“Oh, I won’t say less!” Fanny laughed; with which, the next moment, she had turned away.  But they had it again, not less bravely, on the morrow, after breakfast, in the thick of the advancing carriages and the exchange of farewells.  “I think I’ll send home my maid from Euston,” she was then prepared to amend, “and go to Eaton Square straight.  So you can be easy.”

“Oh, I think we’re easy,” the Prince returned.  “Be sure to say, at any rate, that we’re bearing up.”

“You’re bearing up—­good.  And Charlotte returns to dinner?”

“To dinner.  We’re not likely, I think, to make another night away.”

“Well then, I wish you at least a pleasant day,”

“Oh,” he laughed as they separated, “we shall do our best for it!”—­after which, in due course, with the announcement of their conveyance, the Assinghams rolled off.

XXII

It was quite, for the Prince, after this, as if the view had further cleared; so that the half-hour during which he strolled on the terrace and smoked—­the day being lovely—­overflowed with the plenitude of its particular quality.  Its general brightness was composed, doubtless, of many elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time had been a great picture, from the hand of genius, presented to him as a prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to hang up—­what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was his extraordinarily unchallenged, his absolutely appointed and enhanced possession of it.  Poor Fanny Assingham’s challenge amounted to nothing:  one of the things he thought of while he leaned on the old marble balustrade—­so like others that he knew in still more nobly-terraced Italy—­was that she was squared, all-conveniently even to herself, and that, rumbling toward London with this contentment, she had become an image irrelevant to the scene.  It further passed across him, as his imagination was, for reasons, during the time, unprecedentedly active,—­that he had, after all, gained more from women than he had ever lost by them; there appeared so, more and more, on those mystic books that are kept, in connection with such commerce, even by men of the loosest business habits, a balance in his favour that he could pretty well, as a rule, take for granted.  What were they doing at this very moment, wonderful creatures, but combine and conspire for his advantage?—­from Maggie herself, most wonderful, in her way, of all, to his hostess of the present hour, into whose head it had so inevitably come to keep Charlotte on, for reasons of her own, and who had asked, in this benevolent spirit, why in the world, if not obliged, without plausibility, to hurry, her husband’s son-in-law should not wait over in her company.  He would at least see, Lady Castledean had said, that nothing dreadful should happen to her, either while still there or during the exposure of the run to town; and, for that matter, if they exceeded a little their license