"I think he has been back to England. He came in fact, I've reason to believe, straight from there."
"Straight to do this job? All the way for his half-hour?"
"Well, to try again—with the help perhaps of a new fact. To make himself possibly right with her—a different attempt from the other. He had at any rate something to tell her, and he didn't know his opportunity would reduce itself to half an hour. Or perhaps indeed half an hour would be just what was most effective. It has been!" said Susan Shepherd.
Her companion took it in, understanding but too well; yet as she lighted the matter for him more, really, than his own courage had quite dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of late from Mrs. Lowder."
"Oh yes, two or three times. She depends naturally upon news of Milly."
He hesitated. "And does she depend, naturally, upon news of me?"
His friend matched for an instant his deliberation.
"I've given her none that hasn't been decently good. This will have been the first."
"'This'?" Densher was thinking.
"Lord Mark's having been here, and her being as she is."