own too--in the sense that
I'm awfully fond of them. Also in the sense," she continued, "that I
think they're not so very much less fond of me. Our relation, all round,
exists--it's a reality, and a very good one; we're mixed up, so to
speak, and it's too late to change it. We must live IN it and with
it. Therefore to see that Charlotte gets a good husband as soon as
possible--that, as I say, will be one of my ways of living. It will
cover," she said with conviction, "all the ground." And then as his own
conviction appeared to continue as little to match: "The ground, I mean,
of any nervousness I may ever feel. It will be in fact my duty and I
shan't rest till my duty's performed." She had arrived by this time at
something like exaltation. "I shall give, for the next year or two if
necessary, my life to it. I shall have done in that case what I can."

He took it at last as it came. "You hold there's no limit to what you
'can'?"

"I don't say there's no limit, or anything of the sort. I say there are
good chances--enough of them for hope. Why shouldn't there be when a
girl is, after all, all that she is?"

"By after 'all' you mean after she's in love with somebody else?"

The Colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be
fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. "She's not too much in love not
herself to want to marry. She would now particularly like to."

"Has she told you so?"

"Not yet. It's too soon. But she will. Meanwhile, however, I don't
require the information. Her marrying will prove the truth."

"And what truth?"

"The truth of everything I say."

"Prove it to whom?"

"Well, to myself, to begin with. That will be enough for me--to work
for her. What it will prove," Mrs. Assingham presently went on, "will be
that she's cured. That she accepts the situation."

He paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. "The situation of
doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?"

His wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was
merely vulgar. "The one thing she can do that will really make new
tracks altogether. The thing that, before any other, will be wise and
right. The thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent."

He slowly emitted his smoke. "And best give you, by the same token,
yours to be magnificent with her?"

"I shall be as magnificent, at least, as I can."

Bob Assingham got up. "And you call ME immoral?"

She