st time; all, evidently,
to watch for the return of the absent, to be there to take them over
again as punctually as possible. They were gay, they were amused, in
the pleasant morning; they leaned across the rail and called down
their greeting, lighting up the front of the great black house with an
expression that quite broke the monotony, that might almost have shocked
the decency, of Portland Place. The group on the pavement stared up as
at the peopled battlements of a castle; even Miss Bogle, who carried
her head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as
toward truly superior beings. There could scarce have been so much
of the open mouth since the dingy waits, on Christmas Eve, had so
lamentably chanted for pennies--the time when Amerigo, insatiable for
English customs, had come out, with a gasped "Santissima Vergine!" to
marvel at the depositaries of this tradition and purchase a reprieve.
Maggie's individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the
pair would be at work.

XXX

She had not again, for weeks, had Mrs. Assingham so effectually in
presence as on the afternoon of that lady's return from the Easter party
at Matcham; but the intermission was made up as soon as the date of the
migration to Fawns--that of the more or less simultaneous adjournment of
the two houses--began to be discussed. It had struck her, promptly, that
this renewal, with an old friend, of the old terms she had talked of
with her father, was the one opening, for her spirit, that wouldn't too
much advertise or betray her. Even her father, who had always, as he
would have said, "believed in" their ancient ally, wouldn't necessarily
suspect her of invoking Fanny's aid toward any special inquiry--and
least of all if Fanny would only act as Fanny so easily might. Maggie's
measure of Fanny's ease would have been agitating to Mrs. Assingham had
it been all at once revealed to her--as, for that matter, it was soon
destined to become even on a comparatively graduated showing. Our young
woman's idea, in particular, was that her safety, her escape from being
herself suspected of suspicion, would proceed from this friend's
power to cover, to protect and, as might be, even showily to represent
her--represent, that is, her relation to the form of the life they were
all actually leading. This would doubtless be, as people said, a large
order; but that Mrs. Assingham existed, substantially,