ho's to come down on you
if you break them I don't quite see. Or must you do it in three
guesses--like forfeits on Christmas eve?" To which, as his ribaldry but
dropped from her, he further added: "How much of anything will have to
be left for you to be able to go on with it?"

"I shall go on," Fanny Assingham a trifle grimly declared, "while
there's a scrap as big as your nail. But we're not yet, luckily, reduced
only to that." She had another pause, holding the while the thread of
that larger perception into which her view of Mrs. Verver's obligation
to Maggie had suddenly expanded. "Even if her debt was not to the
others--even then it ought to be quite sufficiently to the Prince
himself to keep her straight. For what, really, did the Prince do," she
asked herself, "but generously trust her? What did he do but take
it from her that if she felt herself willing it was because she felt
herself strong? That creates for her, upon my word," Mrs. Assingham
pursued, "a duty of considering him, of honourably repaying his trust,
which--well, which she'll be really a fiend if she doesn't make the law
of her conduct. I mean of course his trust that she wouldn't interfere
with him--expressed by his holding himself quiet at the critical time."

The brougham was nearing home, and it was perhaps this sense of ebbing
opportunity that caused the Colonel's next meditation to flower in a
fashion almost surprising to his wife. They were united, for the most
part, but by his exhausted patience; so that indulgent despair was
generally, at the best, his note. He at present, however, actually
compromised with his despair to the extent of practically admitting that
he had followed her steps. He literally asked, in short, an intelligent,
well nigh a sympathising, question. "Gratitude to the Prince for not
having put a spoke in her wheel--that, you mean, should, taking it in
the right way, be precisely the ballast of her boat?"

"Taking it in the right way." Fanny, catching at this gleam, emphasised
the proviso.

"But doesn't it rather depend on what she may most feel to BE the right
way?"

"No--it depends on nothing. Because there's only one way--for duty or
delicacy."

"Oh--delicacy!" Bob Assingham rather crudely murmured.

"I mean the highest kind--moral. Charlotte's perfectly capable of
appreciating that. By every dictate of moral delicacy she must let him
alone."

"Then you've made up your mind it's all poor Charlotte?" he asked w