THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
offer ground for insistence to her imagination of his state. It would take her moreover, she clearly showed him she was thinking, but a minute or two to insist. Besides, she had already said it. "Will you do it if he asks you? I mean if Sir Luke himself puts it to you. And will you give him"—oh, she was earnest now!—"the opportunity to put it to you?"
"The opportunity to put what?"
"That if you deny it to her, that may still do something."
Densher felt himself—as had already once befallen him in the quarter-of-an-hour—turn red to the top of his forehead. Turning red had, however, for him, as a sign of shame, been, so to speak, discounted; his consciousness of it at the present moment was rather as a sign of his fear. It showed him sharply enough of what he was afraid. "If I deny what to her?"
Hesitation, on the demand, revived in her, for hadn't he all along, been letting her see that he knew? "Why, what Lord Mark told her?"
"And what did Lord Mark tell her?"
Mrs. Stringham had a look of bewilderment—of seeing him as suddenly perverse. "I've been judging that you yourself know." And it was she who now blushed deep.
It quickened his pity for her, but he was beset too by other things. "Then you know———"
"Of his dreadful visit?" She stared. "Why, it's what has done it."
308
