having put them on their honour, they mustn't spoil their case by abusing it. He must leave her in time; they should probably find it would help them. But she came back to Milly too. "Mind you go to see her." 

 Densher still, however, took up nothing of this. "Then I may come again?" 

 "For Aunt Maud—as much as you like. But we can't again," said Kate, "play her this trick. I can't see you here alone." 

 "Then where?" 

 "Go to see Milly," she for all satisfaction repeated. 

 "And what good will that do me?" 

 "Try it and you'll see." 

 "You mean you'll manage to be there?" Densher asked. "Say you are, how will that give us privacy?" 

 "Try it—you'll see," the girl once more returned. "We must manage as we can." 

 "That's precisely what I feel. It strikes me we might manage better." His idea of this was a thing that made him an instant hesitate; yet he brought it out with conviction. "Why won't you come to me?" 

 It was a question her troubled eyes seemed to tell him he was scarce generous in expecting her definitely to answer, and by looking to him to wait at least she appealed to something that she presently made him feel as his pity. It was on that special shade of tenderness that he thus found himself thrown back; and while he asked of his spirit and of his flesh just what concession they could arrange she pressed him yet again on the subject of her singular remedy for their embarrassment. It might have been irritating had she ever struck him as having in her mind a stupid corner. "You'll see," she said, "the difference it will make." 

 Well, since she wasn't stupid she was intelligent; it was he who was stupid—the proof of which was that he would do what she liked. But he made a last effort to understand, her allusion to the "difference" bringing him round to it. He indeed caught at something subtle but strong even as he spoke. "Is what you meant a moment ago that the difference will be in her being made to believe you hate me?" 

 Kate, however, had simply, for this gross way of putting it, one of her more marked shows of impatience; with which in fact she sharply closed their discussion. He opened the door on a sign from her, and she accompanied him to the top of the stairs with an air 

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