Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/342

THE GOLDEN BOWL Mrs. Assingham deferentially mused. "But for what purpose is it your idea that they should again so intimately meet? "

"For any purpose they like. That's their affair."

Fanny Assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her constant position. "You're splendid—perfectly splendid." To which, as the Princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn't have it again at all, she subjoined: "Or if you're not it's because you're so sure. I mean sure of him."

"Ah I'm exactly not sure of him. If I were sure of him I shouldn't doubt—!" But Maggie cast about her.

"Doubt what?" Fanny pressed as she waited.

"Well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays—and how that ought to keep her present to him."

This in its turn after an instant Mrs. Assingham could meet with a smile. "Trust him, my dear, to keep her present! But trust him also to keep himself absent. Leave him his own way."

"I'll leave him everything," said Maggie. "Only—you know it's my nature—I think."

"It's your nature to think too much," Fanny Assingham a trifle coarsely risked.

This but quickened however in the Princess the act she reprobated. "That may be. But if I hadn't thought—! "

"You wouldn't, you mean, have been where you are?"

"Yes, because they on their side thought of everything but that. They thought of everything but that I might think." 332