"You could be so very content without me?" the Prince presently
inquired.

"Yes, my own dear--if you could be content for a while with
father. That would keep me up. I might, for the time," she went
on, "go to stay there with Charlotte; or, better still, she might
come to Portland Place."

"Oho!" said the Prince with cheerful vagueness.

"I should feel, you see," she continued, "that the two of us were
showing the same sort of kindness."

Amerigo thought. "The two of us? Charlotte and I?"

Maggie again hesitated. "You and I, darling."

"I see, I see"--he promptly took it in. "And what reason shall I
give--give, I mean, your father?"

"For asking him to go off? Why, the very simplest--if you
conscientiously can. The desire," said Maggie, "to be agreeable
to him. Just that only."

Something in this reply made her husband again reflect.
"'Conscientiously?' Why shouldn't I conscientiously? It wouldn't,
by your own contention," he developed, "represent any surprise
for him. I must strike him sufficiently as, at the worst, the
last person in the world to wish to do anything to hurt him."