THE GOLDEN BOWL
to Mrs. Assingham also, that she could convert it to good; if only in short to be "square," as they said, with her question. For herself indeed particularly it wasn't a question; but something in her bones told her that Fanny would treat it as one, and there was truly nothing that from this friend she wasn't bound in decency to take. She might hand things back with every tender precaution, with acknowledgements and assurances, but she owed it to them in any case, and owed it to all Mrs. Assingham had done for her, not to get rid of them without having well unwrapped them and turned them over.
To-night, as happened—and she recognised it more and more, with the ebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her—to-night exactly she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she might at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process with the right temper and tone. She said after a little to the Prince "Stay with me; let no one take you; for I want her, yes, I do want her, to see us together, and the sooner the better"—said it to keep her hand on him through constant diversions, and made him in fact by saying it profess a momentary vagueness. She had to explain to him that it was Fanny Assingham she wanted to see—who clearly would be there, since the Colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned himself for her fate; and she had further, after Amerigo had met her with "See us together? why in the world? hasn't she often seen us together?" to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened didn't now matter and that she at any rate well knew
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