Ah, certainly then, I must find the hour!" He
wonderfully smiled, but it was rather more, after all, than he had been
reckoning with. It went somehow so little with the rest that, directly,
for him, it wasn't the note of safety; it preserved this character, at
the best, but by being the note of publicity. Quickly, quickly, however,
the note of publicity struck him as better than any other. In another
moment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as
publicity put their relation on the right footing? By this appeal to
Mrs. Assingham it was established as right, and she immediately showed
that such was her own understanding.

"Certainly, Prince," she laughed, "you must find the hour!" And it was
really so express a license from her, as representing friendly judgment,
public opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be,
or whatever, that, after observing to Charlotte that, should she come to
Portland Place in the morning, he would make a point of being there
to see her and so, easily, arrange with her about a time, he took his
departure with the absolutely confirmed impression of knowing, as he put
it to himself, where he was. Which was what he had prolonged his visit
for. He was where he could stay.

IV

"I don't quite see, my dear," Colonel Assingham said to his wife the
night of Charlotte's arrival, "I don't quite see, I'm bound to say,
why you take it, even at the worst, so ferociously hard. It isn't your
fault, after all, is it? I'll be hanged, at any rate, if it's mine."

The hour was late, and the young lady who had disembarked at Southampton
that morning to come up by the "steamer special," and who had then
settled herself at an hotel only to re-settle herself a couple of hours
later at a private house, was by this time, they might hope, peacefully
resting from her exploits. There had been two men at dinner, rather
battered brothers-in-arms, of his own period, casually picked up by her
host the day before, and when the gentlemen, after the meal, rejoined
the ladies in the drawing-room, Charlotte, pleading fatigue, had already
excused herself. The beguiled warriors, however, had stayed till after
eleven--Mrs. Assingham, though finally quite without illusions, as
she said, about the military character, was always beguiling to old
soldiers; and as the Colonel had come in, before dinner, only in time
to dress, he had not till this moment really