rom
her father, with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. "Ah,
rather! DO let's have the Assinghams."

"It would be to have them," she had said, "as we used so much to have
them. For a good long stay, in the old way and on the old terms: 'as
regular boarders' Fanny used to call it. That is if they'll come."

"As regular boarders, on the old terms--that's what I should like too.
But I guess they'll come," her companion had added in a tone into which
she had read meanings. The main meaning was that he felt he was going to
require them quite as much as she was. His recognition of the new terms
as different from the old, what was that, practically, but a confession
that something had happened, and a perception that, interested in the
situation she had helped to create, Mrs. Assingham would be, by so much
as this, concerned in its inevitable development? It amounted to an
intimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some one to
turn to. If she had wished covertly to sound him he had now, in short,
quite given himself away, and if she had, even at the start, needed
anything MORE to settle her, here assuredly was enough. He had hold of
his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy's
hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat
little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly,
while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn't have
been more real, mightn't above all have demanded less strange a
study, had it only been on the books that Charlotte should give him a
Principino of his own. She had repossessed herself now of his other arm,
only this time she was drawing him back, gently, helplessly back, to
what they had tried, for the hour, to get away from--just as he was
consciously drawing the child, and as high Miss Bogle on her left,
representing the duties of home, was complacently drawing HER. The
duties of home, when the house in Portland Place reappeared, showed,
even from a distance, as vividly there before them. Amerigo and
Charlotte had come in--that is Amerigo had, Charlotte, rather,
having come out--and the pair were perched together in the balcony, he
bare-headed, she divested of her jacket, her mantle, or whatever, but
crowned with a brilliant brave hat, responsive to the balmy day, which
Maggie immediately "spotted" as new, as insuperably original, as worn,
in characteristic generous harmony, for the fir