THE PRINCESS
"I was very happy then," said Maggie.
"Yes—we thought you so gay and so brilliant." Fanny felt it feeble, but she went on. "We were so glad you were happy."
Maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. "You thought me all right, eh?"
"Surely, dearest; we thought you all right."
"Well, I dare say it was natural; but in point of fact I never was more wrong in my life. For all the while if you please this was brewing."
Mrs. Assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness. "'This'—?"
"That!" replied the Princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among so many precious objects—the Ververs, wherever they might be, always revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments—her visitor hadn't taken heed.
"Do you mean the gilt cup?"
"I mean the gilt cup."
The piece now recognised by Fanny as new to her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted by a short stem on an ample foot which held a central position above the fireplace, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the Louis-Seize clock that accompanied the candelabra. This latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style. Mrs. Assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off
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