The advantage, the happiness of being just as you were--because I was just as _I_ was--that's what you miss." "So that you think," her father presently said, "that I had better get married just in order to be as I was before ?" The detached tone of it--detached as if innocently to amuse her by showing his desire to accommodate--was so far successful as to draw from her gravity a short, light laugh.

"Well, what I don't want you to feel is that if you were to I shouldn't understand.

I SHOULD understand.
That's all," said the Princess gently.
Her companion turned it pleasantly over.

"You don't go so far as to wish me to take somebody I don't like ?" "Ah, father," she sighed, "you know how far I go--how far I COULD go.
But I only wish that if you ever SHOULD like anybody, you may never doubt of my feeling how I've brought you to it.

You'll always know that I know that it's my fault." "You mean," he went on in his contemplative way, "that it will be you who'll take the consequences ?" Maggie just considered.