recent life, thick-sown with the flower of earnest endeavour, with every form of the unruffled and the undoubting, suffered no symptom anywhere to peep out. It was as if, under her pressure, neither party could get rid of the complicity, as it might be figured, of the other; as if, in a word, she saw Amerigo and Charlotte committed, for fear of betrayals on their own side, to a kind of wan consistency on the subject of Lady Castledean's 'set,' and this latter group, by the same stroke, compelled to assist at attestations the extent and bearing of which they rather failed to grasp and which left them indeed, in spite of hereditary high spirits, a trifle bewildered and even a trifle scared.
They made, none the less, at Fawns, for number, for movement, for sound—they played their parts during a crisis that must have hovered for them, in the long passages of the old house, after the fashion of the established ghost, felt, through the dark hours as a constant possibility, rather than have menaced them in the form of a daylight bore, one of the perceived outsiders who are liable to be met in the drawing-room or to be sat next to at dinner. If the Princess, moreover, had failed of her occult use for so much of the machinery of diversion, she would still have had a sense not other than sympathetic for the advantage now extracted from it by Fanny Assingham's bruised philosophy. This good friend's relation to it was actually the revanche, she sufficiently indicated, of her obscured lustre at Matcham, where she had known her way about so much less than most of the others. She knew it at Fawns, through the pathless wild of the right tone, positively better than any one, Maggie could note for her; and her revenge had the magnanimity of a brave pointing out of it to every one else, a wonderful irresistible, conscious, almost compassionate patronage. Here was a house, she triumphantly caused it to be noted, in which she so bristled with values that some of them might serve, by her amused willingness to share, for such of the temporarily vague, among her fellow-guests, such of the dimly disconcerted, as had lost the key to their own. It may have been partly through the effect of this especial strain of community with her old friend that Maggie found herself, one evening, moved to take up again their dropped directness of reference. They had remained downstairs together late; the other women of the party had filed, singly or in couples, up the 'grand' staircase on which, from the equally grand hall, these retreats and advances could always be pleasantly observed; the men had apparently taken their way to the smoking-room; while the Princess, in possession thus of a rare reach of view, had lingered as if to enjoy it. Then she saw that Mrs. Assingham was remaining a little—and as for the appreciation of her enjoyment; upon which they stood looking at each other across the cleared prospect until the elder woman, only vaguely expressive and tentative now, came nearer. It was like the act of asking if there were anything she could yet do, and that question was answered by her immediately feeling, on this closer view, as she had felt when presenting herself in Portland Place after Maggie's last sharp summons. Their understanding was taken up by these new snatched moments where that occasion had left it.
'He has never told her that I know. Of that I'm at last satisfied.' And then as Mrs. Assingham opened wide eyes: 'I've been in the dark since we came down, not understanding what he has been doing or intending—not making out what can have passed between them. But within a day or two I've begun to suspect, and this evening, for reasons—oh, too many to tell you!—I've been sure, since it explains. NOTHING has passed between them— that's what has happened. It explains,' the Princess repeated with energy; 'it explains, it explains!' She spoke in a manner that her auditor was afterwards to describe to the Colonel, oddly enough, as that of the quietest excitement; she had turned back to the chimney-place, where, in honour of a damp day and a chill night, the piled logs had turned to flame and sunk to embers; and the evident intensity of her vision for the fact she imparted made Fanny Assingham wait upon her words. It explained, this striking fact, more indeed than her companion, though conscious of fairly gaping with good-will, could swallow at once. The Princess, however, as for indulgence and confidence, quickly filled up the measure. 'He hasn't let her know that I know—and, clearly, doesn't mean to. He has made up his mind; he'll say nothing about it. Therefore, as she's quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself, she has no idea how much I'm really in possession. She believes,' said Maggie, 'and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that I'm not in possession of anything. And that, somehow, for my own help seems to me immense.'
'Immense, my dear!' Mrs. Assingham applausively murmured, though not quite, even as yet, seeing all the way. 'He's keeping quiet then on purpose?'
'On purpose.' Maggie's lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they had ever looked. 'He'll NEVER tell her now.'
Fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic lucidity. She stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place. This importance breathed upon her comrade. 'So you're all right?'
'Oh, ALL right's a good deal to say. But I seem at least to see, as I haven't before, where I am with it.'
Fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. 'And you have it from him?—your husband himself has told you?'
''Told' me—?'
'Why, what you speak of. It isn't of an assurance received from him then that you do speak?'
At which Maggie had continued to stare. 'Dear me, no. Do you suppose I've asked him for an assurance?'
'Ah, you haven't?' Her companion smiled. 'That's what I supposed you MIGHT mean. Then, darling, what HAVE you—?'
'Asked him for? I've asked him for nothing.'
But this, in turn, made Fanny stare. 'Then nothing, that evening of the Embassy dinner, passed between you?'
'On the contrary, everything passed.'
'Everything—?'
'Everything. I told him what I knew—and I told him how I knew it.'
Mrs. Assingham waited. 'And that was all?'
'Wasn't it quite enough?'
'Oh, love,' she bridled, 'that's for you to have judged!'
'Then I HAVE judged,' said Maggie—'I did judge. I made sure he understood—then I let him alone.'
Mrs. Assingham wondered. 'But he didn't explain—?'
'Explain? Thank God, no!' Maggie threw back her head as with horror at the thought, then the next moment added: 'And I didn't, either.'
The decency of pride in it shed a cold little light—yet as from heights at the base of which her companion rather
