or whatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need.  All our friend’s instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the ground would bear; she would take no step nearer unless intelligibly to meet her, and, awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and distorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of bald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start could lead to.  She caught, however, after a second’s thought, at the Princess’s allusion to her lost reassurance.

“You mean you were so at your ease on Monday—­the night you dined with us?”

“I was very happy then,” said Maggie.

“Yes—­we thought you so gay and so brilliant.”  Fanny felt it feeble, but she went on.  “We were so glad you were happy.”

Maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her.  “You thought me all right, eh?”

“Surely, dearest; we thought you all right.”

“Well, I daresay it was natural; but in point of fact I never was more wrong in my life.  For, all the while, if you please, this was brewing.”

Mrs. Assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness. “’This’—?”

“That!” replied the Princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among so many precious objects—­the Ververs, wherever they might be, always revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments—­her visitor had not taken heed.

“Do you mean the gilt cup?”

“I mean the gilt cup.”

The piece now recognised by Fanny as new to her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted, by a short stem, on an ample foot, which held a central position above the fire-place, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the Louis-Seize clock that accompanied the candelabra.  This latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style.  Mrs. Assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring it at a distance.  “But what has that to do—?”

“It has everything.  You’ll see.”  With which again, however, for the moment, Maggie attached to her strange wide eyes.  “He knew her before—­before I had ever seen him.”

“‘He’ knew—?” But Fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it.

“Amerigo knew Charlotte—­more than I ever dreamed.”

Fanny felt then it was stare for stare.  “But surely you always knew they had met.”

“I didn’t understand.  I knew too little.  Don’t you see what I mean?” the Princess asked.