ecial turn
of the head. It was, in a word, with this value of her chance that
she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to Fanny's last
question: "Don't you remember what you told me, on the occasion of
something or other, the other day? That you believe there's nothing I'm
afraid of? So, my dear, don't ask me!"

"Mayn't I ask you," Mrs. Assingham returned, "how the case stands with
your poor husband?"

"Certainly, dear. Only, when you ask me as if I mightn't perhaps know
what to think, it seems to me best to let you see that I know perfectly
what to think."

Mrs. Assingham hesitated; then, blinking a little, she took her risk.
"You didn't think that if it was a question of anyone's returning to
him, in his trouble, it would be better you yourself should have gone?"

Well, Charlotte's answer to this inquiry visibly shaped itself in the
interest of the highest considerations. The highest considerations were
good humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the REAL truth. "If we
couldn't be perfectly frank and dear with each other, it would be ever
so much better, wouldn't it? that we shouldn't talk about anything at
all; which, however, would be dreadful--and we certainly, at any rate,
haven't yet come to it. You can ask me anything under the sun you like,
because, don't you see? you can't upset me."

"I'm sure, my dear Charlotte," Fanny Assingham laughed, "I don't want to
upset you."

"Indeed, love, you simply COULDN'T even if you thought it
necessary--that's all I mean. Nobody could, for it belongs to my
situation that I'm, by no merit of my own, just fixed--fixed as fast as
a pin stuck, up to its head, in a cushion. I'm placed--I can't imagine
anyone MORE placed. There I AM!"

Fanny had indeed never listened to emphasis more firmly applied, and it
brought into her own eyes, though she had reasons for striving to keep
them from betrayals, a sort of anxiety of intelligence. "I dare say--but
your statement of your position, however you see it, isn't an answer to
my inquiry. It seems to me, at the same time, I confess," Mrs. Assingham
added, "to give but the more reason for it. You speak of our being
'frank.' How can we possibly be anything else? If Maggie has gone off
through finding herself too distressed to stay, and if she's willing to
leave you and her husband to show here without her, aren't the grounds
of her preoccupation more or less discussable?"

"If they're not," Charlotte replied, "it's o