'interests.' You'll have them—on a great scale. It's the country for interests," said Charlotte. "If I had only had a few I doubtless wouldn't have left it."
He waited an instant; they were still on their feet. "Yours then are rather here?"
"Oh, mine!"—the girl smiled. "They take up little room, wherever they are."
It determined in him, the way this came from her and what it somehow did for her-it determined in him a speech that would have seemed a few minutes before precarious and in questionable taste. The lead she had given him made the difference, and he felt it as really a lift on finding an honest and natural word rise, by its license, to his lips. Nothing surely could be, for both of them, more in the note of a high bravery. "I've been thinking it all the while so probable, you know, that you would have seen your way to marrying."
She looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for what he might have spoiled. "To marrying whom?"
"Why, some good, kind, clever, rich American."
Again his security hung in the balance—then she was, as he felt, admirable.
"I tried everyone I came across. I did my best. I showed I had come, quite publicly, FOR that. Perhaps I showed it too much. At any rate it was no use. I had to recognise it. No one would have me." Then she seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so disconcerting. She pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed she would cheer him up. "Existence, you know, all the same, doesn't depend on that. I mean," she smiled, "on having caught a husband."
"Oh—existence!" the Prince vaguely commented. "You think I ought to argue for more than mere existence?" she asked. "I don't see why MY existence—even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine—should be so impossible. There are things, of sorts, I should be able to have—things I should be able to be. The 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 before." With which, before Mrs. Assingham could meet the appeal, she had addressed herself to the Prince on a matter much nearer to him. "YOUR marriage is on Friday?—on Saturday?"
"Oh, on Friday, no! For what do you take us? There's not a vulgar omen we're neglecting. On Saturday, please, at the Oratory, at three o'clock—before twelve assistants exactly."
"Twelve including ME?"
It struck him—he laughed. "You'll make the thirteenth. It won't do!"
"Not," said Charlotte, "if you're going in for 'omens.' Should you like me to stay away?"
"Dear no—we'll manage. We'll make the round number—we'll have in some old woman. They must keep them there for that, don't they?"
Mrs. Assingham's return had at last indicated for him his departure; he had possessed himself again of his hat and approached her to take leave. But he had another word for Charlotte. "I dine to-night with Mr. Verver. Have you any message?"
The girl seemed to wonder a little. "For Mr. Verver?"
"For Maggie—about her seeing you early. That, I know, is what she'll like."
"Then I'll come early—thanks."
"I daresay," he went on, "she'll send for you. I mean send a carriage."
"Oh, I don't require that, thanks. I can go, for a penny, can't I?" she asked of Mrs. Assingham, "in an omnibus."
"Oh, I say!" said the Prince while Mrs. Assingham looked at her blandly.
"Yes, love—and I'll give you the penny. She shall get there," the good lady added to their friend.
But Charlotte, as the latter took leave of her, thought of something else. "There's a great favour, Prince, that I want to ask of you. I want, between this and Saturday, to make Maggie a marriage-present."
"Oh, I say!" the young man again soothingly exclaimed.
"Ah, but I MUST," she went on. "It's really almost for that I came back. It was impossible to get in America what I wanted."
Mrs. Assingham showed anxiety. "What is it then, dear, you want?"
But the girl looked only at their companion. "That's what the Prince, if he'll be so good, must help me to decide."
"Can't I," Mrs. Assingham asked, "help you to decide?"
"Certainly, darling, we must talk it well over." And she kept her eyes on the Prince. "But I want him, if he kindly will, to go with me to look. I want him to judge with me and choose. That, if you can spare the hour," she said, "is the great favour I mean."
He raised his eyebrows at her—he wonderfully smiled. "What you came back from America to ask? Ah, certainly then, I must find the hour!" He wonderfully smiled, but it was rather more, after all, than he had been reckoning with. It went somehow so little with the rest that, directly, for him, it wasn't the note of safety; it preserved this character, at the best, but by being the note of publicity. Quickly, quickly, however, the note of publicity struck him as better than any other.
