The younger of the other men, it afterwards appeared, was most in his element at the piano; so that they had coffee and comic songs upstairs—the gentlemen, temporarily relinquished¹, submitting easily in this interest to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. Our especial young man sat tighter when restored to the drawing-room; he made it out perfectly² with Kate that they might, off and on, foregather without offence. He had perhaps stronger needs in this general respect than she; but she had better names for the scant³ risks to which she consented. It was the blessing⁴ of a big house that intervals⁵ were large and, of an August night, that windows were open; whereby, at a given moment, on the wide balcony, with the songs sufficiently⁶ sung, Aunt Maud could hold her little court more freshly. Densher and Kate, during these moments, occupied side by side a small sofa—a luxury formulated⁷ by the latter as the proof, under criticism, of their remarkably⁸ good conscience. "To seem not to know each other—once you're here—would be," the girl said, "to overdo⁹ it"; and she arranged it charmingly that they must have some passage to put Aunt Maud off the scent¹⁰. She would be wondering otherwise what in the world they found their account in. For Densher, none the less, the profit of snatched moments, snatched contacts, was partial and poor; there were in particular at present more things in his mind than he could bring out while watching the windows. It was true, on the other hand, that she suddenly met most of them—and more than he could see on the spot—by coming out for him with a reference to Milly that was not in the key of those made at dinner. "She's not a bit right, you know. I mean in health. Just see her to-night. I mean it looks grave. For you she would have come, you know, if it had been at all possible."

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