who had rather artlessly remained with her.  Fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as someone else she didn’t know, someone who knew Mrs. Assingham and also knew Sir John.  Charlotte had left it to her friend’s competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters.  This was the little history of the vision, in her, that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that mightn’t again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point.  Her point was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was her own.  She had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even Amerigo—­Amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it—­had given her aid.  To make it now with force for Fanny Assingham’s benefit would see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned, than any other spring she should, yet awhile, doubtless, be able to press.  The direction was that of her greater freedom—­which was all in the world she had in mind.  Her opportunity had accordingly, after a few minutes of Mrs. Assingham’s almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may, for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm’s length and consulting it with a special turn of the head.  It was, in a word, with this value of her chance that she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to Fanny’s last question:  “Don’t you remember what you told me, on the occasion of something or other, the other day?  That you believe there’s nothing I’m afraid of?  So, my dear, don’t ask me!”

“Mayn’t I ask you,” Mrs. Assingham returned, “how the case stands with your poor husband?”

“Certainly, dear.  Only, when you ask me as if I mightn’t perhaps know what to think, it seems to me best to let you see that I know perfectly what to think.”

Mrs. Assingham hesitated; then, blinking a little, she took her risk.  “You didn’t think that if it was a question of anyone’s returning to him, in his trouble, it would be better you yourself should have gone?”

Well, Charlotte’s answer to this inquiry visibly shaped itself in the interest of the highest considerations.  The highest considerations were good humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the real truth.  “If we couldn’t be perfectly frank and dear with each other, it would be ever so much better, wouldn’t it? that we shouldn’t talk about anything at all; which, however, would be dreadful—­and we certainly, at any rate, haven’t yet come to it.  You can ask me anything under the sun you like, because, don’t you see? you can’t upset me.”

“I’m sure, my dear Charlotte,” Fanny Assingham laughed, “I don’t want to upset you.”

“Indeed, love, you simply couldn’t even if you thought it necessary—­that’s all I mean.  Nobody could, for it belongs to my situation that I’m, by no merit of my own, just fixed—­fixed as fast as a pin stuck, up to its head, in a cushion.  I’m placed—­I can’t imagine anyone more placed.  There I am!”