f.a.n.n.y at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn't say all she meant; she said for the moment something else instead. "He did it for you--largely at least for you. And it was for you that I did, in my smaller, interested way--well, what I could do. For I could do something," she continued; "I thought I saw your interest as he himself saw it. And I thought I saw Charlotte's. I believed in her."

"And _I_ believed in her," said Maggie.

Mrs. a.s.singham waited again; but she presently pushed on. "She believed then in herself."

"Ah?" Maggie murmured.

Something exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of it, supported her friend further. "And the Prince believed. His belief was real. Just as he believed in himself."

Maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. "He believed in himself?"

"Just as I too believed in him. For I absolutely did, Maggie." To which f.a.n.n.y then added: "And I believe in him yet. I mean," she subjoined--"well, I mean I DO."

Maggie again took it from her; after which she was again, restlessly, set afloat. Then when this had come to an end: "And do you believe in Charlotte yet?"

Mrs. a.s.singham had a demur that she felt she could now afford. "We'll talk of Charlotte some other day. They both, at any rate, thought themselves safe at the time."

"Then why did they keep from me everything I might have known?"

Her friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. "Why did I myself keep it from you?"

"Oh, you weren't, for honour, obliged."

"Dearest Maggie," the poor woman broke out on this, "you ARE divine!"

"They pretended to love me," the Princess went on. "And they pretended to love HIM."

"And pray what was there that I didn't pretend?"

"Not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amerigo and for Charlotte. They were much more interesting--it was perfectly natural.

How couldn't you like Amerigo?" Maggie continued.

Mrs. a.s.singham gave it up. "How couldn't I, how couldn't I?" Then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. "How CAN'T I, how can't I?"

It fixed afresh Maggie's wide eyes on her. "I see--I see. Well, it's beautiful for you to be able to. And of course," she added, "you wanted to help Charlotte."

"Yes"--f.a.n.n.y considered it--"I wanted to help Charlotte. But I wanted also, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want,"

she richly declared, "to help every one."

It set Maggie once more in movement--movement which, however, spent itself again with a quick emphasis. "Then it's a good deal my fault--if everything really began so well?"

f.a.n.n.y a.s.singham met it as she could. "You've been only too perfect.

You've thought only too much."

But the Princess had already caught at the words. "Yes--I've thought only too much!" Yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. "Of him, dear man, of HIM--!"

Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. THAT way might safety lie--it was like a wider c.h.i.n.k of light. "He believed--with a beauty!--in Charlotte."

"Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn't mean to, at the time, so much; for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it, I did it!" the Princess declared.

"With a beauty--ah, with a beauty, you too!" Mrs. a.s.singham insisted.

Maggie, however, was seeing for herself--it was another matter, "The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible."

f.a.n.n.y again hesitated. "The Prince made her think--?"

Maggie stared--she had meant her father. But her vision seemed to spread. "They both made her think. She wouldn't have thought without them."

"Yet Amerigo's good faith," Mrs. a.s.singham insisted, "was perfect. And there was nothing, all the more," she added, "against your father's."

The remark, however, kept Maggie for a moment still. "Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew."

"'Knew'?"

"That he was doing it, so much, for me. To what extent," she suddenly asked of her friend, "do you think he was aware that she knew?"

"Ah, who can say what pa.s.ses between people in such a relation? The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous." And Mrs. a.s.singham conclusively smiled. "He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself."

"As much, that is, as was right for her."

"Yes then--as was right for her. The point is," f.a.n.n.y declared, "that, whatever his knowledge, it made, all the way it went, for his good faith."

Maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. "Isn't the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?"

f.a.n.n.y a.s.singham thought. "He recognised, he adopted, your long friendship. But he founded on it no selfishness."

"No," said Maggie with still deeper consideration: "he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own."

"So you may say."

"Very well," Maggie went on; "if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little. And she may only since have found that out."

Mrs. a.s.singham looked blank. "Since--?"

"And he may have become aware," Maggie pursued, "that she has found it out. That she has taken the measure, since their marriage," she explained, "of how much he had asked of her--more, say, than she had understood at the time. He may have made out at last how such a demand was, in the long run, to affect her."

"He may have done many things," Mrs. a.s.singham responded; "but there's one thing he certainly won't have done. He'll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give."

"I've often wondered," Maggie mused, "what Charlotte really understood.

But it's one of the things she has never told me."

"Then as it's one of the things she has never told me either, we shall probably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business.

There are many things," said Mrs. a.s.singham, "that we shall never know."

Maggie took it in with a long reflection. "Never."

"But there are others," her friend went on, "that stare us in the face and that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be enough for us. Your father has been extraordinary."

It had been as if Maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this with a rush. "Extraordinary."