position of a single woman
to-day is very favourable, you know."

"Favourable to what?"

"Why, just TO existence--which may contain, after all, in one way
and another, so much. It may contain, at the worst, even affections;
affections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one's friends.
I'm extremely fond of Maggie, for instance--I quite adore her. How
could I adore her more if I were married to one of the people you speak
of?"

The Prince gave a laugh. "You might adore HIM more--!"

"Ah, but it isn't, is it?" she asked, "a question of that."

"My dear friend," he returned, "it's always a question of doing the best
for one's self one can--without injury to others." He felt by this time
that they were indeed on an excellent basis; so he went on again, as
if to show frankly his sense of its firmness. "I venture therefore to
repeat my hope that you'll marry some capital fellow; and also to repeat
my belief that such a marriage will be more favourable to you, as you
call it, than even the spirit of the age."

She looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to
take it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to
take it with gaiety. "Thank you very much," she simply said; but at that
moment their friend was with them again. It was undeniable that, as she
came in, Mrs. Assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from
one of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led
Charlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. "The Prince hopes
so much I shall still marry some good person."

Whether it worked for Mrs. Assingham or not, the Prince was himself, at
this, more than ever reassured. He was SAFE, in a word--that was what it
all meant; and he had required to be safe. He was really safe enough for
almost any joke. "It's only," he explained to their hostess, "because
of what Miss Stant has been telling me. Don't we want to keep up her
courage?" If the joke was broad he had at least not begun it--not, that
is, AS a joke; which was what his companion's address to their friend
made of it. "She has been trying in America, she says, but hasn't
brought it off."

The tone was somehow not what Mrs. Assingham had expected, but she made
the best of it. "Well then," she replied to the young man, "if you take
such an interest you must bring it off."

"And you must help, dear," Charlotte said unperturbed--"as you've
helped, so beautifully, in such things be