all actually leading.  This would doubtless be, as people said, a large order; but that Mrs. Assingham existed, substantially, or could somehow be made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest flower Maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in Portland Place to the Matcham company.  Mrs. Assingham, that night, rebounding from dejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper and darker consciousness—­an impression it would now be late for her inconsistently to attempt to undo.  It was with a wonderful air of giving out all these truths that the Princess at present approached her again; making doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what in especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact quite expressly declared, of Fanny’s discerned foreboding of the strange uses she might perhaps have for her.  Quite from the first, really, Maggie said extraordinary things to her, such as “You can help me, you know, my dear, when nobody else can;” such as “I almost wish, upon my word, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your health, or your money, or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that I might be with you as much as I want, or keep you with me, without exciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such kindnesses are ‘like’ me.”  We have each our own way of making up for our unselfishness, and Maggie, who had no small self at all as against her husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her stepmother, would verily, at this crisis, have seen Mrs. Assingham’s personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang.

The attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw peculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of her victim.  This personage struck her, in truth, as ready for almost anything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with a restlessness of her own to know what she wanted.  And in the long run—­which was none so long either—­there was to be no difficulty, as happened, about that.  It was as if, for all the world, Maggie had let her see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for something; not, to begin with, dotting all the i’s nor hooking together all the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with caressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to assist.  The theory, visibly, had patched itself together for her that the dear woman had somehow, from the early time, had a hand in all their fortunes, so that there was no turn of their common relations and affairs that couldn’t be traced back in some degree to her original affectionate interest.  On this affectionate interest the good lady’s young friend now built, before her eyes —­very much as a wise, or even as a mischievous, child, playing on the floor, might pile up blocks, skilfully and dizzily, with an eye on the face of a covertly-watching elder.