The Wings of the Dove, Henry James [thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

“Mrs. Lowder.” He did make out something, and then fairly coloured for its attestation of his comparative simplicity. “I call her on the whole the best. I can’t imagine a man’s having a better.”

Still with his eyes on her he turned it over. “Do you want me to marry Mrs. Lowder?”

At which it seemed to her that it was he who was almost vulgar! But she wouldn’t in any way have that. “You know, Lord Mark, what I mean. One isn’t in the least turning you out into the cold world. There’s no cold world for you at all, I think,” she went on; “nothing but a very warm and watchful and expectant world that’s waiting for you at any moment you choose to take it up.”

He never budged, but they were standing on the polished concrete and he had within a few minutes possessed himself again of his hat. “Do you want me to marry Kate Croy?”

“Mrs. Lowder wants it⁠—I do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and she understands moreover that you know she does.”

Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn’t obscure to her, on her side, that it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman. “It’s ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what’s the use of my tackling Miss Croy?”

Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. “Because she’s the handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, and because if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as it is.” It was a luxury of response.

“Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can’t further the case of all.”

“Ah,” she went on, “I know about ‘people.’ If the case of one’s bad, the case of another’s good. I don’t see what you have to fear from anyone else,” she said, “save through your being foolish, this way, about me.”

So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of what she didn’t see. “Is it your idea⁠—since we’re talking of these things in these ways⁠—that the young lady you describe in such superlative terms is to be had for the asking?”

“Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. But don’t be humble.” She was almost gay.

It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. “But don’t you really know?”

As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence she could pretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. “I ‘know’ yes, that a particular person’s very much in love with her.”

“Then you must know by the same token that she’s very much in love with a particular person.”

“Ah I beg your pardon!”⁠—and Milly quite flushed at having so crude a blunder imputed to her. “You’re wholly mistaken.”

“It’s not true?”

“It’s not true.”

His stare became a smile. “Are you very, very sure?”

“As sure as one can be”⁠—and Milly’s manner could match it⁠—“when one has every assurance. I speak on the best authority.”

He hesitated. “Mrs. Lowder’s?”

“No. I don’t call Mrs. Lowder’s the best.”

“Oh I thought you were just now saying,” he laughed, “that everything about her’s so good.”

“Good for you”⁠—she was perfectly clear. “For you,” she went on, “let her authority be the best. She doesn’t believe what you mention, and you must know yourself how little she makes of it. So you can take it from her. I take it⁠—” But Milly, with the positive tremor of her emphasis, pulled up.

“You take it from Kate?”

“From Kate herself.”

“That she’s thinking of no one at all?”

“Of no one at all.” Then, with her intensity, she went on. “She has given me her word for it.”

“Oh!” said Lord Mark. To which he next added: “And what do you call her word?”

It made Milly, on her side, stare⁠—though perhaps partly but with the instinct of gaining time for the consciousness that she was already a little further “in” than she had designed. “Why, Lord Mark, what should you call her word?”

“Ah I’m not obliged to say. I’ve not asked her. You apparently have.”

Well, it threw her on her defence⁠—a defence that she felt, however, especially as of Kate. “We’re very intimate,” she said in a moment; “so that, without prying into each other’s affairs, she naturally tells me things.”

Lord Mark smiled as at a lame conclusion. “You mean then she made you of her own movement the declaration you quote?”

Milly thought again, though with hindrance rather than help in her sense of the way their eyes now met⁠—met as for their each seeing in the other more than either said. What she most felt that she herself saw was the strange disposition on her companion’s part to disparage Kate’s veracity. She could be only concerned to “stand up” for that.

“I mean what I say: that when she spoke of her having no private interest⁠—”

“She took her oath to you?” Lord Mark interrupted.

Milly didn’t quite see why he should so catechise her; but she met it again for Kate. “She left me in no doubt whatever of her being free.”

At this Lord Mark did look at her, though he continued to smile. “And thereby in no doubt of your being too?” It was as if as soon as he had said it, however, he felt it as something of a mistake, and she couldn’t herself have told by what queer glare at him she had instantly signified that. He at any rate gave her glare no time to act further; he fell back on the spot, and with a light enough movement, within his rights. “That’s all very well, but why in the world, dear lady, should she be swearing to you?”

She had to take this “dear lady” as applying to herself; which disconcerted her when he might now so gracefully have used it for the aspersed Kate. Once more it came to her that she must claim her own part of the aspersion. “Because, as I’ve told you, we’re