Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/144

THE GOLDEN BOWL said, "that last morning at Matcham when all of us went off and she kept the Prince and Charlotte over. She helped them simply that she might herself be helped—if it wasn't perhaps rather, with her ridiculous Mr. Blint, that he might be. They put in together therefore of course that day; they got it clear—and quite under her eyes; inasmuch as they didn't become traceable again, as we know, till late in the evening." On this historic circumstance Mrs. Assingham was always ready afresh to brood; but she was no less ready, after her brooding, devoutly to add: "Only we know nothing whatever else—for which all our stars be thanked!"

The Colonel's gratitude was apt to be less marked. "What did they do for themselves, anyway, from the moment they got that free hand to the moment (long after dinner-time, haven't you told me?) of their turning up at their respective homes?"

"Well, it's none of your business!"

"I don't speak of it as mine, but it's only too much theirs. People are always traceable, in England, when tracings are required. Something sooner or later happens; somebody sooner or later breaks the holy calm. Murder will out."

"Murder will—but this isn't murder. Quite the contrary perhaps! I verily believe," she had her moments of adding, "that for the amusement of the row you'd prefer an explosion."

This however was a remark he seldom noticed; he wound up for the most part, after a long contemplative smoke, with a transition from which no exposed futility in it had succeeded in weaning him. "What 134