though it was a good deal known. More,
certainly," she said, "than I then imagined--though I don't know what
difference it would after all have made with me. I liked him, I thought
him charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more
than a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. And there are things he
might have done--things that many men easily would. Therefore I believe
in him, and I was right, at first, in knowing I was going to. So I
haven't"--and she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after
adding up the items, the sum of a column of figures--"so I haven't, I
say to myself, been a fool."

"Well, are you trying to make out that I've said you have? All their
case wants, at any rate," Bob Assingham declared, "is that you should
leave it well alone. It's theirs now; they've bought it, over the
counter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours."

"Of which case," she asked, "are you speaking?"

He smoked a minute: then with a groan: "Lord, are there so many?"

"There's Maggie's and the Prince's, and there's the Prince's and
Charlotte's."

"Oh yes; and then," the Colonel scoffed, "there's Charlotte's and the
Prince's."

"There's Maggie's and Charlotte's," she went on--"and there's also
Maggie's and mine. I think too that there's Charlotte's and mine. Yes,"
she mused, "Charlotte's and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see,
there are plenty. But I mean," she said, "to keep my head."

"Are we to settle them all," he inquired, "to-night?"

"I should lose it if things had happened otherwise--if I had acted
with any folly." She had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his
question. "I shouldn't be able to bear that now. But my good conscience
is my strength; no one can accuse me. The Ververs came on to Rome
alone--Charlotte, after their days with her in Florence, had decided
about America. Maggie, I daresay, had helped her; she must have made her
a present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. Charlotte
left them, came to England, 'joined' somebody or other, sailed for New
York. I have still her letter from Milan, telling me; I didn't know at
the moment all that was behind it, but I felt in it nevertheless the
undertaking of a new life. Certainly, in any case, it cleared THAT
air--I mean the dear old Roman, in which we were steeped. It left the
field free--it gave me a free hand. There was no question for me of
anybody else when I brought the two others together