e has never told me either, we shall
probably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business.
There are many things," said Mrs. Assingham, "that we shall never know."

Maggie took it in with a long reflection. "Never."

"But there are others," her friend went on, "that stare us in the face
and that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be
enough for us. Your father has been extraordinary."

It had been as if Maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this
with a rush. "Extraordinary."

"Magnificent," said Fanny Assingham.

Her companion held tight to it. "Magnificent."

"Then he'll do for himself whatever there may be to do. What he
undertook for you he'll do to the end. He didn't undertake it to break
down; in what--quiet, patient, exquisite as he is--did he ever break
down? He had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and
he won't have done it on this occasion."

"Ah, this occasion!"--and Maggie's wail showed her, of a sudden, thrown
back on it. "Am I in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows
what it is? And yet am I in the least sure he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't then, so much the better. Leave him alone."

"Do you mean give him up?"

"Leave HER," Fanny Assingham went on. "Leave her TO him."

Maggie looked at her darkly. "Do you mean leave him to HER? After this?"

"After everything. Aren't they, for that matter, intimately together
now?"

"'Intimately'--? How do I know?"

But Fanny kept it up. "Aren't you and your husband--in spite of
everything?"

Maggie's eyes still further, if possible, dilated. "It remains to be
seen!"

"If you're not then, where's your faith?"

"In my husband--?"

Mrs. Assingham but for an instant hesitated. "In your father. It all
comes back to that. Rest on it."

"On his ignorance?"

Fanny met it again. "On whatever he may offer you. TAKE that."

"Take it--?" Maggie stared.

Mrs. Assingham held up her head. "And be grateful." On which, for a
minute, she let the Princess face her. "Do you see?"

"I see," said Maggie at last.

"Then there you are." But Maggie had turned away, moving to the window,
as if still to keep something in her face from sight. She stood there
with her eyes on the street while Mrs. Assingham's reverted to that
complicating object on the chimney as to which her condition, so
oddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent
protest. She went over it, loo