Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/91

THE PRINCE But the girl looked only at their companion. "That's what the Prince, if he'll be so good, must help me to decide."

"Can't I," Mrs. Assingham asked, "help you to decide?"

"Certainly, darling, we must talk it well over." And she kept her eyes on the Prince. "But I want him, if he kindly will, to go with me to look. I want him to judge with me and choose. That, if you can spare the hour," she said, "is the great favour I mean."

He raised his eyebrows at her—he wonderfully smiled. "What you came back from America to ask? Ah certainly then I must find the hour!" He wonderfully smiled, but it was after all rather more than he had been reckoning with. It went somehow so little with the rest that, directly, for him, it wasn't the note of safety; it preserved this character, at the best, but by being the note of publicity. Quickly, quickly, however, the note of publicity struck him as better than any other. In another moment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as publicity put their relation on the right footing? By this appeal to Mrs. Assingham it was established as right, and she immediately showed that such was her own understanding.

"Certainly, Prince," she laughed, "you must find the hour!" And it was really so express a licence from her, as representing friendly judgement, public opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be, or whatever, that, after observing to Charlotte that should she come to Portland Place in the morning he would make a point of being there to 61