"Mrs. Lowder wants it—I do no wrong, I think, in saying that; and she understands moreover that you know she does."
Well, he showed how beautifully he could take it; and it wasn't obscure to her, on her side, that it was a comfort to deal with a gentleman. "It's ever so kind of you to see such opportunities for me. But what's the use of my tackling Miss Croy?"
Milly rejoiced on the spot to be so able to point out. "Because she's the handsomest and cleverest and most charming creature I ever saw, and because if I were a man I should simply adore her. In fact I do as it is." It was a luxury of response.
"Oh, my dear lady, plenty of people adore her. But that can't further the case of all."
"Ah," she went on, "I know about 'people.' If the case of one's bad, the case of another's good. I don't see what you have to fear from any one else," she said, "save through your being foolish, this way, about me."
So she said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of what she didn't see. "Is it your idea—since we're talking of these things in these ways—that the young lady you describe in such superlative terms is to be had for the asking?"
"Well, Lord Mark, try. She is a great person. But don't be humble." She was almost gay.
It was this apparently, at last, that was too much for him. "But don't you really know?"
As a challenge, practically, to the commonest intelligence she could pretend to, it made her of course wish to be fair. "I 'know' yes, that a particular person's very much in love with her."
"Then you must know by the same token that she's very much in love with a particular person."