parts doubtless magnified andparts certainly vague. They represented at all events alike, the dimand the distinct, a strong will and a high hand. It was perfectlypresent to Kate that she might be devoured, and she likened herself toa trembling kid, kept apart a day or two till her turn should come, butsure sooner or later to be introduced into the cage of the lioness.

  The cage was Aunt Maud's own room, her office, her counting-house, herbattlefield, her especial scene, in fine, of action, situated on theground-floor, opening from the main hall and figuring rather to ouryoung woman on exit and entrance as a guard house or a toll-gate. Thelioness waited--the kid had at least that consciousness; was aware ofthe neighbour
hood of a morsel she had reason to suppose tender. Shewould have been meanwhile a wonderful lioness for a show, anextraordinary figure in a cage or anywhere; majestic, magnificent,high-coloured, all brilliant gloss, perpetual satin, twinkling buglesand flashing gems, with a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of raven hair,a polish of complexion that was like that of well-kept china andthat--as if the skin were too tight--told especially at curves andcorners. Her niece had a quiet name for her--she kept it quiet;thinking of her, with a free fancy, as somehow typically insular, shetalked to herself of Britannia of the Market Place--Britanniaunmistakable, but with a pen in her ear, and felt she should not behappy till she might on some occasion add to the rest of the panoply ahelmet, a shield, a trident and a ledger. It was not in truth, however,that the forces with which, as Kate felt, she would have to deal werethose most suggested by an image simple and broad; she was learning,after all, each day, to know her companion, and what she had alreadymost perceived was the mistake of trusting to easy analogies. There wasa whole side of Britannia, the side of her florid philistinism, herplumes and her train, her fantastic furniture and heaving bosom, thefalse gods of her taste and false notes of her talk, the solecontemplation of which would be dangerously misleading. She was acomplex and subtle Britannia, as passionate as she was practical, witha reticule for her prejudices as deep as that other pocket, the pocketfull of coins stamped in her image, that the world best knew her by.She carried on, in short, behind her aggressive and defensive front,operations determined by her wisdom. It was in fact, we have hinted, asa besieger that our young lady, in the provisioned citadel, had for thepresent most to think of her, and what made her formidable in thischaracter was that she was unscrupulous and immoral. So, at all events,in silent sessions and a youthful off-hand way, Kate convenientlypictured her: what this sufficiently represented being that her weightwas in the scale of certain dangers--those dangers that, by ourshowing, made the younger woman linger and lurk above, while the elder,below, both militant and diplomatic, covered as much of the ground aspossible. Yet what were the dangers, after all, but just the dangers oflife and of London? Mrs. Lowder _was_ London, _was_ life--the roar ofthe siege and the thick of the fray. There were some things, after all,of which Britannia was afraid; but Aunt Maud was afraid of nothing--noteven, it would appear, of arduous thought. These impressions, none theless, Kate kept so much to herself that she scarce shared them withpoor Marian, the ostensible purpose of her frequent visits to whom yetcontinued to be to talk over everything. One of her reasons for holdingoff from the last concession to Aunt Maud was that she might be themore free to commit herself to this so much nearer and so much lessfortunate relative, with whom Aunt Maud would have, directly, almostnothing to do. The sharpest pinch of her state, meanwhile, was exactlythat all intercourse with her sister had the effect of casting down hercourage and tying her hands, adding daily to her sense of the part, notalways either uplifting or sweetening, that the bond of blood mightplay in one's life. She was face to face with it now, with the bond ofblood; the consciousness of it was what she seemed most clearly to have"come into" by the death of her mother, much of that consciousness asher mother had absorbed and carried away. Her haunting, harrassingfather, her menacing, uncompromising aunt, her portionless littlenephews and nieces, were figures that caused the chord of natural pietysuperabundantly to vibrate. Her manner of putting it to herself--butmore especially in respect to Marian--was that she saw what you mightbe brought to by the cultivation of consanguinity. She had taken, inthe old days, as she supposed, the measure of this liability; thosebeing the days when, as the second-born, she had thought no one in theworld so pretty as Marian, no one so charming, so clever, so assured,in advance, of happiness and success. The view was different now, buther attitude had been obliged, for many reasons, to show as the same.The subject of this estimate was no longer pretty, as the reason forthinking her clever was no longer plain; yet, bereaved, disappointed,demoralised, querulous, she was all the more sharply and insistentlyKate's elder and Kate's own. Kate's most constant feeling about her wasthat she would make her, Kate, do things; and always, in comfortlessChelsea, at the door of the small house the small rent of which shecouldn't help having on her mind, she fatalistically asked herself,before going in, which thing it would probably be this time. Shenoticed with profundity that disappointment made people selfish; shemarvelled at the serenity--it was the poor woman's only one--of whatMarian took for granted: her own state of abasement as the second-born,her life reduced to mere inexhaustible sisterhood. She existed, in thatview, wholly for the small house in Chelsea; the moral of whichmoreover, of course, was that the more one gave oneself the less of onewas left. There were always people to snatch at one, and it would neveroccur to _them_ that they were eating one up. They did that withouttasting.

