Her mind had taken a long excursion, wandered far into the vision of what a summer at Fawns, with Amerigo and Charlotte still more eminently in presence against that higher sky, would bring forth.  Wasn’t her father meanwhile only pretending to talk of it? just as she was, in a manner, pretending to listen?  He got off it, finally, at all events, for the transition it couldn’t well help thrusting out at him; it had amounted exactly to an arrest of her private excursion by the sense that he had begun to imitate—­oh, as never yet!—­the ancient tone of gold.  It had verily come from him at last, the question of whether she thought it would be very good—­but very good indeed—­that he should leave England for a series of weeks, on some pretext, with the Prince.  Then it had been that she was to know her husband’s “menace” hadn’t really dropped, since she was face to face with the effect of it.  Ah, the effect of it had occupied all the rest of their walk, had stayed out with them and come home with them, besides making it impossible that they shouldn’t presently feign to recollect how rejoining the child had been their original purpose.  Maggie’s uneffaced note was that it had, at the end of five minutes more, driven them to that endeavour as to a refuge, and caused them afterwards to rejoice, as well, that the boy’s irrepressibly importunate company, in due course secured and enjoyed, with the extension imparted by his governess, a person expectant of consideration, constituted a cover for any awkwardness.  For that was what it had all come to, that the dear man had spoken to her to try her—­quite as he had been spoken to himself by Charlotte, with the same fine idea.  The Princess took it in, on the spot, firmly grasping it; she heard them together, her father and his wife, dealing with the queer case.  “The Prince tells me that Maggie has a plan for your taking some foreign journey with him, and, as he likes to do everything she wants, he has suggested my speaking to you for it as the thing most likely to make you consent.  So I do speak—­see?—­being always so eager myself, as you know, to meet Maggie’s wishes.  I speak, but without quite understanding, this time, what she has in her head.  Why should she, of a sudden, at this particular moment, desire to ship you off together and to remain here alone with me?  The compliment’s all to me, I admit, and you must decide quite as you like.  The Prince is quite ready, evidently, to do his part—­but you’ll have it out with him.  That is you’ll have it out with her.”  Something of that kind was what, in her mind’s ear, Maggie heard—­and this, after his waiting for her to appeal to him directly, was her father’s invitation to her to have it out.  Well, as she could say to herself all the rest of the day, that was what they did while they continued to sit there in their penny chairs, that was what they had done as much as they would now ever, ever, have out anything.  The measure of this, at least, had been