unless INTELLIGIBLY to
meet her, and, awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and
distorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of
bald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start
could lead to. She caught, however, after a second's thought, at the
Princess's allusion to her lost reassurance.

"You mean you were so at your ease on Monday--the night you dined with
us?"

"I was very happy then," said Maggie.

"Yes--we thought you so gay and so brilliant." Fanny felt it feeble, but
she went on. "We were so glad you were happy."

Maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. "You thought me all
right, eh?"

"Surely, dearest; we thought you all right."

"Well, I daresay it was natural; but in point of fact I never was more
wrong in my life. For, all the while, if you please, this was brewing."

Mrs. Assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness.
"'This'--?"

"THAT!" replied the Princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had
turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among
so many precious objects--the Ververs, wherever they might be, always
revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments--her visitor had
not taken heed.

"Do you mean the gilt cup?"

"I mean the gilt cup."

The piece now recognised by Fanny as new to her own vision was a
capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted,
by a short stem, on an ample foot, which held a central position above
the fire-place, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance
had been made of other objects, notably of the Louis-Seize clock that
accompanied the candelabra. This latter trophy ticked at present on the
marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style.
Mrs. Assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was
obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring
it at a distance. "But what has that to do--?"

"It has everything. You'll see." With which again, however, for
the moment, Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. "He knew her
before--before I had ever seen him."

"'He' knew--?" But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she
missed, could only echo it.

"Amerigo knew Charlotte--more than I ever dreamed."

Fanny felt then it was stare for stare. "But surely you always knew they
had met."

"I didn't understand. I knew too little. Don't you s