he's here at all she must stay with me." He quite took it in. "So
she's coming now?"

"I expect her at any moment. If you wait you'll see her."

"Oh," he promptly declared--"charming!" But this word came out as if,
a little, in sudden substitution for some other. It sounded accidental,
whereas he wished to be firm. That accordingly was what he next showed
himself. "If it wasn't for what's going on these next days Maggie would
certainly want to have her. In fact," he lucidly continued, "isn't
what's happening just a reason to MAKE her want to?" Mrs. Assingham, for
answer, only looked at him, and this, the next instant, had apparently
had more effect than if she had spoken. For he asked a question that
seemed incongruous. "What has she come for!"

It made his companion laugh. "Why, for just what you say. For your
marriage."

"Mine?"--he wondered.

"Maggie's--it's the same thing. It's 'for' your great event. And then,"
said Mrs. Assingham, "she's so lonely."

"Has she given you that as a reason?"

"I scarcely remember--she gave me so many. She abounds, poor dear, in
reasons. But there's one that, whatever she does, I always remember for
myself."

"And which is that?" He looked as if he ought to guess but couldn't.

"Why, the fact that she has no home--absolutely none whatever. She's
extraordinarily alone."

Again he took it in. "And also has no great means."

"Very small ones. Which is not, however, with the expense of railways
and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro."

"On the contrary. But she doesn't like her country."

"Hers, my dear man?--it's little enough 'hers.'" The attribution, for
the moment, amused his hostess. "She has rebounded now--but she has had
little enough else to do with it."

"Oh, I say hers," the Prince pleasantly explained, "very much as, at
this time of day, I might say mine. I quite feel, I assure you, as if
the great place already more or less belonged to ME."

"That's your good fortune and your point of view. You own--or you soon
practically WILL own--so much of it. Charlotte owns almost nothing in
the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which I
have given her leave to introduce into this house. She'll depreciate to
you," Mrs. Assingham added, "your property."

He thought of these things, he thought of every thing; but he had always
his resource at hand of turning all to the easy. "Has she come with
designs upon me?" And then in a moment, as if ev