Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/328

320 Her friend caught her up. 'But you haven't.'

'Then they must make the most of the occasion as it is.' Lily was very sweet, but very lucid. 'The Duchesses may write or not, as they like; but I'm afraid the Princess simply must.' She hesitated, but after a moment went on: 'He oughtn't to be willing moreover that I shouldn't expect to be welcomed.'

'He isn't!' Lady Champer blurted out.

Lily jumped at it. 'Then he has told you? It's her attitude?'

She had spoken without passion, but her friend was scarce the less frightened. 'My poor child, what can he do?'

Lily saw perfectly. 'He can make her.'

Lady Charnper turned it over, but her fears were what was clearest. 'And if he doesn't?'

'If he "doesn't"?' The girl ambiguously echoed it.

'I mean if he can't.'

Well, Lily, more cheerfully, declined, for the hour, to consider this. He would certainly do for her what was right; so that after all, though she had herself put the question, she disclaimed the idea that an answer was urgent. There was time, she conveyed—which Lady Champer only desired to believe; a faith moreover somewhat shaken in the latter when the Prince entered her room the next day with the information that there was none—none at least to leave everything in the air. Lady Champer had not yet made up her mind as to which of these young persons she liked most to draw into confidence, nor as to whether she most inclined to take the Roman side with the American or the American side with the Roman. But now in truth she was settled; she gave proof of it in the increased lucidity with which she spoke for Lily.

'Wouldn't the Princess depart—a—from her usual attitude for such a great occasion?'

The difficulty was a little that the young man so well understood his mother. 'The devil of it is, you see, that it's