weet and beautiful. In
a way, as I say," Mrs. Assingham almost caressingly repeated, "just all
your very own--nobody else's at all. I've never thought of you but
as OUTSIDE of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or
vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. I've
never mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that
if they had seemed to be near you. But they haven't--if that's what you
want to know."

"You've only believed me contented then because you've believed me
stupid?"

Mrs. Assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride,
dissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. "If I had
believed you stupid I shouldn't have thought you interesting, and if I
hadn't thought you interesting I shouldn't have noted whether I 'knew'
you, as I've called it, or not. What I've always been conscious of is
your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character;
quite as much in fact," Fanny smiled, "as one could suppose a person
of your size able to carry. The only thing was," she explained, "that
thanks to your never calling one's attention to it, I hadn't made out
much more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to
WHERE you carried it or kept it. Somewhere UNDER, I should simply have
said--like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the
Holy Father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. That
relic I've had a glimpse of"--with which she continued to invoke the
privilege of humour. "But the precious little innermost, say this time
little golden, personal nature of you--blest by a greater power, I
think, even than the Pope--that you've never consentingly shown me. I'm
not sure you've ever consentingly shown it to anyone. You've been in
general too modest."

Maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead.
"I strike you as modest to-day--modest when I stand here and scream at
you?"

"Oh, your screaming, I've granted you, is something new. I must fit
it on somewhere. The question is, however," Mrs. Assingham further
proceeded, "of what the deuce I can fit it on TO. Do you mean," she
asked, "to the fact of our friends' being, from yesterday to to-morrow,
at a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?" She spoke
with the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. "Are you
thinking of their being there alone--of their having consented to be?"
And th