or could somehow
be made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest
flower Maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant
seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in Portland Place
to the Matcham company. Mrs. Assingham, that night, rebounding from
dejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then
absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper
and darker consciousness--an impression it would now be late for her
inconsistently to attempt to undo. It was with a wonderful air of giving
out all these truths that the Princess at present approached her again;
making doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what
in especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact
quite expressly declared, of Fanny's discerned foreboding of the strange
uses she might perhaps have for her. Quite from the first, really,
Maggie said extraordinary things to her, such as "You can help me, you
know, my dear, when nobody else can;" such as "I almost wish, upon my
word, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your
health, or your money, or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that
I might be with you as much as I want, or keep you with ME, without
exciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such
kindnesses are 'like' me." We have each our own way of making up for our
unselfishness, and Maggie, who had no small self at all as against her
husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her
stepmother, would verily, at this crisis, have seen Mrs. Assingham's
personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang.

The attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw
peculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of
her victim. This personage struck her, in truth, as ready for almost
anything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with
a restlessness of her own to know what she wanted. And in the long
run--which was none so long either--there was to be no difficulty, as
happened, about that. It was as if, for all the world, Maggie had let
her see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for
something; not, to begin with, dotting all the i's nor hooking together
all the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with
caressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to
assist. The theory