With time however Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. "I think you're wrong. That, my dear, is my answer to your question.
It demands assuredly the straightest I can make. I see no 'awfulness'--I suspect none. I'm deeply distressed," she added, "that you should do anything else."
It drew again from Maggie a long look. "You've never even imagined anything?"
"Ah God forbid!--for it's exactly as a woman of imagination that I speak.
There's no moment of my life at which I'm not imagining something; and it's thanks to that, darling," Mrs. Assingham pursued, "that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable adorable wife." She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this--as to Maggie's measure of which however no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort. "He would n't hurt a hair of your head."
It had produced in Maggie at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. "Ah there it is!"
But her guest had already gone on. "And I'm absolutely certain that Charlotte would n't either."
It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. "No--Charlotte would n't either. That's how they've had again to go off together. They've been afraid not to--lest it should disturb me, (115) aggravate me, somehow work upon me. As I insisted that they must, that we could n't all fail--though father and Charlotte had n't really accepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. Their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I've seemed to accept and that I've given no indication at any moment of not accepting. Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away--so that it's all as wonderful as you may conceive.
They move at any rate among the dangers I speak of--between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough." Her tone might by this time have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up: "And that's how I make them do what I like!"
It had an effect on Mrs. Assingham, who rose with the deliberation that from point to point marked the widening of her grasp. "My dear child, you're amazing."
"Amazing--?"
"You're terrible."
Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. "No; I'm not terrible, and you don't think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt--but surprisingly mild. Because--don't you see?--I AM mild. I can bear anything."
(116) "Oh 'bear'!" Mrs. Assingham fluted.
"For love," said the Princess.
Fanny hesitated. "Of your father?"
"For love," Maggie repeated.
It kept her friend watching. "Of your husband?"
"For love," Maggie said again.
It was for the moment as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives.
Mrs. Assingham's rejoinder at all events--however much or however little it was a choice--was presently a triumph. "Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father's wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?"
And then as the Princess did n't at first answer: "Do you call such an allegation as that 'mild'?"
"Oh I'm not pretending to be mild to YOU. But I've told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I've been to them."
Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. "Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?"
"Ah there would n't be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide."
Mrs. Assingham faced her--quite steady now. "Are you really conscious, love, of what you're saying?"
"I'm saying that I'm bewildered and tormented, and that I've no one but you to speak to. I've thought, I've in fact been sure, that you've seen for (117) yourself how much this is the case. It's why I've believed you would meet me halfway."
"Halfway to what? To denouncing," Fanny asked, "two persons, friends of years, whom I've always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I have n't the shadow of a charge to make?"