with a perfection void of any vulgarity of triumph.  She merely completed, for truth’s sake, her demonstration.  “What is a quarrel with me but a quarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain?  But I can carry them out alone,” she said as she turned away.  She turned to meet the Ambassador and the Prince, who, their colloquy with their Field-Marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she was aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed.  She had made her point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it thoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction before her, unmistakably moved to admiration by her exceptional radiance.  She at first but watched this reflection, taking no note of any less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor Fanny—­poor Fanny left to stare at her incurred “score,” chalked up in so few strokes on the wall; then she took in what the Ambassador was saying, in French, what he was apparently repeating to her.

“A desire for your presence, Madame, has been expressed en tres-haut lieu, and I’ve let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of the honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that so august an impatience is not kept waiting.”  The greatest possible Personage had, in short, according to the odd formula of societies subject to the greatest personages possible, “sent for” her, and she asked, in her surprise, “What in the world does he want to do to me?” only to know, without looking, that Fanny’s bewilderment was called to a still larger application, and to hear the Prince say with authority, indeed with a certain prompt dryness:  “You must go immediately—­it’s a summons.”  The Ambassador, using authority as well, had already somehow possessed himself of her hand, which he drew into his arm, and she was further conscious as she went off with him that, though still speaking for her benefit, Amerigo had turned to Fanny Assingham.  He would explain afterwards—­besides which she would understand for herself.  To Fanny, however, he had laughed—­ as a mark, apparently, that for this infallible friend no explanation at all would be necessary.

XV

It may be recorded none the less that the Prince was the next moment to see how little any such assumption was founded.  Alone with him now Mrs. Assingham was incorruptible.  “They send for Charlotte through you?”

“No, my dear; as you see, through the Ambassador.”

“Ah, but the Ambassador and you, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, have been for them as one.  He’s your ambassador.”  It may indeed be further mentioned that the more Fanny looked at it the more she saw in it.  “They’ve connected her with you—­she’s treated as your appendage.”

“Oh, my ‘appendage,’” the Prince amusedly exclaimed—­“cara mia, what a name!  She’s treated, rather, say, as my ornament and my glory.  And it’s so remarkable a case for a mother-in-law that you surely can’t find fault with it.”