Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/73

THE PRINCE as if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. The only thing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established Mrs. Assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to this before they dropped the question. "My first impulse is always to behave about everything as if I feared complications. But I don't fear them—I really like them. They're quite my element."

He deferred for her to this account of herself. "But still," he said, "if we're not in the presence of a complication."

She debated. "A handsome clever odd girl staying with one is always a complication."

The young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. "And will she stay very long?"

His friend gave a laugh. "How in the world can I know? I've scarcely asked her."

"Ah yes. You can't."

But something in the tone of it amused her afresh. "Do you think you could?"

"I?" He wondered.

"Do you think you could get it out of her for me—the probable length of her stay?"

He rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. "I dare say if you were to give me the chance."

"Here it is then for you," she answered; for she had heard, within the minute, the stop of a cab at her door. "She's back."