THE GOLDEN BOWL
in a graceful little frisk. "If I had believed you stupid I shouldn't have thought you interesting, and if I hadn't thought you interesting I shouldn't have noted whether I 'knew' you, as I've called it, or not. What I've always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character; quite as much in fact," Fanny smiled, "as one could suppose a person of your size able to carry. The only thing was," she explained, "that thanks to your never calling one's attention to it, I hadn't made out much more about it, and should have been vague above all as to where you carried it or kept it. Somewhere under, I should simply have said—like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the Holy Father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. That relic I've had a glimpse of"—with which she continued to invoke the privilege of humour. "But the precious little innermost, say this time little golden personal nature of you—blest by a greater power I think even than the Pope—that you've never consentingly shown me. I'm not sure you've ever consentingly shown it to any one. You've been in general too modest."
Maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead. "I strike you as modest to-day—modest when I stand here and scream at you?"
"Oh your screaming, I've granted you, is something new. I must fit it on somewhere. The question is, however," Mrs. Assingham further proceeded, "of what the deuce I can fit it on to. Do you mean," she asked, "to the fact of our friends' being, from yesterday to to-morrow, at a place where they may more or
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