He thought a moment longer. "What has Mrs. Lowder written about him? Has she written that he has been with them?"
"She has mentioned him but once--it was in her letter before the last. Then she said something."
Mrs. Stringham produced it with an effort. "Well it was in reference to Miss Croy. That she thought Kate was thinking of him. Or perhaps I should say rather that he was thinking of _her_--only it seemed this time to have struck Maud that he was seeing the way more open to him."
Densher listened with his eyes on the ground, but he presently raised them to speak, and there was that in his face which proved him aware of a queerness in his question. "Does she mean he has been encouraged to _propose_ to her niece?"
"Of course not"--he recovered himself; "and I oughtn't to seem to trouble you to piece together what I can't piece myself. Only I 'guess,'" he added, "I _can_ piece it."
She spoke a little timidly, but she risked it. "I dare say I can piece it too."
It was one of the things in her--and his conscious face took it from her as such--that from the moment of her coming in had seemed to mark for him, as to what concerned him, the long jump of her perception. They had parted four days earlier with many things, between them, deep down. But these things were now on their troubled surface, and it wasn't he who had brought them so quickly up. Women were wonderful--at least this one was. But so, not less, was Milly, was Aunt Maud; so, most of all, was his very Kate. Well, he already knew what he had been feeling about the circle of petticoats. They were all _such_ petticoats! It was just the fineness of his tangle. The sense of that, in its turn, for us too, might have been not unconnected with his putting to his visitor a question that quite passed over her remark. "Has Miss Croy meanwhile written to our friend?"
"Oh," Mrs. Stringham amended, "_her_ friend also. But not a single word that I know of."
He had taken it for certain she hadn't--the thing being after all but a shade more strange than his having himself, with Milly, never for six weeks mentioned the young lady in question. It was for that matter but a shade more strange than Milly's not having mentioned her. In spite of which, and however inconsequently, he blushed anew for Kate's silence. He got away from it in fact as quickly as possible, and the furthest he could get was by reverting for a minute to the man they had been judging. "How did he manage to get _at_ her? She had only--with what had passed between them before--to say she couldn't see him."