"Oh!" said Mrs. Lowder.
"Yes, her pride," Mrs. Stringham explained in spite of her friend's doubt, and it was with this that her communication took consistent form. It had never been pride, Maud Manningham had hinted, that kept her from crying when other things made for it; it had only been that these same things, at such times, made still more for business, arrangements, correspondence, the ringing of bells, the marshalling of servants, the taking of decisions. "I might be crying now," she said, "if I weren't writing letters"—and this quite without harshness for her anxious companion, to whom she allowed just the administrative margin for difference. She had interrupted her no more than she would have interrupted the piano-tuner. It gave poor Susie time; and when Mrs. Lowder, to save appearances and catch the post, had, with her addressed and stamped notes, met at the door of the room the footman summoned by the pressure of a knob, the facts of the case were sufficiently ready for her. It took but two or three, however, given their importance, to lay the ground for the great one—Mrs. Stringham's interview of the day before with Sir Luke, who had wished to see her about Milly.
"He had wished it himself?"
"I think he was glad of it. Clearly indeed he was. He stayed a quarter of an hour. I could see that for him it was long. He's interested," said Mrs. Stringham.
"Do you mean in her case?"
"He says it isn't a case."
"What then is it?"
"It isn't, at least," Mrs. Stringham explained, "the case she believed it to be—thought it at any rate might be—when, without my knowledge, she went to see him. She went because there was something she was afraid of, and he examined her thoroughly—he has made sure. She's wrong—she hasn't what she thought."
"And what did she think?" Mrs. Lowder demanded.
"He didn't tell me."