he point permitted. "The
amusement surely will be to find our present."

"Certainly--as I say."

"Well, if they don't come down--?"

"Then we'll come up. There's always something to be done. Besides,
Prince," she had gone on, "I'm not, if you come to that, absolutely a
pauper. I'm too poor for some things," she had said--yet, strange as
she was, lightly enough; "but I'm not too poor for others." And she had
paused again at the top. "I've been saving up."

He had really challenged it. "In America?"

"Yes, even there--with my motive. And we oughtn't, you know," she had
wound up, "to leave it beyond to-morrow."

That, definitely, with ten words more, was what had passed--he feeling
all the while how any sort of begging-off would only magnify it. He
might get on with things as they were, but he must do anything rather
than magnify. Besides which it was pitiful to make her beg of him. He
WAS making her--she had begged; and this, for a special sensibility in
him, didn't at all do. That was accordingly, in fine, how they had come
to where they were: he was engaged, as hard as possible, in the policy
of not magnifying. He had kept this up even on her making a point--and
as if it were almost the whole point--that Maggie of course was not to
have an idea. Half the interest of the thing at least would be that she
shouldn't suspect; therefore he was completely to keep it from her--as
Charlotte on her side would--that they had been anywhere at all together
or had so much as seen each other for five minutes alone. The absolute
secrecy of their little excursion was in short of the essence; she
appealed to his kindness to let her feel that he didn't betray her.
There had been something, frankly, a little disconcerting in such an
appeal at such an hour, on the very eve of his nuptials: it was one
thing to have met the girl casually at Mrs. Assingham's and another to
arrange with her thus for a morning practically as private as their old
mornings in Rome and practically not less intimate. He had immediately
told Maggie, the same evening, of the minutes that had passed between
them in Cadogan Place--though not mentioning those of Mrs. Assingham's
absence any more than he mentioned the fact of what their friend had
then, with such small delay, proposed. But what had briefly checked his
assent to any present, to any positive making of mystery--what had made
him, while they stood at the top of the stairs, demur just long enough
for he