y an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with
the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the next
nearest sympathy.

They had no occasion thus, the conjoined worshippers, to talk of what
the Prince might be or might do for his son--the sum of service, in
his absence, so completely filled itself out. It was not in the least,
moreover, that there was doubt of him, for he was conspicuously addicted
to the manipulation of the child, in the frank Italian way, at such
moments as he judged discreet in respect to other claims: conspicuously,
indeed, that is, for Maggie, who had more occasion, on the whole, to
speak to her husband of the extravagance of her father than to speak
to her father of the extravagance of her husband. Adam Verver had,
all round, in this connection, his own serenity. He was sure of
his son-in-law's auxiliary admiration--admiration, he meant, of his
grand-son; since, to begin with, what else had been at work but the
instinct--or it might fairly have been the tradition--of the latter's
making the child so solidly beautiful as to HAVE to be admired? What
contributed most to harmony in this play of relations, however, was the
way the young man seemed to leave it to be gathered that, tradition
for tradition, the grandpapa's own was not, in any estimate, to go for
nothing. A tradition, or whatever it was, that had flowered prelusively
in the Princess herself--well, Amerigo's very discretions were his way
of taking account of it. His discriminations in respect to his heir
were, in fine, not more angular than any others to be observed in him;
and Mr. Verver received perhaps from no source so distinct an impression
of being for him an odd and important phenomenon as he received from
this impunity of appropriation, these unchallenged nursery hours. It
was as if the grandpapa's special show of the character were but another
side for the observer to study, another item for him to note. It came
back, this latter personage knew, to his own previous perception--that
of the Prince's inability, in any matter in which he was concerned,
to CONCLUDE. The idiosyncrasy, for him, at each stage, had to be
demonstrated--on which, however, he admirably accepted it. This last
was, after all, the point; he really worked, poor young man, for
acceptance, since he worked so constantly for comprehension. And how,
when you came to that, COULD you know that a horse wouldn't shy at
a brass-band, in a country road, becau