“With a beauty—ah, with a beauty, you too!” Mrs. Assingham insisted.
Maggie, however, was seeing for herself—it was another matter, “The thing was that he made her think it would be so possible.”
Fanny again hesitated. “The Prince made her think—?”
Maggie stared—she had meant her father. But her vision seemed to spread. “They both made her think. She wouldn’t have thought without them.”
“Yet Amerigo’s good faith,” Mrs. Assingham insisted, “was perfect. And there was nothing, all the more,” she added, “against your father’s.”
The remark, however, kept Maggie for a moment still. “Nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew.”
“‘Knew’?”
“That he was doing it, so much, for me. To what extent,” she suddenly asked of her friend, “do you think he was aware that she knew?”
“Ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation? The only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous.” And Mrs. Assingham conclusively smiled. “He doubtless knew as much as was right for himself.”
“As much, that is, as was right for her.”