m was certainly inconspicuous. What had she then come
back for?--he had asked himself that; with the effect of deciding that
it probably would have been, a little, to "look after" her remnant of
property. Perhaps she had come to save what little might still remain of
that shrivelled interest; perhaps she had been, by those who took care
of it for her, further swindled and despoiled, so that she wished to
get at the facts. Perhaps on the other hand--it was a more cheerful
chance--her investments, decently administered, were making larger
returns, so that the rigorous thrift of Bognor could be finally relaxed.

He had little to learn about the attraction of Europe, and rather
expected that in the event of his union with Mrs Worthingham he should
find himself pleading for it with the competence of one more in the
"know" about Paris and Rome, about Venice and Florence, than even she
could be. He could have lived on in _his_ New York, that is in the
sentimental, the spiritual, the more or less romantic visitation of it;
but had it been positive for him that he could live on in hers?--unless
indeed the possibility of this had been just (like the famous _vertige
de l'abime_, like the solicitation of danger, or otherwise of the
dreadful) the very hinge of his whole dream. However that might be,
his curiosity was occupied rather with the conceivable hinge of poor
Cornelia's: it was perhaps thinkable that even Mrs. Worthingham's New
York, once it should have become possible again at all, might have
put forth to this lone exile a plea that wouldn't be in the chords of
Bognor. For himself, after all, too, the attraction had been much
more of the Europe over which one might move at one's ease, and which
therefore could but cost, and cost much, right and left, than of the
Europe adapted to scrimping. He saw himself on the whole scrimping with
more zest even in Mrs. Worthingham's New York than under the inspiration
of Bognor. Apart from which it was yet again odd, not to say perceptibly
pleasing to him, to note where the emphasis of his interest fell in this
fumble of fancy over such felt oppositions as the new, the latest, the
luridest power of money and the ancient reserves and moderations and
mediocrities. These last struck him as showing by contrast the old brown
surface and tone as of velvet rubbed and worn, shabby, and even a bit
dingy, but all soft and subtle and still velvety--which meant still
dignified; whereas the angular fa