Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/290

THE GOLDEN BOWL was simplest was the ease of boldness. "Make them up, I mean, by coming to see you?"

Charlotte replied however without, as her friend would have phrased it, turning a hair. She shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle. "He never comes."

"Oh!" said Fanny Assingham: with which she felt a little stupid.

"There it is. He might so well, you know, otherwise."

"Otherwise'?"—and Fanny was still vague. It passed this time over her companion, whose eyes, wandering to a distance, found themselves held. The Prince was at hand again; the Ambassador was still at his side; they were stopped a moment by a uniformed personage, a little old man, of apparently the highest military character, bristling with medals and orders. This gave Charlotte time to go on. "He has not been for three months." And then as with her friend's last word in her ear: "'Otherwise'—yes. He arranges otherwise. And in my position," she added, "I might too. It's too absurd we shouldn't meet."

"You've met, I gather," said Fanny Assingham, "to-night."

"Yes—as far as that goes. But what I mean is that I might—placed for it as we both are—go to see him."

"And do you?" Fanny asked with almost mistaken solemnity.

The perception of this excess made Charlotte, whether for gravity or for irony, hang fire a minute. 260