“She’s always so different from anyone else in the world that it’s hard to say when she’s different from herself.  But she has made me,” said Fanny after an instant, “think of her differently.  She drove me home.”

“Home here?”

“First to Portland Place—­on her leaving her father:  since she does, once in a while, leave him.  That was to keep me with her a little longer.  But she kept the carriage and, after tea there, came with me herself back here.  This was also for the same purpose.  Then she went home, though I had brought her a message from the Prince that arranged their movements otherwise.  He and Charlotte must have arrived—­if they have arrived—­expecting to drive together to Eaton Square and keep Maggie on to dinner there.  She has everything there, you know—­she has clothes.”

The Colonel didn’t in fact know, but he gave it his apprehension.  “Oh, you mean a change?”

“Twenty changes, if you like—­all sorts of things.  She dresses, really, Maggie does, as much for her father—­and she always did—­ as for her husband or for herself.  She has her room in his house very much as she had it before she was married—­and just as the boy has quite a second nursery there, in which Mrs. Noble, when she comes with him, makes herself, I assure you, at home.  Si bien that if Charlotte, in her own house, so to speak, should wish a friend or two to stay with her, she really would be scarce able to put them up.”

It was a picture into which, as a thrifty entertainer himself, Bob Assingham could more or less enter.  “Maggie and the child spread so?”

“Maggie and the child spread so.”

Well, he considered.  “It is rather rum,”

“That’s all I claim”—­she seemed thankful for the word.  “I don’t say it’s anything more—­but it is, distinctly, rum.”

Which, after an instant, the Colonel took up. “‘More’?  What more could it be?”

“It could be that she’s unhappy, and that she takes her funny little way of consoling herself.  For if she were unhappy”—­Mrs. Assingham had figured it out—­“that’s just the way, I’m convinced, she would take.  But how can she be unhappy, since—­as I’m also convinced—­she, in the midst of everything, adores her husband as much as ever?”

The Colonel at this brooded for a little at large.  “Then if she’s so happy, please what’s the matter?”

It made his wife almost spring at him.  “You think then she’s secretly wretched?”

But he threw up his arms in deprecation.  “Ah, my dear, I give them up to you.  I’ve nothing more to suggest.”

“Then it’s not sweet of you.”  She spoke at present as if he were frequently sweet.  “You admit that it is ‘rum.’”

And this indeed fixed again, for a moment, his intention.  “Has Charlotte complained of the want of rooms for her friends?”

“Never, that I know of, a word.  It isn’t the sort of thing she does.  And whom has she, after all,” Mrs. Assingham added, “to complain to?”