  There was no such misfortune, or at any rate no such discomfort, shefurther reasoned, as to be formed at once for being and for seeing. Youalways saw, in this case, something else than what you were, and yougot, in consequence, none of the peace of your condition. However, asshe never really let Marian see what she was, Marian might well nothave been aware that she herself saw. Kate was accordingly, to her ownvision, not a hypocrite of virtue, for she gave herself up; but she wasa hypocrite of stupidity, for she kept to herself everything that wasnot herself. What she most kept was the particular sentiment with whichshe watched her sister instinctively neglect nothing that would makefor her submission to their aunt; a state of the spirit that perhapsmarked most sharply how poor you might become when you minded so muchthe absence of wealth. It was through Kate that Aunt Maud should beworked, and nothing mattered less than what might become of Kate in theprocess. Kate was to burn her ships, in short, so that Marian shouldprofit; and Marian's desire to profit was quite oblivious of a dignitythat had, after all, its reasons--if it had only cared for them--forkeeping itself a little stiff. Kate, to be properly stiff for both ofthem, would therefore have had to be selfish, have had to prefer anideal of behaviour--than which nothing, ever, was more selfish--to thepossibility of stray crumbs for the four small creatures. The tale ofMrs. Lowder's disgust at her elder niece's marriage to Mr. Condrip hadlost little of its point; the incredibly fatuous behaviour of Mr.Condrip, the parson of a dull suburban parish, with a saintly profilewhich was always in evidence, being so distinctly on record to keepcriticism consistent. He had presented his profile on system, having,goodness knew, nothing else to present--nothing at all to full-face theworld with, no imagination of the propriety of living and minding hisbusiness. Criticism had remained on Aunt Maud's part consistent enough;she was not a person to regard such proceedings as less of a mistakefor having acquired more of the privilege of pathos. She had not beenforgiving, and the only approach she made to overlooking them was byoverlooking--with the surviving delinquent--the solid little phalanxthat now represented them. Of the two sinister ceremonies that shelumped together, the marriage and the interment, she had been presentat the former, just as she had sent Marian, before it, a liberalcheque; but this had not been for her more than the shadow of anadmitted link with Mrs. Condrip's course. She disapproved of clamorouschildren for whom there was no prospect; she disapproved of weepingwidows who couldn't make their errors good; and she had thus put withinMarian's reach one of the few luxuries left when so much else had gone,an easy pretext for a constant grievance. Kate Croy remembered wellwhat their mother, in a different quarter, had made of it; and it wasMarian's marked failure to pluck the fruit of resentment that committedthem, as sisters, to an almost equal fellowship in abjection. If thetheory was that, yes, alas, one of the pair had ceased to be noticed,but that the other was noticed enough to make up for it, who would failto see that Kate couldn't separate herself without a cruel pride? Thatlesson became sharp for our young lady the day after her interview withher father.

