seven including
the Principino, had practically been without accessions or invasions;
but within sight of Charlotte, seated far away, very much where she
had expected to find her, the Princess fell to wondering if her friend
wouldn't be affected quite as she herself had been, that night on the
terrace, under Mrs. Verver's perceptive pursuit. The relation, to-day,
had turned itself round; Charlotte was seeing her come, through patches
of lingering noon, quite as she had watched Charlotte menace her through
the starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little
as they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by
a recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged
with strange meanings, than that of the other occasion. The point,
however, was that they had changed places; Maggie had from her window,
seen her stepmother leave the house--at so unlikely an hour, three
o'clock of a canicular August, for a ramble in garden or grove--and had
thereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that
had made the spring of her companion's three weeks before. It was the
hottest day of the season, and the shaded siesta, for people all at
their ease, would certainly rather have been prescribed; but our young
woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such
refinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the
feast. This was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great
bedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had
just been taking place without Mrs. Verver. She had been represented but
by the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company
by her husband, but offered directly to Mr. Verver himself, on their
having assembled, by her maid, deputed for the effect and solemnly
producing it.

Maggie had sat down, with the others, to viands artfully iced, to
the slow circulation of precious tinkling jugs, to marked reserves
of reference in many directions--poor Fanny Assingham herself scarce
thrusting her nose out of the padded hollow into which she had
withdrawn. A consensus of languor, which might almost have been taken
for a community of dread, ruled the scene--relieved only by the fitful
experiments of Father Mitchell, good holy, hungry man, a trusted and
overworked London friend and adviser, who had taken, for a week or two,
the light neighbouring service, local rites flourishing under