ecess of some coloured and gilded image,
in which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her
husband and remembered her mission. Her mission had quite taken form--it
was but another name for the interest of her great opportunity--that of
representing the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar
off, in ignorance. Maggie had sufficiently intimated to the Prince,
ten minutes before, that she needed no showing as to what their friend
wouldn't consent to be taken for; but the difficulty now indeed was to
choose, for explicit tribute of admiration, between the varieties of her
nobler aspects. She carried it off, to put the matter coarsely, with a
taste and a discretion that held our young woman's attention, for the
first quarter-of-an-hour, to the very point of diverting it from the
attitude of her overshadowed, her almost superseded companion. But Adam
Verver profited indeed at this time, even with his daughter, by his so
marked peculiarity of seeming on no occasion to have an attitude; and so
long as they were in the room together she felt him still simply weave
his web and play out his long fine cord, knew herself in presence of
this tacit process very much as she had known herself at Fawns. He had
a way, the dear man, wherever he was, of moving about the room,
noiselessly, to see what it might contain; and his manner of now
resorting to this habit, acquainted as he already was with the objects
in view, expressed with a certain sharpness the intention of leaving his
wife to her devices. It did even more than this; it signified, to the
apprehension of the Princess, from the moment she more directly took
thought of him, almost a special view of these devices, as actually
exhibited in their rarity, together with an independent, a settled
appreciation of their general handsome adequacy, which scarcely required
the accompaniment of his faint contemplative hum.

Charlotte throned, as who should say, between her hostess and her host,
the whole scene having crystallised, as soon as she took her place, to
the right quiet lustre; the harmony was not less sustained for being
superficial, and the only approach to a break in it was while Amerigo
remained standing long enough for his father-in-law, vaguely wondering,
to appeal to him, invite or address him, and then, in default of any
such word, selected for presentation to the other visitor a plate of
petits fours. Maggie watched her husband--if it now could