ing how, for so long, she simply kept
missing him. She missed his company--a large allowance of which is, in
spite of everything else, of the first necessity to her. So she puts it
in when she can--a little here, a little there, and it ends by making up
a considerable amount. The fact of our distinct establishments--which
has, all the same, everything in its favour," Charlotte hastened to
declare, "makes her really see more of him than when they had the same
house. To make sure she doesn't fail of it she's always arranging for
it--which she didn't have to do while they lived together. But she likes
to arrange," Charlotte steadily proceeded; "it peculiarly suits her; and
the result of our separate households is really, for them, more contact
and more intimacy. To-night, for instance, has been practically an
arrangement. She likes him best alone. And it's the way," said our young
woman, "in which he best likes HER. It's what I mean therefore by being
'placed.' And the great thing is, as they say, to 'know' one's place.
Doesn't it all strike you," she wound up, "as rather placing the Prince
too?"

Fanny Assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish
presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast--so thick were
the notes of intention in this remarkable speech. But she also felt that
to plunge at random, to help herself too freely, would--apart from there
not being at such a moment time for it--tend to jostle the ministering
hand, confound the array and, more vulgarly speaking, make a mess. So
she picked out, after consideration, a solitary plum. "So placed that
YOU have to arrange?"

"Certainly I have to arrange."

"And the Prince also--if the effect for him is the same?"

"Really, I think, not less."

"And does he arrange," Mrs. Assingham asked, "to make up HIS arrears?"
The question had risen to her lips--it was as if another morsel, on the
dish, had tempted her. The sound of it struck her own ear, immediately,
as giving out more of her thought than she had as yet intended; but she
quickly saw that she must follow it up, at any risk, with simplicity,
and that what was simplest was the ease of boldness. "Make them up, I
mean, by coming to see YOU?"

Charlotte replied, however, without, as her friend would have phrased
it, turning a hair. She shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle.
"He never comes."

"Oh!" said Fanny Assingham: with which she felt a little stupid. "There
it is. He