er in quick
vibrations. She had expressed, while the revolution of her thought
was incomplete, the idea of what Amerigo "ought," on his side, in the
premises, to be capable of, and then had felt her companion's answering
stare. But she insisted on what she had meant. "He ought to wish to see
her--and I mean in some protected and independent way, as he used to--in
case of her being herself able to manage it. That," said Maggie with the
courage of her conviction, "he ought to be ready, he ought to be happy,
he ought to feel himself sworn--little as it is for the end of such
a history!--to take from her. It's as if he wished to get off without
taking anything."

Mrs. Assingham deferentially mused. "But for what purpose is it your
idea that they should again so intimately meet?"

"For any purpose they like. That's THEIR affair."

Fanny Assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her
constant position. "You're splendid--perfectly splendid." To which, as
the Princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn't have it again at all,
she subjoined: "Or if you're not it's because you're so sure. I mean
sure of HIM."

"Ah, I'm exactly NOT sure of him. If I were sure of him I shouldn't
doubt--!" But Maggie cast about her.

"Doubt what?" Fanny pressed as she waited.

"Well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays--and how that
ought to keep her present to him."

This, in its turn, after an instant, Mrs. Assingham could meet with a
smile. "Trust him, my dear, to keep her present! But trust him also to
keep himself absent. Leave him his own way."

"I'll leave him everything," said Maggie. "Only--you know it's my
nature--I THINK."

"It's your nature to think too much," Fanny Assingham a trifle coarsely
risked.

This but quickened, however, in the Princess the act she reprobated.
"That may be. But if I hadn't thought--!"

"You wouldn't, you mean, have been where you are?"

"Yes, because they, on their side, thought of everything BUT that. They
thought of everything but that I might think."

"Or even," her friend too superficially concurred, "that your father
might!"

As to this, at all events, Maggie discriminated. "No, that wouldn't have
prevented them; for they knew that his first care would be not to make
me do so. As it is," Maggie added, "that has had to become his last."

Fanny Assingham took it in deeper--for what it immediately made her give
out louder. "HE'S splendid then." She sounded it a