"Oh she was disposed to kindness. She was easier," the good lady explained with a slight embarrassment, "than at the other time."
"She was off her guard. There was a difference."
"Exactly not the difference of her having to be harsh. Perfectly. She could afford to be the opposite." With which, as he said nothing, she just impatiently completed her sense. "She had had _you_ here for six weeks."
"Besides, I think he must have written her first--written I mean in a tone to smooth his way. That it would be a kindness to himself. Then on the spot--"
"On the spot," Densher broke in, "he unmasked? The horrid little beast!"
It made Susan Shepherd turn slightly pale, though quickening, as for hope, the intensity of her look at him. "Oh he went off without an alarm."
"And he must have gone off also without a hope."
"Then it _was_ mere base revenge. Hasn't he known her, into the bargain," the young man asked--"didn't he, weeks before, see her, judge her, feel her, as having for such a suit as his not more perhaps than a few months to live?"
Mrs. Stringham at first, for reply, but looked at him in silence; and it gave more force to what she then remarkably added. "He has doubtless been aware of what you speak of, just as you have yourself been aware."
"He has wanted her, you mean, just _because_--?"
"The hound!" Merton Densher brought out. He moved off, however, with a hot face, as soon as he had spoken, conscious again of an intention in his visitor's reserve. Dusk was now deeper, and after he had once more taken counsel of the dreariness without he turned to his companion. "Shall we have lights--a lamp or the candles?"
He waited at the window another moment and then faced his friend with a thought. "He _will_ have proposed to Miss Croy. That's what has happened."
Her reserve continued. "It's you who must judge."
"Well, I do judge. Mrs. Lowder will have done so too--only _she_, poor lady, wrong. Miss Croy's refusal of him will have struck him"--Densher continued to make it out--"as a phenomenon requiring a reason."
"And you've been clear to him _as_ the reason?"
"Not too clear--since I'm sticking here and since that has been a fact to make his descent on Miss Theale relevant. But clear enough. He has believed," said Densher bravely, "that I may have been a reason at Lancaster Gate, and yet at the same time have been up to something in Venice."