ption of what would secretly have passed. She saw her,
face to face with the Prince, take from him the chill of his stiffest
admonition, with the possibilities of deeper difficulty that it
represented for each. She heard her ask, irritated and sombre, what
tone, in God's name--since her bravery didn't suit him--she was then
to adopt; and, by way of a fantastic flight of divination, she heard
Amerigo reply, in a voice of which every fine note, familiar and
admirable, came home to her, that one must really manage such prudences
a little for one's self. It was positive in the Princess that, for this,
she breathed Charlotte's cold air--turned away from him in it with
her, turned with her, in growing compassion, this way and that, hovered
behind her while she felt her ask herself where then she should rest.
Marvellous the manner in which, under such imaginations, Maggie thus
circled and lingered--quite as if she were, materially, following
her unseen, counting every step she helplessly wasted, noting every
hindrance that brought her to a pause.

A few days of this, accordingly, had wrought a change in that
apprehension of the instant beatitude of triumph--of triumph magnanimous
and serene--with which the upshot of the night-scene on the terrace had
condemned our young woman to make terms. She had had, as we know, her
vision of the gilt bars bent, of the door of the cage forced open from
within and the creature imprisoned roaming at large--a movement, on
the creature's part, that was to have even, for the short interval, its
impressive beauty, but of which the limit, and in yet another direction,
had loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees
with her father. It was when she saw his wife's face ruefully attached
to the quarter to which, in the course of their session, he had so
significantly addressed his own--it was then that Maggie could watch for
its turning pale, it was then she seemed to know what she had meant
by thinking of her, in she shadow of his most ominous reference, as
"doomed." If, as I say, her attention now, day after day, so circled and
hovered, it found itself arrested for certain passages during which she
absolutely looked with Charlotte's grave eyes. What she unfailingly made
out through them was the figure of a little quiet gentleman who mostly
wore, as he moved, alone, across the field of vision, a straw hat, a
white waistcoat and a blue necktie, keeping a cigar in his teeth and