THE PRINCESS
of conviction came back to her—"and, you know, I believe it's what I shall turn out to have done."
This produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened and deepened, was that of silence only and the long, charged look; all of which found virtual consecration when Maggie at last spoke. "I'm sure you tried to act for the best."
It kept Fanny Assingham again a minute in silence. "I never thought, dearest, you weren't an angel."
Not however that this alone was much help! "It was up to the very eve, you see," the Princess went on—"up to within two or three days of our marriage. That, that, you know—!" And she broke down for strangely smiling.
"Yes, as I say, it was while she was with me. But I didn't know it. That is," said Fanny Assingham, " I didn't know of anything in particular." It sounded weak—that she felt; but she had really her point to make. "What I mean is that I don't know, for knowledge, now, anything I didn't then. That's how I am." She still however floundered. "I mean it's how I was."
"But don't they, how you were and how you are," Maggie asked, "come practically to the same thing?"
The elder woman's words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. The situation had changed by—well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this could keep Maggie at least firm. She was firm enough as she
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