"Not only there were no objections, but there were reasons, positive ones--and all excellent, all charming." She spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. "It IS always the Prince, and it is always, thank heaven, marriage. And these are the (82) things, God grant, that it will always be. That I could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues to make me happy."
"Then why are n't you quiet?"
"I AM quiet," said Fanny Assingham.
He looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she moved about again a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration of her tranquillity. He was as silent at first as if he had taken her answer, but he was n't to keep it long. "What do you make of it that, by your own show, Charlotte could n't tell her all? What do you make of it that the Prince did n't tell her anything? Say one understands that there are things she can't be told--since, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked."
He produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. But she was roaming still when he concluded his enquiry. "If there had n't been anything there should n't have been between the pair before Charlotte bolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there SHOULD N'T be: why in the world was what there HAD been too bad to be spoken of?"
Mrs. Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped. "I thought you wanted me to be quiet."
"So I do--and I 'm trying to make you so much so that you won't worry more. Can't you be quiet on THAT?"
She thought a moment--then seemed to try. "To relate that she had to 'bolt' for the reasons we speak (83) of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wished--THAT I can perfectly feel Charlotte's not wanting to do."
"Ah then if it HAS done for her what she wished--!" But the Colonel's conclusion hung by the "if" which his wife did n't take up. So it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again. "All one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him."
"Say she has n't come back to him. Not really to HIM."
"I'll say anything you like. But that won't do me the same good as your saying it."
"Nothing, my dear, will do you good," Mrs. Assingham returned. "You don't care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be grossly amused because I don't keep washing my hands--!"
"I thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this is precisely what you do."
But his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as she had gone on before. "You're perfectly indifferent, really; you're perfectly immoral. You've taken part in the sack of cities, and I 'm sure you've done dreadful things yourself. But I DON'T trouble my head, if you like.
'So now there!'" she laughed.
He accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. " Well, I back poor Charlotte."
"'Back' her?"
"To know what she wants."
"Ah then, so do I. She does know what she wants." And Mrs. Assingham produced this quantity, at last, on the girl's behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings (84) and musings. She had groped through their talk for the thread and now had got it. "She wants to be magnificent."
"She IS," said the Colonel almost cynically.
"She wants"--his wife now had it fast--"to be thoroughly superior, and she's capable of that."
"Of wanting to?"
"Of carrying out her idea."
"And what IS her idea?"
"To see Maggie through."
Bob Assingham wondered. "Through what?"
"Through everything. She KNOWS the Prince. And Maggie doesn't. No, dear thing"--Mrs. Assingham had to recognise it--"she does n't."
"So that Charlotte has come out to give her lessons?
She continued, Fanny Assingham, to work out her thought. "She has done this great thing for him. That is a year ago she practically did it. She practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himself--and helped me to help him. She kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what, moreover, were her silences to Maggie but a direct aid to him? If she had spoken in Florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had come back at any time--till within a few weeks ago; if she had n't gone to New York and had n't held out there: if she had n't done these things all that has happened since would certainly have been different. Therefore she's in a position to be consistent now. She knows the Prince," Mrs. Assingham repeated. It involved even again her former recognition. "And Maggie, dear thing, does n't."