’t Fanny at bottom half-expect, absolutely at the bottom half-want, things? – so that she’d be disappointed if, after what must just have occurred for her, she didn’t get something to put between the teeth of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which our young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have ‘gone too far’ in her irrepressible interest in other lives. What had just happened – it pieced itself together for Charlotte – was that the Assingham sposi, drifting like every one else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the Colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the Prince. His very dryness in this encounter would have, as always, struck a spark from his wife’s curiosity, and, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he must have thrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of her young friends was ‘going on’ with another. He knew perfectly – such at least was Charlotte’s liberal assumption – that she wasn’t going on with any one, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was inevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous intercourse of the inimitable pair. The Prince meanwhile had also, under coercion, sacrificed her; the Ambassador had come up to him with a message from Royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had talked for five minutes with Sir John Brinder, who had been of the Ambassador’s company and who had rather artlessly remained with her. Fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as some one else she didn’t know, some one who knew Mrs Assingham and also knew Sir John. Charlotte had left it to her friend’s competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters. This was the little history of the vision in her that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that mightn’t again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. Her point was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was her own. She had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even Amerigo – Amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it – had given her aid. To make it now with force for Fanny Assingham’s benefit would see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned, than any other spring she should doubtless yet awhile be able to press. The direction was that of her greater freedom – which was all in the world she had in mind. Her opportunity had accordingly, after a few minutes of Mrs Assingham’s almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm’s length and consulting it with a special turn of the head. It was in a word with this value of her chance that she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to Fanny’s last question: ‘Don’t you remember what you told me, on the occasion of something or other, the other day? That you believe there’s nothing I’m afraid of? So, my dear, don’t ask me!’
‘Mayn’t I ask you,’ Mrs Assingham returned, ‘how the case stands with your poor husband?’
‘Certainly, dear. Only when you ask me as if I mightn’t perhaps know what to think, it seems to me best to let you see that I know perfectly what to think.’
Mrs Assingham had a wait, then, blinking a little, she took her risk. ‘You didn’t think that if it was a question of any one’s returning to him in his trouble it would be better you yourself should have gone?’
Well, Charlotte’s answer to this enquiry visibly shaped itself in the interest of the highest considerations. The highest considerations were good humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the real truth. ‘If we couldn’t be perfectly frank and dear with each other it would be ever so much better, wouldn’t it? that we shouldn’t talk about anything at all; which however would be dreadful