Chapter
3
It had been said as a joke, but as, after this, they awaited their friend in silence, the effect of the silence was to turn the time to gravity—a gravity not dissipated even when the Prince next spoke. He had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. A handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. Mrs. Assingham, so far, was right. But there were the facts—the good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. "She can come, you know, at any time, to US."
Mrs. Assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. "You'd like her for your honeymoon?"
"Oh no, you must keep her for that. But why not after?"
She had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the corridor, t
