his
hands in his pockets, and who, oftener than not, presented a somewhat
meditative back while he slowly measured the perspectives of the park
and broodingly counted (it might have appeared) his steps. There were
hours of intensity, for a week or two, when it was for all the world as
if she had guardedly tracked her stepmother, in the great house, from
room to room and from window to window, only to see her, here and there
and everywhere, TRY her uneasy outlook, question her issue and her fate.
Something, unmistakably, had come up for her that had never come
up before; it represented a new complication and had begotten a new
anxiety--things, these, that she carried about with her done up in the
napkin of her lover's accepted rebuke, while she vainly hunted for some
corner where she might put them safely down. The disguised solemnity,
the prolonged futility of her search might have been grotesque to a more
ironic eye; but Maggie's provision of irony, which we have taken for
naturally small, had never been so scant as now, and there were moments
while she watched with her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being
near her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almost
moved to saying to her: "Hold on tight, my poor dear--without TOO MUCH
terror--and it will all come out somehow."

Even to that indeed, she could reflect, Charlotte might have replied
that it was easy to say; even to that no great meaning could attach so
long as the little meditative man in the straw hat kept coming into view
with his indescribable air of weaving his spell, weaving it off there by
himself. In whatever quarter of the horizon the appearances were scanned
he was to be noticed as absorbed in this occupation; and Maggie was to
become aware of two or three extraordinary occasions of receiving from
him the hint that he measured the impression he produced. It was not
really till after their recent long talk in the park that she knew how
deeply, how quite exhaustively, they had then communicated--so that they
were to remain together, for the time, in consequence, quite in the form
of a couple of sociable drinkers who sit back from the table over which
they have been resting their elbows, over which they have emptied to the
last drop their respective charged cups. The cups were still there
on the table, but turned upside down; and nothing was left for the
companions but to confirm by placid silences the fact that the wine had
been good.