The lady looked at Kitty--a steady, straightforward look--then held
out her hand. It was a large, warm, hearty hand, and gripped yours
like a man's. Kitty took it, but felt like shirking the eyes. She
had no mind to be so weighed and measured. She had an uncomfortable
consciousness that her inner nature was all bared and sorted by this
agreeable young woman in this first moment to the last odd and end in
it, though she could not have put the consciousness into words.

"Going to the school, William? I am."

"Well--yes, we will go there." He turned irresolutely, and they walked
together down the plank pathway, Kitty with an oppressive sense of
having fallen into the clutch of one of the Primal Forces, who was
about to settle her destiny for her; in which she stumbled almost on
the truth. Miss Muller was quite aware of the fact of her brother's
visits at the book-shop, and their motive. She glanced at her watch:
she could give herself half an hour to find out what stuff was in the
girl, though it hardly needed so long. "A good type of the Domestic
Woman in the raw state," she thought. (She always jotted down her
thoughts sharply to herself, as a busy shopkeeper makes entries in his
day-book.) "Pulpy, kissable. A vine to which poor William would appear
an oak. A devoted wife, and, if he died, a gay widow, ready to be a
fond wife to somebody else."

"What do you mean to make of yourself, Miss Vogdes?" she snapped
suddenly, just as Kitty was counting the hen-coops of the society in
the field they were passing, and wondering how she could contrive to
get a pair of their Cochin Chinas.

"To make?" stammered Kitty ("I knew she would take me by the throat