  "I can't imagine," Marian on this occasion said to her, "how you canthink of anything else in the world but the horrid way we're situated."

  "And, pray, how do you know," Kate inq
uired in reply, "anything aboutmy thoughts? It seems to me I give you sufficient proof of how much Ithink of _you._ I don't, really, my dear, know what else you've to dowith!"

  Marian's retort, on this, was a stroke as to which she had suppliedherself with several kinds of preparation, but there was, none theless, something of an unexpected note in its promptitude. She hadforeseen her sister's general fear; but here, ominously, was thespecial one. "Well, your own business is of course your own business,and you may say there's no one less in a position than I to preach toyou. But, all the same, if you wash your hands of me for ever for it, Iwon't, for this once, keep back that I don't consider you've a right,as we all stand, to throw yourself away."

  It was after the children's dinner, which was also their mother's, butwhich their aunt mostly contrived to keep from ever becoming her ownluncheon and the two young women were still in the presence of thecrumpled table-cloth, the dispersed pinafores, the scraped dishes, thelingering odour of boiled food. Kate had asked, with ceremony, if shemight put up a window a little, and Mrs. Condrip had replied without itthat she might do as she liked. She often received such inquiries as ifthey reflected in a manner on the pure essence of her little ones. Thefour had retired, with much movement and noise, under imperfect controlof the small Irish governess whom their aunt had hunted out for themand whose brooding resolve not to prolong so uncrowned a martyrdom shealready more than suspected. Their mother had become for Kate--who tookit just for the effect of being their mother--quite a different thingfrom the mild Marian of the past: Mr. Condrip's widow expansivelyobscured that image. She was little more than a ragged relic, a plain,prosaic result of him, as if she had somehow been pulled through him asthrough an obstinate funnel, only to be left crumpled and useless andwith nothing in her but what he accounted for. She had grown red andalmost fat, which were not happy signs of mourning; less and less likeany Croy, particularly a Croy in trouble, and sensibly like herhusband's two unmarried sisters, who came to see her, in Kate's view,much too often and stayed too long, with the consequence of inroadsupon the tea and bread-and-butter--matters as to which Kate, notunconcerned with the tradesmen's books, had feelings. About them,moreover, Marian _was_ touchy, and her nearer relative, who observedand weighed things, noted as an oddity that she would have taken anyreflection on them as a reflection on herself. If that was whatmarriage necessarily did to you, Kate Croy would have questionedmarriage. It was a grave example, at any rate, of what a man--and sucha man!--might make of a woman. She could see how the Condrip pairpressed their brother's widow on the subject of Aunt Maud--who wasn't,after all, _their_ aunt; made her, over their interminable cups,chatter and even swagger about Lancaster Gate, made her more vulgarthan it had seemed written that any Croy could possibly become on sucha subject. They laid it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gatewas to be kept in sight, and that she, Kate, was to keep it; so that,curiously, or at all events sadly, our young woman was sure of being,in her own person, more permitted to them as an object of comment thanthey would in turn ever be permitted to herself. The beauty of which,too, was that Marian didn't love them. But they were Condrips--they hadgrown near the rose; they were almost like Bertie and Maudie, likeKitty and Guy. They talked of the dead to her, which Kate never did; itbeing a relation in which Kate could but mutely listen. She couldn'tindeed too often say to herself that if that was what marriage did toyou----! It may easily be guessed, therefore, that the ironic light ofsuch reserves fell straight across the field of Marian's warning. "Idon't quite see," she answered, "where, in particular, it strikes youthat my danger lies. I'm not conscious, I assure you, of the least'disposition' to throw myself anywhere. I feel as if, for the present,I have been quite sufficiently thrown."

  "You don't feel"--Marian brought it all out--"as if you would like tomarry Merton Densher?"

  Kate took a moment to meet this inquiry. "Is it your idea that if Ishould feel so I would be bound to give you notice, so that you mightstep in and head me off? Is that your idea?" the girl asked. Then, asher sister also had a pause, "I don't know what makes you talk of Mr.Densher," she observed.

