ilious,
though charming, though in fact the dearest little creature in the world
and the Princess into the bargain, was distinctly not, would distinctly
never be, and might as well, practically, give it up: whether through
being above it or below it, too much outside of it or too much lost in
it, too unequipped or too indisposed, didn't especially matter. What
sufficed was that the whole thing, call it appetite or call it
patience, the act of representation at large and the daily business of
intercourse, fell in with Charlotte's tested facility and, not much less
visibly, with her accommodating, her generous, view of her domestic use.
She had come, frankly, into the connection, to do and to be what she
could, "no questions asked," and she had taken over, accordingly, as it
stood, and in the finest practical spirit, the burden of a visiting-list
that Maggie, originally, left to herself, and left even more to the
Principino, had suffered to get inordinately out of hand.

She had in a word not only mounted, cheerfully, the London
treadmill--she had handsomely professed herself, for the further comfort
of the three others, sustained in the effort by a "frivolous side," if
that were not too harsh a name for a pleasant constitutional curiosity.
There were possibilities of dulness, ponderosities of practice, arid
social sands, the bad quarters-of-an-hour that turned up like false
pieces in a debased currency, of which she made, on principle, very
nearly as light as if she had not been clever enough to distinguish. The
Prince had, on this score, paid her his compliment soon after her
return from her wedding-tour in America, where, by all accounts, she
had wondrously borne the brunt; facing brightly, at her husband's side,
everything that came up--and what had come, often, was beyond words:
just as, precisely, with her own interest only at stake, she had thrown
up the game during the visit paid before her marriage. The discussion of
the American world, the comparison of notes, impressions and adventures,
had been all at hand, as a ground of meeting for Mrs. Verver and her
husband's son-in-law, from the hour of the reunion of the two couples.
Thus it had been, in short, that Charlotte could, for her friend's
appreciation, so promptly make her point; even using expressions from
which he let her see, at the hour, that he drew amusement of his own.
"What could be more simple than one's going through with everything,"
she had asked,