Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Henry James Page A

Kate was sure she had discussed Mr. Densher with the Miss Condrips. “If I name that person I suppose it’s because I’m so afraid of him. If you want really to know, he fills me with terror. If you want really to know, in fact, I dislike him as much as I dread him.”
    “And yet don’t think it dangerous to abuse him to me?”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Condrip confessed, “I do think it dangerous; but how can I speak of him otherwise? I dare say, I admit, that I shouldn’t speak of him at all. Only I do want you for once, as I said just now, to know.”
    “To know what, my dear?”
    “That I should regard it,” Marian promptly returned, “as far and away the worst thing that has happened to us yet.”
    “Do you mean because he hasn’t money?”
    “Yes, for one thing. And because I don’t believe in him.”
    Kate was civil but mechanical. “What do you mean by not believing in him?”
    “Well, being sure he’ll never get it. And you must have it. You shall have it.”
    “To give it to you?”
    Marian met her with a readiness that was practically pert. “To have it, first. Not at any rate to go on not having it. Then we should see.”
    “We should indeed!” said Kate Croy. It was talk of a kind she loathed, but if Marian chose to be vulgar what was one to do? It made her think of the Miss Condrips with renewed aversion. “I like the way you arrange things—I like what you take for granted. If it’s so easy for us to marry men who want us to scatter gold, I wonder we any of us do anything else. I don’t see so many of them about, nor what interest I might ever have for them. You live, my dear,” she presently added, “in a world of vain thoughts.”
    “Not so much as you, Kate; for I see what I see and you can’t turn it off that way.” The elder sister paused long enough for the younger’s face to show, in spite of superiority, an apprehension. “I’m not talking of any man but Aunt Maud’s man, nor of any money even, if you like, but Aunt Maud’s money. I’m not talking of anything but your doing what she wants. You’re wrong if you speak of anything that I want of you; I want nothing but what she does. That’s good enough for me!”—and Marian’s tone struck her companion as of the lowest. “If I don’t believe in Merton Densher I do at least in Mrs. Lowder.”
    “Your ideas are the more striking,” Kate returned, “that they’re the same as papa’s. I had them from him, you’ll be interested to know—and with all the brilliancy you may imagine—yesterday.”
    Marian clearly was interested to know. “He has been to see you?”
    “No, I went to him.”
    “Really?” Marian wondered. “For what purpose?”
    “To tell him I’m ready to go to him.”
    Marian stared. “To leave Aunt Maud—?”
    “For my father, yes.”
    She had fairly flushed, poor Mrs. Condrip, with horror. “You’re ready—?”
    “So I told him. I couldn’t tell him less.”
    “And pray could you tell him more?” Marian gasped in her distress. “What in the world is he to us? You bring out such a thing as that this way?”
    They faced each other—the tears were in Marian’s eyes. Kate watched them there a moment and then said: “I had thought it well over—over and over. But you needn’t feel injured. I’m not going. He won’t have me.”
    Her companion still panted—it took time to subside. “Well, I wouldn’t have you—wouldn’t receive you at all, I can assure you—if he had made you any other answer. I do feel injured—at your having been willing. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you’d have to stop coming to me.” Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently make, could think herself masterful for making. “But if he won’t take you,” she continued, “he shows at least his sharpness.”
    Marian had always her views of sharpness; she was, as her sister privately commented, great