"But the whole point is just that two years of Charlotte are what he hasn't really--or what you may call undividedly--had." "Any more than Maggie, by your theory, eh, has 'really or undividedly,' had four of the Prince?
It takes all she hasn't had," the Colonel conceded, "to account for the innocence that in her, too, so leaves us in admiration." So far as it might be ribald again she let this pass.

"It takes a great many things to account for Maggie.

What is definite, at all events, is that--strange though this be--her effort for her father has, up to now, sufficiently succeeded.

She has made him, she makes him, accept the tolerably obvious oddity of their relation, all round, for part of the game.

Behind her there, protected and amused and, as it were, exquisitely humbugged--the Principino, in whom he delights, always aiding--he has safely and serenely enough suffered the conditions of his life to pass for those he had sublimely projected.