  "I talk of him just because you don't. That you never do, in spite ofwhat I know--that's what makes me think of him. Or rather perhaps it'swhat makes me think of _you._ If you don't know by this time what Ihope for you, what I dream of--my attachment being what it is--it's nouse my attempting to tell you." But Marian had in fact warmed to herwork, and Kate was sure she had discussed Mr. Densher with the MissCondrips. "If I name that person I suppose it's because I'm so afraidof him. If you want really to know, he fills me with terror. If youwant really to know, in fact, I dislike him as much as I dread him."

  "And yet don't think it dangerous to abuse him to me?"

  "Yes," Mrs. Condrip confessed, "I do think it dangerous; but how can Ispeak of him otherwise? I dare say, I admit, that I shouldn't speak ofhim at all. Only I do want you for once, as I said just now, to know."

  "To know what, my dear?"

  "That I should regard it," Marian promptly returned, "as far and awaythe worst thing that has happened to us yet."

  "Do you mean because he hasn't money?"

  "Yes, for one thing. And because I don't believe in him."

  Kate was civil, but perfunctory. "What do you mean by not believing inhim?"

  "Well, being sure he'll never get it. And you _must_ have it. You_shall_ have it."

  "To give it to you?"

  Marian met her with a readiness that was practically pert. "To _have_it, first. Not, at any rate, to go on not having it. Then we shouldsee."

  "We should indeed!" said Kate Croy. It was talk of a kind she loathed,but if Marian chose to be vulgar what was one to do? It made her thinkof the Miss Condrips with renewed aversion. "I like the way you arrangethings--I like what you take for granted. If it's so easy for us tomarry men who want us to scatter gold, I wonder we any of us doanything else. I don't see so many of them about, nor what interest Imight ever have for them. You live, my dear," she presently added, "ina world of vain thoughts."

  "Not so much as you, Kate; for I see what I see, and you can't turn itoff that way." The elder sister paused long enough for the younger'sface to show, in spite of superiority, an apprehension. "I'm nottalking of any man but Aunt Maud's man, nor of any money, even, if youlike, but Aunt Maud's money. I'm not talking of anything but your doingwhat _she_ wants. You're wrong if you speak of anything that I want ofyou; I want nothing but what she does. That's good enough for me!"--andMarian's tone struck her companion as dreadful. "If I don't believe inMerton Densher, I do at least in Mrs. Lowder."

  "Your ideas are the more striking," Kate returned, "that they're thesame as papa's. I had them from him, you may be interested to know--andwith all the brilliancy you may imagine--yesterday."

  Marian clearly was interested to know. "He has been to see you?"

  "No, I went to him."

  "Really?" Marian wondered. "For what purpose?"

  "To tell him I'm ready to go to him."

  Marian stared. "To leave Aunt Maud----?"

  "For my father, yes."

  She had fairly flushed, poor Mrs. Condrip, with horror. "You'reready----?"

  "So I told him. I couldn't tell him less."

  "And, pray, could you tell him more?" Marian gasped in her distress."What in the world is he _to_ us? You bring out such a thing as thatthis way?"

  They faced each other--the tears were in Marian's eyes. Kate watchedthem there a moment and then said: "I had thought it well over--overand over. But you needn't feel injured. I'm not going. He won't haveme."

  Her companion still panted--it took time to subside. "Well, _I_wouldn't have you--wouldn't receive you at all, I can assure you--if hehad made you any other answer. I do feel injured--at your having beenwilling. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you would have to stopcoming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture ofprivation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threatsshe could complacently make, could think herself masterful for
making."But if he won't take you," she continued, "he shows at least hissharpness."

  Marian had always her views of sharpness; she was, as her sisterprivately commented, great on it. But Kate had her refuge fromirritation. "He won't take me," she simply repeated. "But he believes,like you, in Aunt Maud. He threatens me with his curse if I leave her."

