eir romance?"

She looked at him a moment. "What do you want more?"

"Didn't HE," the Colonel inquired, "want anything more? Or didn't, for
that matter, poor Charlotte herself?"

She kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered.
"They were thoroughly in love. She might have been his--" She checked
herself; she even for a minute lost herself. "She might have been
anything she liked--except his wife."

"But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.

"She wasn't," Mrs. Assingham echoed.

The echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. He seemed to
listen to it die away; then he began again. "How are you sure?"

She waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite. "There
wasn't time."

He had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other.
"Does it take so much time?"

She herself, however, remained serious. "It takes more than they had."

He was detached, but he wondered. "What was the matter with their time?"
After which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it
together, she only considered, "You mean that you came in with your
idea?" he demanded.

It brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to
answer herself. "Not a bit of it--THEN. But you surely recall," she went
on, "the way, a year ago, everything took place. They had parted before
he had ever heard of Maggie."

"Why hadn't he heard of her from Charlotte herself?"

"Because she had never spoken of her."

"Is that also," the Colonel inquired, "what she has told you?"

"I'm not speaking," his wife returned, "of what she has told me. That's
one thing. I'm speaking of what I know by myself. That's another."

"You feel, in other words, that she lies to you?" Bob Assingham more
sociably asked.

She neglected the question, treating it as gross. "She never so much, at
the time, as named Maggie."

It was so positive that it appeared to strike him. "It's he then who has
told you?"

She after a moment admitted it. "It's he."

"And he doesn't lie?"

"No--to do him justice. I believe he absolutely doesn't. If I hadn't
believed it," Mrs. Assingham declared, for her general justification, "I
would have had nothing to do with him--that is in this connection. He's
a gentleman--I mean ALL as much of one as he ought to be. And he had
nothing to gain. That helps," she added, "even a gentleman. It was I
who named Maggie to him--a year from last May. He had never hea