Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/183

THE PRINCESS She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. "Of him, dear man, of him—!"

Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. That way might safety lie—it was like a wider chink of light. "He believed—with a beauty!—in Charlotte."

"Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn't mean to at the time so much, for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it, I did it!" the Princess declared.

"With a beauty—ah with a beauty you too!" Mrs. Assingham insisted.

Maggie at all events was seeing for herself—it was another matter. "The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible."

Fanny again hesitated. "The Prince made her think—?"

Maggie stared—she had meant her father. But her vision seemed to spread. "They both made her think. She wouldn't have thought without them."

"Yet Amerigo's good faith," Mrs. Assingham insisted, "was perfect. And there was nothing, all the more," she added, "against your father's."

The remark kept Maggie for a moment still. "Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew."

"'Knew'—?"

"That he was doing it so much for me. To what extent," she suddenly asked of her friend, "do you think he was aware she knew?"

"Ah who can say what passes between people in such a relation? The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous." And Mrs. Assingham 173