duce in her, the sense of highly choosing. At first, clearly, she had
been frightened; she had not been pursued, it had quickly struck her,
without some design on the part of her pursuer, and what might she
not be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the
pursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose? It
had sunk into Maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and Mrs. Verver
had felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance
of pressure successfully applied had naturally, till now, remained with
her. But her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure,
so dishonestly come by, for which her companion's still countenance, at
the hour and afterwards, had consented to serve as the deep soil, might
have worked up again to the surface, to be thrown back upon her hands.
Yes, it was positive that during one of these minutes the Princess had
the vision of her particular alarm. "It's her lie, it's her lie that has
mortally disagreed with her; she can keep down no longer her rebellion
at it, and she has come to retract it, to disown it and denounce it--to
give me full in my face the truth instead." This, for a concentrated
instant, Maggie felt her helplessly gasp--but only to let it bring home
the indignity, the pity of her state. She herself could but tentatively
hover, place in view the book she carried, look as little dangerous,
look as abjectly mild, as possible; remind herself really of people she
had read about in stories of the wild west, people who threw up their
hands, on certain occasions, as a sign they weren't carrying revolvers.
She could almost have smiled at last, troubled as she yet knew herself,
to show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume, which was
so weak a weapon, and while she continued, for consideration, to keep
her distance, she explained with as quenched a quaver as possible. "I
saw you come out--saw you from my window, and couldn't bear to think you
should find yourself here without the beginning of your book. THIS is
the beginning; you've got the wrong volume, and I've brought you out the
right."

She remained after she had spoken; it was like holding a parley with a
possible adversary, and her intense, her exalted little smile asked for
formal leave. "May I come nearer now?" she seemed to say--as to which,
however, the next minute, she saw Charlotte's reply lose itself in a
strange process, a thing of several sharp s