n the Prince next spoke. He
had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome,
clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs. Assingham,
so far, was right. But there were the facts--the good relations, from
schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which
one of them had arrived. "She can come, you know, at any time, to US."

Mrs. Assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. "You'd like her
for your honeymoon?"

"Oh no, you must keep her for that. But why not after?"

She had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the
corridor, they had got up. "Why not? You're splendid!" Charlotte Stant,
the next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her
cab, and prepared for not finding Mrs. Assingham alone--this would have
been to be noticed--by the butler's answer, on the stairs, to a question
put to him. She could have looked at her hostess with such straightness
and brightness only from knowing that the Prince was also there--the
discrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still
better than if she had instantly faced him. He availed himself of the
chance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. What he
accordingly saw, for some seconds, with intensity, was a tall, strong,
charming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her
adventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and
gesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from
the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of
winds and waves and custom-houses, of far countries and long journeys,
the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience,
of not being afraid. He was aware, at the same time, that of this
combination the "strongminded" note was not, as might have been
apprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with
English-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such
possibilities, for a quick vision of differences. He had, besides, his
own view of this young lady's strength of mind. It was great, he had
ground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her
extremely personal, her always amusing taste. This last was the thing
in her--for she threw it out positively, on the spot, like a light--that
she might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his
worried eyes with. He saw her in her light that immed