Fanny Assingham took it in deeper--for what it immediately made her give out louder. "HE'S splendid then." She sounded it almost aggressively; it was what she was reduced to--she had positively to place it.
"Ah that as much as you please!"
Maggie said this and left it, but the tone of it had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. "You think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. But it's what will have saved you."
"Oh," Maggie returned, "it's what--from the moment they discovered we could think at all--will have saved THEM. For they're the ones who are saved," she went on. "We're the ones who are lost."
"Lost--?"
"Lost to each other--father and I." And then as her friend appeared to demur, "Oh yes," Maggie quite lucidly declared, "lost to each other really much more than Amerigo and Charlotte are; since for them it's just, it's right, it's deserved, while for us it's only sad and strange and not caused by our fault. But I don't know," she went on, "why I talk about myself, for it's on father it really comes. I let him go," said Maggie.
"You let him, but you don't make him."
(334) "I take it from him," she answered.
"But what else can you do?"
"I take it from him," the Princess repeated. "I do what I knew from the first I SHOULD do. I get off by giving him up."
"But if he gives you?" Mrs. Assingham presumed to object. "Does n't it moreover then," she asked, "complete the very purpose with which he married--that of making you and leaving you more free?"
Maggie looked at her long. "Yes--I help him to do that."
Mrs. Assingham hesitated, but at last her bravery flared. "Why not call it then frankly his complete success?"
"Well," said Maggie, "that's all that's left me to do."
"It's a success," her friend ingeniously developed, "with which you've simply not interfered." And as if to show that she spoke without levity Mrs. Assingham went further. "He has made it a success for THEM--!"
"Ah there you are!" Maggie responsively mused. "Yes," she said the next moment, "that's why Amerigo stays."
"Let alone that it's why Charlotte goes." And Mrs. Assingham, emboldened, smiled. "So he knows--?"
But Maggie hung back. "Amerigo--?" After which, however, she blushed--to her companion's recognition.
"Your father. He knows what YOU know? I mean," Fanny faltered--"well, how much does he (335) know?" Maggie's silence and Maggie's eyes had in fact arrested the push of the question--which for a decent consistency she could n't yet quite abandon. "What I should rather say is does he know how much?" She found it still awkward. "How much, I mean, they did. How far"--she touched it up--"they went."
Maggie had waited, but only with a question. "Do you think he does?"
"Know at least something? Oh about HIM I can't think. He's beyond me," said Fanny Assingham.
"Then do you yourself know?"
"How much--?"
"How much."
"How far--?"
"How far."
Fanny had appeared to wish to make sure, but there was something she remembered--remembered in time and even with a smile. "I've told you before that I know absolutely nothing."
"Well--that's what I know," said the Princess.
Her friend again hesitated. "Then nobody knows--? I mean," Mrs. Assingham explained, "how much your father does."
Oh Maggie showed she understood. "Nobody."
"Not--a little--Charlotte?"
"A little?" the Princess echoed. "To know anything would be, for her, to know enough."
"And she does n't know anything?"
"If she did," Maggie answered, "Amerigo would."
"And that's just it--that he does n't?"
"That's just it," said the Princess profoundly.
(336) On which Mrs. Assingham reflected. "Then how is Charlotte so held?"
"Just BY that."
"By her ignorance?"
"By her ignorance."
Fanny wondered. "A torment--?"
"A torment," said Maggie with tears in her eyes.
Her companion a moment watched them. "But the Prince then?"
"How HE'S held?" Maggie asked.
"How HE'S held."
"Oh I can't tell you that!" And the Princess again broke off.