Her companion held tight to it.  “Magnificent.”

“Then he’ll do for himself whatever there may be to do.  What he undertook for you he’ll do to the end.  He didn’t undertake it to break down; in what—­quiet, patient, exquisite as he is—­did he ever break down?  He had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and he won’t have done it on this occasion.”

“Ah, this occasion!”—­and Maggie’s wail showed her, of a sudden, thrown back on it.  “Am I in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows what it is?  And yet am I in the least sure he doesn’t?”

“If he doesn’t then, so much the better.  Leave him alone.”

“Do you mean give him up?”

“Leave her,” Fanny Assingham went on.  “Leave her to him.”

Maggie looked at her darkly.  “Do you mean leave him to her?  After this?”

“After everything.  Aren’t they, for that matter, intimately together now?”

“’Intimately’—?  How do I know?”

But Fanny kept it up.  “Aren’t you and your husband—­in spite of everything?”

Maggie’s eyes still further, if possible, dilated.  “It remains to be seen!”

“If you’re not then, where’s your faith?”

“In my husband—?”

Mrs. Assingham but for an instant hesitated.  “In your father.  It all comes back to that.  Rest on it.”

“On his ignorance?”

Fanny met it again.  “On whatever he may offer you.  Take that.”

“Take it—?” Maggie stared.

Mrs. Assingham held up her head.  “And be grateful.”  On which, for a minute, she let the Princess face her.  “Do you see?”

“I see,” said Maggie at last.

“Then there you are.”  But Maggie had turned away, moving to the window, as if still to keep something in her face from sight.  She stood there with her eyes on the street while Mrs. Assingham’s reverted to that complicating object on the chimney as to which her condition, so oddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent protest.  She went over it, looked at it afresh and yielded now to her impulse to feel it in her hands.  She laid them on it, lifting it up, and was surprised, thus, with the weight of it—­she had seldom handled so much massive gold.  That effect itself somehow prompted her to further freedom and presently to saying:  “I don’t believe in this, you know.”

It brought Maggie round to her.  “Don’t believe in it?  You will when I tell you.”

“Ah, tell me nothing!  I won’t have it,” said Mrs. Assingham.  She kept the cup in her hand, held it there in a manner that gave Maggie’s attention to her, she saw the next moment, a quality of excited suspense.  This suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty she was taking, an air of intention, and the impression betrayed by her companion’s eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning.  “It’s of value, but its value’s impaired, I’ve learned, by a crack.”