THE GOLDEN BOWL
to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight discussion at which we have been present was so far from having exhausted. It came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense of fascination. Mrs. Assingham declared at such moments that in the interest of this admirable young thing—to whom, she also declared, she had quite "come over"—she was ready to pass with all the world else, even with the Prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar indelicate pestilential woman, showing her true character in an abandoned old age. The Colonel's confessed attention had been enlisted, we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew, was not a bit because he was sorry for her, was touched by what she had let herself in for, but because when once they had been opened he couldn't keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the Princess. If he was in love with her now, however, so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they would have to do for her. Mrs. Assingham had come back to that whenever he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment—since Maggie's little march was positively beguiling—let him lose sight of the grim necessity awaiting them. "We shall have, as I've again and again told you, to lie for her—to lie till we're black in the face."
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