“Yet Amerigo’s good faith,” Mrs. Assingham insisted, “was perfect.  And there was nothing, all the more,” she added, “against your father’s.”

The remark, however, kept Maggie for a moment still.  “Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew.”

“’Knew’?”

“That he was doing it, so much, for me.  To what extent,” she suddenly asked of her friend, “do you think he was aware that she knew?”

“Ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation?  The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous.”  And Mrs. Assingham conclusively smiled.  “He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself.”

“As much, that is, as was right for her.”

“Yes then—­as was right for her.  The point is,” Fanny declared, “that, whatever his knowledge, it made, all the way it went, for his good faith.”

Maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements.  “Isn’t the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?”

Fanny Assingham thought.  “He recognised, he adopted, your long friendship.  But he founded on it no selfishness.”

“No,” said Maggie with still deeper consideration:  “he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own.”

“So you may say.”

“Very well,” Maggie went on; “if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little.  And she may only since have found that out.”

Mrs. Assingham looked blank.  “Since—?”

“And he may have become aware,” Maggie pursued, “that she has found it out.  That she has taken the measure, since their marriage,” she explained, “of how much he had asked of her—­more, say, than she had understood at the time.  He may have made out at last how such a demand was, in the long run, to affect her.”

“He may have done many things,” Mrs. Assingham responded; “but there’s one thing he certainly won’t have done.  He’ll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give.”

“I’ve often wondered,” Maggie mused, “what Charlotte really understood.  But it’s one of the things she has never told me.”

“Then as it’s one of the things she has never told me either, we shall probably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business.  There are many things,” said Mrs. Assingham, “that we shall never know.”

Maggie took it in with a long reflection.  “Never.”

“But there are others,” her friend went on, “that stare us in the face and that—­under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour—­may now be enough for us.  Your father has been extraordinary.”

It had been as if Maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this with a rush.  “Extraordinary.”

“Magnificent,” said Fanny Assingham.