Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/120

THE GOLDEN BOWL if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be blessedly an American—as indeed you had to be blessedly an American for all sorts of things: so long as you hadn't, blessedly or not, to remain in America. The Prince had by half-past ten—as also by definite appointment—called in Cadogan Place for Mrs. Assingham's visitor, and then after brief delay the two had walked together up Sloane Street and got straight into the Park from Knightsbridge. The understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in Mrs. Assingham's drawing-room. It was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidate—everything much rather to place in a light, and as to which it obviously wouldn't have fitted that any one should raise an objection. Who was there for that matter to raise one from the moment Mrs. Assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, didn't intervene? This the young man had asked himself—with a very sufficient sense of what would have made him ridiculous. He wasn't going to begin—that at least was certain—by showing a fear. Even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval.

The time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own wedding-guests and by Maggie's scarce less absorbed entertainment of her friend, 90