II
A telegram in Charlotte's name arrived early—"We shall come and ask you for tea at five if convenient to you. Am wiring for the Assinghams to lunch." This document, into which meanings were to be read, Maggie promptly placed before her husband, adding the remark that her father and his wife, who would have come up the previous night or that morning, had evidently gone to an hotel.
The Prince was in his "own" room, where he often sat now alone; half a dozen open newspapers, the Figaro notably, as well as the Times, were scattered about him; but with a cigar in his teeth and a visible cloud on his brow he appeared actually to be engaged in walking to and fro. Never yet on thus approaching him—for she had done it of late, under one necessity or another, several times—had a particular impression so greeted her; supremely strong, for some reason, as he turned quickly round on her entrance. The reason was partly the look in his face—a suffusion like the flush of fever, which brought back to her Fanny Assingham's charge, recently uttered under that roof, of her "thinking" too impenetrably. The word had remained with her and made her think still more; so that at first as she stood there she felt responsible for provoking on his part an irritation of suspense at which she hadn't aimed. She had been going about him these three months, she perfectly
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