en as she had waited without result for her companion to say: "But
isn't it true that--after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour,
said YOU wouldn't--they would really much rather not have gone?"

"Yes--they would certainly much rather not have gone. But I wanted them
to go."

"Then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?"

"I wanted to see if they WOULD. And they've had to," Maggie added. "It
was the only thing."

Her friend appeared to wonder. "From the moment you and your father
backed out?"

"Oh, I don't mean go for those people; I mean go for us. For father and
me," Maggie went on. "Because now they know."

"They 'know'?" Fanny Assingham quavered.

"That I've been for some time past taking more notice. Notice of the
queer things in our life."

Maggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what
these queer things might be; but Mrs. Assingham had the next minute
brushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a
better one. "And is it for that you did it? I mean gave up the visit."

"It's for that I did it. To leave them to themselves--as they less and
less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to
be left. As they had for so long arranged things," the Princess went
on, "you see they sometimes have to be." And then, as if baffled by the
lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: "Now do you
think I'm modest?"

With time, however; Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would
serve. "I think you're wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your
question. It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no
'awfulness'--I suspect none. I'm deeply distressed," she added, "that
you should do anything else." It drew again from Maggie a long look.
"You've never even imagined anything?"

"Ah, God forbid!--for it's exactly as a woman of imagination that
I speak. There's no moment of my life at which I'm not imagining
something; and it's thanks to that, darling," Mrs. Assingham pursued,
"that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as
viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly
interested, in his admirable, adorable wife." She paused a minute as
to give her friend the full benefit of this--as to Maggie's measure
of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she
crowned her effort.--"He wouldn't hurt a hair of your head."

It had produced in Maggi