"Oh," he promptly declared--"charming!" But this word came out as if a little in sudden substitution for some other. It sounded accidental, whereas he wished to be firm. That accordingly was what he next showed himself. "If it was n't for what's going on these next days Maggie would certainly want to have her. In fact," he lucidly continued, "is n't what's happening just a reason to MAKE her want to?" Mrs. Assingham, for answer, only looked at him, and this the next instant had apparently had more effect than if she had spoken. For he asked a question that seemed incongruous.
"What has she come FOR?"
It made his companion laugh. "Why, for just what you say. For your marriage."
"Mine?"--He wondered.
"Maggie's--it's the same thing. It's 'for' your great event. And then," said Mrs. Assingham, "she's so lonely."
"Has she given you that as a reason?"
"I scarcely remember--she gave me so many. She abounds, poor dear, in reasons. But there's one that, whatever she does, I always remember for myself."
"And which is that?" He looked as if he ought to guess but could n't.
"Why the fact that she has no home--absolutely none whatever. She's extraordinarily alone."
Again he took it in. "And also has no great means."
"Very small ones. Which is not however, with the (40) expense of railways and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro."
"On the contrary. But she does n't like her country."
"Hers, my dear man?--it's little enough 'hers.'" The attribution for the moment amused his hostess. "She has rebounded now--but she has had little enough else to do with it."
"Oh I say hers," the Prince pleasantly explained, "very much as at this time of day I might say mine. I quite feel, I assure you, as if the great place already more or less belonged to me."
"That's your good fortune and your point of view. You own--or you soon practically own--so much of it. Charlotte owns almost nothing in the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks--only one of which I've given her leave to introduce into this house. She'll depreciate to you," Mrs. Assingham added, "your property."
He thought of these things, he thought of everything; but he had always his resource at hand of turning all to the easy. "Has she come with designs upon me?" And then in a moment, as if even this were almost too grave, he sounded the note that had least to do with himself. "Est-elle toujours aussi belle?" That was the furthest point, somehow, to which Charlotte Stant could be relegated.
Mrs. Assingham treated it freely. "Just the same. The person in the world, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. It's all in the way she affects you. One admires her if one does n't happen not to. So, as well, one criticises her."
(41) "Ah that's not fair!" said the Prince.
"To criticise her? Then there you are! You're answered."
"I'm answered." He took it, humorously, as his lesson--sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. "I only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with Miss Stant than to criticise her. When once you begin THAT with any one--!" He was vague and kind.
"I quite agree that it's better to keep out of it as long as one can.
But when one MUST do it--"
"Yes?" he asked as she paused.
"Then know what you mean."
"I see. Perhaps," he smiled, "I don't know what I mean."
"Well, it's what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know."