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By Root 7002 0

then held them in a manner of which neither party had been capable, doubtless, for mute penetration, since the hour spent by him in Cadogan Place on the eve of his marriage and the afternoon of Charlotte’s reappearance. Something now again became possible for these communicants under the intensity of their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might have been a redemption of pledges then exchanged. This rapid play of suppressed appeal and disguised response lasted indeed long enough for more results than one; quite enough for Mrs Assingham to measure the feat of quick self-recovery, possibly therefore of recognition still more immediate, accompanying Amerigo’s vision and estimate of the evidence with which she had been – so admirably, she felt as she looked at him – inspired to deal. She looked at him and looked at him – there were so many things she wanted on the spot to say. But Maggie was looking too – and was moreover looking at them both; so that these things, for the elder woman, very quickly reduced themselves to one. She met his question – not too late, since it had by their silence remained in the air. Gathering herself to go, leaving the golden bowl split into three pieces on the ground, she simply referred him to his wife. She should see them later, they would all meet soon again; and meanwhile, as to what Maggie had meant – she said, in her turn, from the door – why Maggie herself was doubtless by this time ready to tell him.

10

Left with her husband Maggie however for the time said nothing; she only felt on the spot a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again till he should have had a minute to arrange it. She had seen it enough for her temporary clearness and her next movement – seen as it showed during the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. Then it was that she knew how hugely expert she had been made – made for judging it quickly – by the vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that had flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return from Matcham. The expression worn by it at that juncture for however few instants had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the most relevant of which might have been playing up for her, before the consummation of Fanny Assingham’s retreat, just long enough to be recognised. What she had recognised in it was his recognition, the result of his having been forced, by the flush of their visitor’s attitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account of the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident, on which he had unexpectedly dropped. He had not unnaturally failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable which lay there on the floor and which even across the width of the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakeably though confusedly, of something known, some other unforgotten image. That was a mere shock, that was a pain – as if Fanny’s violence had been a violence redoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. Maggie knew as she turned away from him that she didn’t want his pain; what she wanted was her own simple certainty – not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. If she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she now apparently should have to, and of taking from him what he would say, any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a boon.

She went in silence to where her friend – never in intention visibly so much her friend as at that moment – had braced herself to so amazing an energy, and there under Amerigo’s eyes she picked up the shining pieces. Bedizened and jewelled, in her rustling finery, she paid, with humility of attitude, this prompt tribute to order – only to find however that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. She brought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place occupied by the cup before Fanny’s