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By Root 7132 0

He was taken seriously. Lost there in the white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him. It was even in Mrs Assingham, in spite of her having, as she had frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. All he could say as yet was that he had done nothing so far to break any charm. What should he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally speaking, behind their veil. It would come to asking what they expected him to do. She would answer him probably: ‘Oh, you know, it’s what we expect you to be!’ on which he would have no resource but to deny his knowledge. Would that dissipate the spell, his saying he had no idea? What idea in fact could he have? He also took himself seriously – made a point of it; but it wasn’t simply a question of fancy and pretension. His own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with; but theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the practical proof. As the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be proportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale that he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. Who but a billionaire could say what was fair exchange for a billion? That measure was the shrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in Cadogan Place, a little nearer the shroud. He promised himself virtually to give the latter a twitch.

2

‘They’re not good days, you know,’ he had said to Fanny Assingham after declaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of tea, putting her in possession of the latest news – the documents signed an hour ago, de part et d’autre,1 and the telegram from his backers, who had reached Paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little, poor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. ‘We’re very simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you,’ he had also observed, ‘and Paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the world. London therefore will be more or less another planet. It has always been, as with so many of us, quite their Mecca, but this is their first real caravan; they’ve mainly known “old England”2 as a shop for articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they’ve dressed themselves as much as possible. Which all means, however, that you’ll see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. We must be very easy with them. Maggie’s too wonderful – her preparations are on a scale! She insists on taking in the sposi3 and my uncle. The others will come to me. I’ve been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and with all those solemn signatures of an hour ago that brings the case home to me.’

‘Do you mean you’re afraid?’ his hostess had amusedly asked.

‘Terribly afraid. I’ve now but to wait to see the monster come. They’re not good days; they’re neither one thing nor the other. I’ve really got nothing, yet I’ve everything to lose. One doesn’t know what still may happen.’

The way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. It was a sign, that is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. And to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe – that was what he had come for. ‘Marriage then,’ said Mrs Assingham, ‘is what you call the monster? I admit it’s a fearful thing at the best; but, for heaven’s sake, if that’s what you’re thinking of, don’t run away from it.’

‘Ah to run away from it would be to run away from you,’ the Prince replied; ‘and I’ve already told you often enough how I depend on you to see me through.’ He so liked the way she took this, from the corner of her sofa, that he gave his sincerity – for it was sincerity – fuller expression. ‘I’m starting on the great voyage – across the unknown sea; my ship’s all rigged and appointed, the cargo’s stowed away and the company complete. But what seems the matter with me is that I can’t sail alone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste of waters, a – what do you call it? – a consort.