  "So you _won't?"_ As the girl at first said nothing her companioncaught at it. "You won't, of course? I see you won't. But I don't seewhy, nevertheless, I shouldn't insist to you once for all on the plaintruth of the whole matter. The truth, my dear, of your duty. Do youever think about _that?_ It's the greatest duty of all."

  "There you are again," Kate laughed. "Papa's also immense on my duty."

  "Oh, I don't pretend to be immense, but I pretend to know more than youdo of life; more even perhaps than papa." Marian seemed to see thatpersonage at this moment, nevertheless, in the light of a kinder irony."Poor old papa!"

  She sighed it with as many condonations as her sister's ear had morethan once caught in her "Dear old Aunt Maud!" These were things thatmade Kate, for the time, turn sharply away, and she gathered herselfnow to go. They were the note again of the abject; it was hard to saywhich of the persons in question had most shown how little they likedher. The younger woman proposed, at any rate, to let discussion rest,and she believed that, for herself, she had done so during the tenminutes that, thanks to her wish not to break off short, elapsed beforeshe could gracefully withdraw. It then appeared, however, that Marianhad been discussing still, and there was something that, at the last,Kate had to take up. "Whom do you mean by Aunt Maud's young man?"

  "Whom should I mean but Lord Mark?"

  "And where do you pick up such vulgar twaddle?" Kate demanded with herclear face. "How does such stuff, in this hole, get to you?"

  She had no sooner spoken than she asked herself what had become of thegrace to which she had sacrificed. Marian certainly did little to saveit, and nothing indeed was so inconsequent as her ground of complaint.She desired her to "work" Lancaster Gate as she believed that scene ofabundance could be worked; but she now didn't see why advantage shouldbe taken of the bloated connection to put an affront on her own poorhome. She appeared in fact for the moment to take the position thatKate kept her in her "hole" and then heartlessly reflected on her beingin it. Yet she didn't explain how she had picked up the report on whichher sister had challenged her--so that it was thus left to her sisterto see in it, once more, a sign of the creeping curiosity of the MissCondrips. They lived in a deeper hole than Marian, but they kept theirear to the ground, they spent their days in prowling, whereas Marian,in garments and shoes that seemed steadily to grow looser and larger,never prowled. There were times when Kate wondered if the Miss Condripswere offered her by fate as a warning for her own future--to be takenas showing her what she herself might become at forty if she let thingstoo recklessly go. What was expected of her by others--and by so manyof them--could, all the same, on occasion, present itself as beyond ajoke; and this was just now the aspect it particularly wore. She wasnot only to quarrel with Merton Densher to oblige her fivespectators--with the Miss Condrips there were five; she was to setforth in pursuit of Lord Mark on some preposterous theory of thepremium attached to success. Mrs. Lowder's hand had attached it, and itfigured at the end of the course as a bell that would ring, break outinto public clamour, as soon as touched. Kate reflected sharply enoughon the weak points of this fond fiction, with the result at last of acertain chill for her sister's confidence; though Mrs. Condrip stilltook refuge in the plea--which was after all the great point--thattheir aunt would be munificent when their aunt should be pleased. Theexact identity of her candidate was a detail; what was of the essencewas her conception of the kind of match it was open to her niece tomake with her aid. Marian always spoke of marriages as "matches," butthat was again a detail. Mrs. Lowder's "aid" meanwhile awaited them--ifnot to light the way to Lord Mark, then to somebody better. Marianwould put up, in fine, with somebody better; she only wouldn't put upwith somebody so much worse. Kate had, once more, to go through allthis before a graceful issue was reached. It was reached by her payingwith the sacrifice of Mr. Densher for her reduction of Lord Mark to theabsurd. So they separated softly enough. She was to be let off hearingabout Lord Mark so long as she made it good that she wasn't underhandabout anybody else. She had denied everything and every one, shereflected as she went away--and that was a relief; but it also maderather a clean sweep of the future. The prospect put on a bareness thatalready gave her something in common with the Miss Condrips.