Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/404

THE GOLDEN BOWL or for herself. She has her room in his house very much as she had it before she was married—and just as the boy has quite a second nursery there, in which Mrs. Noble, when she comes with him, makes herself, I assure you, at home. Si bien that if Charlotte, in her own house, so to speak, should wish a friend or two to stay with her, she really would be scarce able to put them up."

It was a picture into which, as a thrifty entertainer himself, Bob Assingham could more or less enter. "Maggie and the child spread so?"

"Maggie and the child spread so."

Well, he considered. "It is rather rum."

"That's all I claim"—she seemed thankful for the word. "I don't say it's anything more—but it is distinctly 'rum.'"

Which after an instant the Colonel took up. "'More'? What more could it be?"

"It could be that she's unhappy and that she takes her funny little way of consoling herself. For if she were unhappy"—Mrs. Assingham had figured it out—"that's just the way I'm convinced she would take. But how can she be unhappy, since—as I'm also convinced—she in the midst of everything adores her husband as much as ever?"

The Colonel at this brooded for a little at large. "Then if she's so happy please what's the matter?"

It made his wife almost spring at him. "You think then she's secretly wretched?"

But he threw up his arms in deprecation. "Ah my dear, I give them up to you. I've nothing more to suggest." 374