, went back to it and again turned from it: it was
inscrutable in its rather stupid elegance, and yet, from the moment
one had thus appraised it, vivid and definite in its domination of
the scene. Fanny could no more overlook it now than she could have
overlooked a lighted Christmas-tree; but nervously and all in vain she
dipped into her mind for some floating reminiscence of it. At the same
time that this attempt left her blank she understood a good deal, she
even not a little shared the Prince's mystic apprehension. The golden
bowl put on, under consideration, a sturdy, a conscious perversity; as
a "document," somehow, it was ugly, though it might have a decorative
grace. "His finding me here in presence of it might be more flagrantly
disagreeable--for all of us--than you intend or than would necessarily
help us. And I must take time, truly, to understand what it means."

"You're safe, as far as that goes," Maggie returned; "you may take it
from me that he won't come in; and that I shall only find him below,
waiting for me, when I go down to the carriage."

Fanny Assingham took it from her, took it and more. "We're to sit
together at the Ambassador's then--or at least you two are--with this
new complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look
at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to be
seeing it?"

Maggie looked at HER with a face that might have been the one she was
preparing. "'Unexplained,' my dear? Quite the contrary--explained:
fully, intensely, admirably explained, with nothing really to add. My
own love"--she kept it up--"I don't want anything more. I've plenty to
go upon and to do with, as it is."

Fanny Assingham stood there in her comparative darkness, with her links,
verily, still missing; but the most acceptable effect of this was,
singularly, as yet, a cold fear of getting nearer the fact. "But when
you come home--? I mean he'll come up with you again. Won't he see it
then?"

On which Maggie gave her, after an instant's visible thought, the
strangest of slow headshakes. "I don't know. Perhaps he'll never see
it--if it only stands there waiting for him. He may never again," said
the Princess, "come into this room."

Fanny more deeply wondered, "Never again? Oh--!"

"Yes, it may be. How do I know? With THIS!" she quietly went on. She had
not looked again at the incriminating piece, but there was a marvel to
her friend in the way the little word representing