"But has she any idea herself, poor thing?" was the way I had put it to
Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the
effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as
alluding to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might
create. I had my own sense of that--this provision had been nil; the
question was of her consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald
had counted on her and for which we were so promptly proceeding to spoil
her altogether.

"Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion," Mrs. Munden had replied
when I had explained; "for she's clever too, you know, as well as good-
looking, and I don't see how, if she ever really _knew_ Nina, she could
have supposed for a moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might
have left to give up. Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that
she's ugly enough for anything?" It was even at this point already
wonderful how my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for
its past and its future, she was prepared to throw on it. "If she has
seen herself as ugly enough for anything she has seen herself--and that
was the only way--as ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner
of showing that she understands without making Nina commit herself to
anything vulgar. Women are never without ways for doing such things--both
for communicating and receiving knowledge--that I can't explain to you,
and that you wouldn't understand if I could, since you must be a woman
even to do that. I daresay they've expressed it all to each other simply
in the language of kisses. But doesn't it at any rate make something
rather beautiful of the relation between them as affected by our
discovery--?"

I had a laugh for her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if