d--!" That, however, was not worth
talking about; he had broken off. "You think then you could now risk
Fawns?"

"'Risk' it?"

"Well, morally--from the point of view I was talking of; that of our
sinking deeper into sloth. Our selfishness, somehow, seems at its
biggest down there."

Maggie had allowed him the amusement of her not taking this up. "Is
Charlotte," she had simply asked, "really ready?"

"Oh, if you and I and Amerigo are. Whenever one corners Charlotte," he
had developed more at his ease, "one finds that she only wants to know
what we want. Which is what we got her for!"

"What we got her for--exactly!" And so, for a little, even though with
a certain effect of oddity in their more or less successful ease, they
left it; left it till Maggie made the remark that it was all the same
wonderful her stepmother should be willing, before the season was out,
to exchange so much company for so much comparative solitude.

"Ah," he had then made answer, "that's because her idea, I think, this
time, is that we shall have more people, more than we've hitherto had,
in the country. Don't you remember that THAT, originally, was what we
were to get her for?"

"Oh yes--to give us a life." Maggie had gone through the form of
recalling this, and the light of their ancient candour, shining from so
far back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with
the sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet. "Well, with a
'life' Fawns will certainly do." He had remained in his place while she
looked over his head; the picture, in her vision, had suddenly swarmed.
The vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in
which, with her companion, she was travelling; but she was having to
steady herself, this time, before meeting his eyes. She had measured
indeed the full difference between the move to Fawns because each of
them now knew the others wanted it and the pairing-off, for a journey,
of her husband and her father, which nobody knew that either wanted.
"More company" at Fawns would be effectually enough the key in which her
husband and her stepmother were at work; there was truly no question but
that she and her father must accept any array of visitors. No one could
try to marry him now. What he had just said was a direct plea for that,
and what was the plea itself but an act of submission to Charlotte? He
had, from his chair, been noting her look, but he had, the next minute,
also risen, a