e
guidance he could really often give a cabman; it was a whim of his own,
a part of his Anglomania, and congruous with that feature, which had,
after all, so much more surface than depth. When his companion, with the
memory of other visits and other rambles, spoke of places he hadn't
seen and things he didn't know, he actually felt again--as half the
effect--just a shade humiliated. He might even have felt a trifle
annoyed--if it hadn't been, on this spot, for his being, even more,
interested. It was a fresh light on Charlotte and on her curious
world-quality, of which, in Rome, he had had his due sense, but
which clearly would show larger on the big London stage. Rome was, in
comparison, a village, a family-party, a little old-world spinnet for
the fingers of one hand. By the time they reached the Marble Arch it was
almost as if she were showing him a new side, and that, in fact, gave
amusement a new and a firmer basis. The right tone would be easy for
putting himself in her hands. Should they disagree a little--frankly
and fairly--about directions and chances, values and authenticities, the
situation would be quite gloriously saved. They were none the less,
as happened, much of one mind on the article of their keeping clear of
resorts with which Maggie would be acquainted. Charlotte recalled it
as a matter of course, named it in time as a condition--they would keep
away from any place to which he had already been with Maggie.

This made indeed a scant difference, for though he had during the last
month done few things so much as attend his future wife on her making
of purchases, the antiquarii, as he called them with Charlotte, had not
been the great affair. Except in Bond Street, really, Maggie had had
no use for them: her situation indeed, in connection with that order of
traffic, was full of consequences produced by her father's. Mr. Verver,
one of the great collectors of the world, hadn't left his daughter to
prowl for herself; he had little to do with shops, and was mostly, as
a purchaser, approached privately and from afar. Great people, all over
Europe, sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high,
and more of them than would ever be known, solemnly sworn as everyone
was, in such cases, to discretion, high personages made up to him as
the one man on the short authentic list likely to give the price. It had
therefore been easy to settle, as they walked, that the tracks of
the Ververs, daughter's