“Amazing—?”

“You’re terrible.”

Maggie thoughtfully shook her head.  “No; I’m not terrible, and you don’t think me so.  I do strike you as surprising, no doubt—­ but surprisingly mild.  Because—­don’t you see?—­I am mild.  I can bear anything.”

“Oh, ’bear’!” Mrs. Assingham fluted.

“For love,” said the Princess.

Fanny hesitated.  “Of your father?”

“For love,” Maggie repeated.

It kept her friend watching.  “Of your husband?”

“For love,” Maggie said again.

It was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives.  Mrs. Assingham’s rejoinder, at all events—­however much or however little it was a choice—­was presently a triumph.  “Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father’s wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?” And then as the Princess didn’t at first answer:  “Do you call such an allegation as that ’mild’?”

“Oh, I’m not pretending to be mild to you.  But I’ve told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I’ve been to them.”

Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled.  “Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?”

“Ah, there wouldn’t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.”

Mrs. Assingham faced her—­quite steady now.  “Are you really conscious, love, of what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m bewildered and tormented, and that I’ve no one but you to speak to.  I’ve thought, I’ve in fact been sure, that you’ve seen for yourself how much this is the case.  It’s why I’ve believed you would meet me half way.”

“Half way to what?  To denouncing,” Fanny asked, “two persons, friends of years, whom I’ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom I haven’t the shadow of a charge to make?”

Maggie looked at her with wide eyes.  “I had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them.  Denounce me, denounce me,” she said, “if you can see your way.”  It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself.  “If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig—!”

“Well?” said Mrs. Assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis.

“I think I shall be saved.”

Her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head.  “You say you’ve no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings—­not having, as you call it, given yourself away.  Have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?”