ight moments, that his course wouldn't then be difficult,
inasmuch as, so simply constituted as he was on all the precious
question--and why should he be ashamed of it?--he knew but one way with
the fair. They had to be fair--and he was fastidious and particular, his
standard was high; but when once this was the case what relation with
them was conceivable, what relation was decent, rudimentary, properly
human, but that of a plain interest in the fairness? His interest, she
always answered, happened not to be "plain," and plainness, all round,
had little to do with the matter, which was marked, on the contrary, by
the richest variety of colour; but the working basis, at all events, had
been settled--the Miss Maddocks of life been assured of their importance
for him. How conveniently assured Maggie--to take him too into the
joke--had more than once gone so far as to mention to her father; since
it fell in easily with the tenderness of her disposition to remember she
might occasionally make him happy by an intimate confidence. This
was one of her rules-full as she was of little rules, considerations,
provisions. There were things she of course couldn't tell him, in so
many words, about Amerigo and herself, and about their happiness and
their union and their deepest depths--and there were other things she
needn't; but there were also those that were both true and amusing,
both communicable and real, and of these, with her so conscious, so
delicately cultivated scheme of conduct as a daughter, she could make
her profit at will. A pleasant hush, for that matter, had fallen on
most of the elements while she lingered apart with her companion; it
involved, this serenity, innumerable complete assumptions: since so
ordered and so splendid a rest, all the tokens, spreading about them, of
confidence solidly supported, might have suggested for persons of poorer
pitch the very insolence of facility. Still, they weren't insolent--THEY
weren't, our pair could reflect; they were only blissful and grateful
and personally modest, not ashamed of knowing, with competence, when
great things were great, when good things were good, and when safe
things were safe, and not, therefore, placed below their fortune by
timidity which would have been as bad as being below it by impudence.
Worthy of it as they were, and as each appears, under our last possible
analysis, to have wished to make the other feel that they were, what
they most finally exhaled