Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/422

THE GOLDEN BOWL is at least the consequence of what they've done. Are they mere helpless victims of fate?"

Well, Fanny at last had the courage of it. "Yes—they are. To be so abjectly innocent—that is to be victims of fate."

"And Charlotte and the Prince are abjectly innocent—?"

It took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. "Yes. That is they were—as much so in their way as the others. There were beautiful intentions all round. The Prince's and Charlotte's were beautiful—of that I had my faith. They were—I'd go to the stake. Otherwise," she added, "I should have been a wretch. And I've not been a wretch. I've only been a double-dyed donkey."

"Ah then," he asked, "what does our muddle make them to have been?"

"Well, too much taken up with considering each other. You may call such a mistake as that by whatever name you please; it at any rate means, all round, their case. It illustrates the misfortune," said Mrs. Assingham gravely, "of being too, too charming."

This was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel again did his best. "Yes, but to whom?—doesn't it rather depend on that? To whom have the Prince and Charlotte then been too charming?"

"To each other in the first place—obviously. And then both of them together to Maggie."

"To Maggie?" he wonderingly echoed.

"To Maggie." She was now crystalline. "By 392