I had to recognise it. No one would have me." Then she seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so disconcerting. She pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed she would cheer him up. "Existence, you know, al the same, doesn't depend on that. I mean," she smiled, "on having caught a husband."

"Oh--existence!" the Prince vaguely commented. "You think I ought to argue for more than mere existence?" she asked. "I don't see why MY existence--even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine--should be so impossible. There are things, of sorts, I should be able to have--things I should be able to be. The position of a single woman today is very favourable, you know."

"Favourable to what?"

"Why, just TO existence--which may contain, after al , in one way and another, so much. It may contain, at the worst, even affections; affections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one's friends. I'm extremely fond of Maggie, for instance --I quite adore her. How could I adore her more if I were married to one of the people you speak of?" The Prince gave a laugh. "You might adore HIM more--!"

"Ah, but it isn't, is it?" she asked, "a question of that."

"My dear friend," he returned, "it's always a question of doing the best for one's self one can--without injury to others." He felt by this time that they were indeed on an excel ent basis; so he went on again, as if to show frankly his sense of its firmness. "I venture therefore to repeat my hope that you'l marry some capital fel ow; and also to repeat my belief that such a marriage wil be more favourable to you, as you cal it, than even the spirit of the age."

She looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to take it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to take it with gaiety. "Thank you very much," she simply said; but at that moment their friend was with them again. It was undeniable that, as she came in, Mrs. Assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from one of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led Charlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. "The Prince hopes so much I shal stil marry some good person."

Whether it worked for Mrs. Assingham or not, the Prince was himself, at this, more than ever reassured. He was SAFE, in a word--that was what it al meant; and he had required to be safe. He was real y safe enough for almost any joke. "It's only," he explained to their hostess, "because of what Miss Stant has been tel ing me. Don't we want to keep up her courage?" If the joke was broad he had at least not begun it--not, that is, AS a joke; which was what his companion's address to their friend made of it.

"She has been trying in America, she The Legal Smal Print

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says, but hasn't brought it off."

The tone was somehow not what Mrs. Assingham had expected, but she made the best of it. "Wel then," she replied to the young man, "if you take such an interest you must bring it off."

"And you must help, dear," Charlotte said unperturbed--"as you've helped, so beautiful y, in such things before." With which, before Mrs. Assingham could meet the appeal, she had addressed herself to the Prince on a matter much nearer to him. "YOUR mar-riage is on Friday?--on Saturday?"

"Oh, on Friday, no! For what do you take us? There's not a vulgar omen we're neglecting. On Saturday, please, at the Oratory, at three o'clock--before twelve assistants exactly."

"Twelve including ME?"

It struck him--he laughed. "You'l make the thirteenth.