"If there hadn't been anything there shouldn't have been between the pair before Charlotte bolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there SHOULDN'T be: why in the world was what there HAD been too bad to be spoken of ?" Mrs.Assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped.
"I thought you wanted me to be quiet." "So I do--and I'm trying to make you so much so that you won't worry more.

Can't you be quiet on THAT ?" She thought a moment--then seemed to try.

"To relate that she had to 'bolt' for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wished--THAT I can perfectly feel Charlotte's not wanting to do." "Ah then, if it HAS done for her what she wished-!" But the Colonel's conclusion hung by the "if" which his wife didn't take up.

So it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again.

"All one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him." "Say she hasn't come back to him.