that you believe your husband and your father's wife to
be in act and in fact lovers of each other?" And then as the Princess
didn't at first answer: "Do you call such an allegation as that 'mild'?"

"Oh, I'm not pretending to be mild to you. But I've told you, and
moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I've been to
them."

Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. "Is that what you call it
when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?"

"Ah, there wouldn't be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide."

Mrs. Assingham faced her--quite steady now. "Are you really conscious,
love, of what you're saying?"

"I'm saying that I'm bewildered and tormented, and that I've no one but
you to speak to. I've thought, I've in fact been sure, that you've seen
for yourself how much this is the case. It's why I've believed you would
meet me half way."

"Half way to what? To denouncing," Fanny asked, "two persons, friends of
years, whom I've always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I
haven't the shadow of a charge to make?"

Maggie looked at her with wide eyes. "I had much rather you should
denounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me," she said, "if
you can see your way." It was exactly what she appeared to have argued
out with herself. "If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if,
conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me
in my place for a low-minded little pig--!"

"Well?" said Mrs. Assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.

"I think I shall be saved."

Her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes,
eyes verily portentous, over her head. "You say you've no one to speak
to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings--not
having, as you call it, given yourself away. Have you then never seen
it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a
pitch, to speak to your husband?"

"I've spoken to him," said Maggie.

Mrs. Assingham stared. "Ah, then it isn't true that you've made no
sign."

Maggie had a silence. "I've made no trouble. I've made no scene. I've
taken no stand. I've neither reproached nor accused him. You'll say
there's a way in all that of being nasty enough."

"Oh!" dropped from Fanny as if she couldn't help it.

"But I don't think--strangely enough--that he regards me as nasty.
I think that at bottom--for that IS," said the Princess, "the