Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/284

THE GOLDEN BOWL irrepressible interest in other lives. What had just happened—it pieced itself together for Charlotte—was that the Assingham sposi, drifting like every one else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the Colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the Prince. His very dryness in this encounter would have, as always, struck a spark from his wife's curiosity, and, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he must have thrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of her young friends was "going on" with another. He knew perfectly—such at least was Charlotte's liberal assumption—that she wasn't going on with any one, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was inevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous intercourse of the inimitable pair. The Prince meanwhile had also, under coercion, sacrificed her; the Ambassador had come up to him with a message from Royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had talked for five minutes with Sir John Brinder, who had been of the Ambassador's company and who had rather artlessly remained with her. Fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as some one else she didn't know, some one who knew Mrs. Assingham and also knew Sir John. Charlotte had left it to her friend's competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters. This was the little history of the vision in her that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that 254