The word, for a little, held the air, and he might have seemed the while to be looking, by no means dimly now, at all it stood for. But he had in fact been looking at something else. "You leave her here then to die?"
"Ah she believes she won't die. Not if you stay. I mean," Kate explained, "Aunt Maud believes."
"And that's all that's necessary?"
Still indeed she didn't break down. "Didn't we long ago agree that what she believes is the principal thing for us?"
He recalled it, under her eyes, but it came as from long ago. "Oh yes. I can't deny it." Then he added: "So that if I stay—"
"It won't"—she was prompt—"be our fault."
"If Mrs. Lowder still, you mean, suspects us?"
"If she still suspects us. But she won't."
Kate gave it an emphasis that might have appeared to leave him nothing more; and he might in fact well have found nothing if he hadn't presently found: "But what if she doesn't accept me?"
It produced in her a look of weariness that made the patience of her tone the next moment touch him. "You can but try."