Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/119

THE PRINCESS all—that of itself first cried it out. "'Between them'? What do you mean?"

"Anything there shouldn't be, there shouldn't have been—all this time. Do you believe there is—or what's your idea?"

Fanny's idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. "Do you speak from a suspicion of your own?"

"I speak at last from a torment. Forgive me if it comes out. I've been thinking for months and months, and I've no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don't you see? to go by."

"You've been thinking for months and months?"—Mrs. Assingham took it in. "But what then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?"

"Well, horrible things—like a little beast that I perhaps am. That there may be something—something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up."

The elder woman's colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. "You imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? Is that it?"

But Maggie for a minute only stared back at her. "Help me to find out what I imagine. I don't know—I've nothing but my perpetual anxiety. Have you any?—do you see what I mean? If you'll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me."

Fanny's look had taken a peculiar gravity—a 109