She had not again for weeks had Mrs. Assingham so effectually in presence as on the afternoon of that lady's return from the Easter party at Matcham; but the intermission was made up as soon as the date of the migration to Fawns--that of the more or less simultaneous adjournment of the two houses--began to be discussed. It had struck her promptly that this renewal with an old friend of the old terms she had talked of with her father was the one opening for her spirit that would n't too much advertise or betray her. Even her father, who had always, as he would have said, "believed in" their ancient ally, would n't necessarily suspect her of invoking Fanny's aid toward any special enquiry--and least of all if Fanny would only act as Fanny so easily might. Maggie's measure of Fanny's ease would have been agitating to Mrs. Assingham had it been all at once revealed to her--as for that matter it was soon destined to become even on a comparatively graduated showing. Our young woman's idea in particular was that her safety, her escape from being herself suspected of suspicion, would proceed from this friend's power to cover, to protect and, as might be, even showily to represent her--represent, that is, her relation to the form of the life they were all actually leading. This would doubtless be, as people said, a large order; but that Mrs. Assingham existed substantially or could somehow be made (101) prevailingly to exist for her private benefit was the finest flower Maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in Portland Place to the Matcham company. Mrs. Assingham had that night, rebounding from dejection, bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper and darker consciousness--an impression it would now be late for her inconsistently to attempt to undo.
It was with a wonderful air of giving out all these truths that the Princess at present approached her again; making doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what in especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact quite expressly declared, of Fanny's discerned foreboding of the strange uses she might perhaps have for her. Quite from the first really Maggie said extraordinary things to her, such as "You can help me, you know, my dear, when nobody else can"; such as "I almost wish, upon my word, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your health or your money or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that I might be with you as much as I want, or keep you with ME, without exciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such kindnesses are 'like' me." We have each our own way of making up for our unselfishness, and Maggie, who had no small self at all as against her husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her stepmother, would verily at this crisis have seen Mrs. Assingham's personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang. (102) The attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw peculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of her victim. This personage struck her in truth as ready for almost anything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with a restlessness of her own to know what SHE wanted. And in the long run--which was none so long either--there was to be no difficulty, as happened, about that. It was as if, for all the world, Maggie had let her see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for something; not, to begin with, dotting all the i's nor hooking together all the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with caressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to assist. The theory, visibly, had patched itself together for her that the dear woman had somehow from the early time had a hand in ALL their fortunes, so that there was no turn of their common relations and affairs that could n't be traced back in some degree to her original affectionate interest. On this affectionate interest the good lady's young friend now built before her eyes--very much as a wise or even as a mischievous child, playing on the floor, might pile up blocks, skilfully and dizzily, with an eye on the face of a covertly-watching elder. When the blocks tumbled down they but acted after the nature of blocks; yet the hour would come for their rising so high that the structure would have to be noticed and admired. Mrs. Assingham's appearance of unreservedly giving herself involved meanwhile on her own side no separate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed altogether to her young (103) friend's so vivid felicity; it suggested that she took for granted at the most certain vague recent enhancements of that state. If the Princess now, more than before, was going and going, she was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always known she WOULD, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation must more or less contain and invite the note of triumph. There was a blankness in her blandness, assuredly, and very nearly an extravagance in her generalising gaiety; a precipitation of cheer particularly marked whenever they met again after short separations: meetings during the first flush of which Maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in other faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the physiognomic light that had played out in her husband at the shock--she had come at last to talk to herself of the "shock"--of his first vision of her on his return from Matcham and Gloucester, and the wonder of Charlotte's beautiful bold wavering glance when, the next morning in Eaton Square, this old friend had turned from the window to begin to deal with her.
