Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. “No; I’m not terrible, and you don’t think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt—but surprisingly mild. Because—don’t you see?—I AM mild. I can bear anything.”
“Oh, ‘bear’!” Mrs. Assingham fluted.
“For love,” said the Princess.
Fanny hesitated. “Of your father?”
“For love,” Maggie repeated.
It kept her friend watching. “Of your husband?”
“For love,” Maggie said again.
It was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives. Mrs. Assingham’s rejoinder, at all events—however much or however little it was a choice—was presently a triumph. “Speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father’s wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?” And then as the Princess didn’t at first answer: “Do you call such an allegation as that ‘mild’?”
“Oh, I’m not pretending to be mild to you. But I’ve told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so I’ve been to them.”
Mrs. Assingham, more brightly again, bridled. “Is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?”