ee what I mean?" the
Princess asked.

Mrs. Assingham wondered, during these instants, how much she even now
knew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking.
With that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of
the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past
ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt,
first, a strange, barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been
the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting,
any way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. She shouldn't be
judged--save by herself; which was her own wretched business. The next
moment, however, at all events, she blushed, within, for her immediate
cowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of "getting off," before
so much as thinking--that is of pitifully seeing--that she was in
presence of an appeal that was ALL an appeal, that utterly accepted its
necessity. "In a general way, dear child, yes. But not--a--in connexion
with what you've been telling me."

"They were intimate, you see. Intimate," said the Princess.

Fanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history,
so dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis, of the far-away other
time. "There's always the question of what one considers--!"

"What one considers intimate? Well, I know what I consider intimate now.
Too intimate," said Maggie, "to let me know anything about it."

It was quiet--yes; but not too quiet for Fanny Assingham's capacity to
wince. "Only compatible with letting ME, you mean?" She had asked it
after a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney
and wondering, even while she took relief from it, at this gap in her
experience. "But here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is
perfect."

"They went about together--they're known to have done it. And I don't
mean only before--I mean after."

"After?" said Fanny Assingham.

"Before we were married--yes; but after we were engaged."

"Ah, I've known nothing about that!" And she said it with a braver
assurance--clutching, with comfort, at something that was apparently new
to her.

"That bowl," Maggie went on, "is, so strangely--too strangely, almost,
to believe at this time of day--the proof. They were together all the
while--up to the very eve of our marriage. Don't you remember how just
before that she came back, so unexpectedly, from America?"

The question h