"Then he'll do for himself whatever there may be to do. What he
undertook for you he'll do to the end. He didn't undertake it to
break down; in what--quiet, patient, exquisite as he is--did he
ever break down? He had never in his life proposed to himself to
have failed, and he won't have done it on this occasion."
"Ah, this occasion!"--and Maggie's wail showed her, of a sudden,
thrown back on it. "Am I in the least sure that, with everything,
he even knows what it is? And yet am I in the least sure he
doesn't?"
"If he doesn't then, so much the better. Leave him alone."
"Do you mean give him up?"
"Leave HER," Fanny Assingham went on. "Leave her TO him."
Maggie looked at her darkly. "Do you mean leave him to HER? After
this?"
"After everything. Aren't they, for that matter, intimately
together now?"
"'Intimately'--? How do I know?"
But Fanny kept it up. "Aren't you and your husband--in spite of
everything?"
Maggie's eyes still further, if possible, dilated. "It remains to
be seen!"
"If you're not then, where's your faith?"
"In my husband--?"
Mrs. Assingham but for an instant hesitated. "In your father. It
all comes back to that. Rest on it."
"On his ignorance?"