“It’s for that I did it.  To leave them to themselves—­as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left.  As they had for so long arranged things,” the Princess went on, “you see they sometimes have to be.”  And then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing:  “Now do you think I’m modest?”

With time, however; Fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve.  “I think you’re wrong.  That, my dear, is my answer to your question.  It demands assuredly the straightest I can make.  I see no “awfulness’—­I suspect none.  I’m deeply distressed,” she added, “that you should do anything else.”  It drew again from Maggie a long look.  “You’ve never even imagined anything?”

“Ah, God forbid!—­for it’s exactly as a woman of imagination that I speak.  There’s no moment of my life at which I’m not imagining something; and it’s thanks to that, darling,” Mrs. Assingham pursued, “that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable, adorable wife.”  She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this—­as to Maggie’s measure of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort.—­“He wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.”

It had produced in Maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression.  “Ah, there it is!”

But her guest had already gone on.  “And I’m absolutely certain that Charlotte wouldn’t either.”

It kept the Princess, with her strange grimace, standing there.  “No—­Charlotte wouldn’t either.  That’s how they’ve had again to go off together.  They’ve been afraid not to—­lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me.  As I insisted that they must, that we couldn’t all fail—­though father and Charlotte hadn’t really accepted; as I did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger:  which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged.  Their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that I’ve seemed to accept and that I’ve given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting.  Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away—­so that it’s all as wonderful as you may conceive.  They move at any rate among the dangers I speak of—­ between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence, or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.”  Her tone, by this time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up.  “And that’s how I make them do what I like!”

It had an effect on Mrs. Assingham, who rose with the deliberation that, from point to point, marked the widening of her grasp.  “My dear child, you’re amazing.”