that is for Portland Place—­that Charlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to Maggie’s mind as one day when the dear Assinghams swam back into her ken besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen Samson pull down the temple.  They had seen at least what she was not seeing, rich dim things under the impression of which they had retired; she having eyes at present but for the clock by which she timed her husband, or for the glass—­the image perhaps would be truer—­in which he was reflected to her as he timed the pair in the country.  The accession of their friends from Cadogan Place contributed to all their intermissions, at any rate, a certain effect of resonance; an effect especially marked by the upshot of a prompt exchange of inquiries between Mrs. Assingham and the Princess.  It was noted, on the occasion of that anxious lady’s last approach to her young friend at Fawns, that her sympathy had ventured, after much accepted privation, again to become inquisitive, and it had perhaps never so yielded to that need as on this question of the present odd “line” of the distinguished eccentrics.

“You mean to say really that you’re going to stick here?” And then before Maggie could answer:  “What on earth will you do with your evenings?”

Maggie waited a moment—­Maggie could still tentatively smile.  “When people learn we’re here—­and of course the papers will be full of it!—­they’ll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever they are, to catch us.  You see you and the Colonel have yourselves done it.  As for our evenings, they won’t, I dare say, be particularly different from anything else that’s ours.  They won’t be different from our mornings or our afternoons—­except perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us to get through them.  I’ve offered to go anywhere,” she added; “to take a house if he will.  But this—­just this and nothing else—­is Amerigo’s idea.  He gave it yesterday” she went on, “a name that, as, he said, described and fitted it.  So you see”—­and the Princess indulged again in her smile that didn’t play, but that only, as might have been said, worked—­“so you see there’s a method in our madness.”

It drew Mrs. Assingham’s wonder.  “And what then is the name?”

“’The reduction to its simplest expression of what we are doing’—­that’s what he called it.  Therefore as we’re doing nothing, we’re doing it in the most aggravated way—­which is the way he desires.”  With which Maggie further said:  “Of course I understand.”

“So do I!” her visitor after a moment breathed.  “You’ve had to vacate the house—­that was inevitable.  But at least here he doesn’t funk.”

Our young woman accepted the expression.  “He doesn’t funk.”

It only, however, half contented Fanny, who thoughtfully raised her eyebrows.  “He’s prodigious; but what is there—­as you’ve ‘fixed’ it—­to dodge?  Unless,” she pursued, “it’s her getting near him; it’s—­if you’ll pardon my vulgarity—­her getting at him.  That,” she suggested, “may count with him.”