ht a moment--then seemed to try. "To relate that she had to
'bolt' for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for
her what she wished--THAT I can perfectly feel Charlotte's not wanting
to do."

"Ah then, if it HAS done for her what she wished-!" But the Colonel's
conclusion hung by the "if" which his wife didn't take up. So it hung
but the longer when he presently spoke again. "All one wonders, in that
case, is why then she has come back to him."

"Say she hasn't come back to him. Not really to HIM."

"I'll say anything you like. But that won't do me the same good as your
saying it."

"Nothing, my dear, will do you good," Mrs. Assingham returned. "You
don't care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be
grossly amused because I don't keep washing my hands--!"

"I thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this
is precisely what you do."

But his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as
she had gone on before. "You're perfectly indifferent, really; you're
perfectly immoral. You've taken part in the sack of cities, and I'm sure
you've done dreadful things yourself. But I DON'T trouble my head, if
you like. 'So now there!'" she laughed.

He accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. "Well, I back poor
Charlotte."

"'Back' her?"

"To know what she wants."

"Ah then, so do I. She does know what she wants." And Mrs. Assingham
produced this quantity, at last, on the girl's behalf, as the ripe
result of her late wanderings and musings. She had groped through
their talk, for the thread, and now she had got it. "She wants to be
magnificent."

"She is," said the Colonel almost cynically.

"She wants"--his wife now had it fast "to be thoroughly superior, and
she's capable of that."

"Of wanting to?"

"Of carrying out her idea."

"And what IS her idea?"

"To see Maggie through."

Bob Assingham wondered. "Through what?"

"Through everything. She KNOWS the Prince."

"And Maggie doesn't. No, dear thing"--Mrs. Assingham had to recognise
it--"she doesn't."

"So that Charlotte has come out to give her lessons?"

She continued, Fanny Assingham, to work out her thought. "She has done
this great thing for him. That is, a year ago, she practically did it.
She practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himself--and helped me
to help him. She kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what,
moreover, were her silences to Maggie but a di