considering, in
especial, his fuller resources in that line--while he worked out--to the
last lucidity the principle on which he forbore either to seek Fanny out
in Cadogan Place or to perpetrate the error of too marked an assiduity
in Eaton Square. This error would be his not availing himself to the
utmost of the convenience of any artless theory of his constitution, or
of Charlotte's, that might prevail there. That artless theories could
and did prevail was a fact he had ended by accepting, under copious
evidence, as definite and ultimate; and it consorted with common
prudence, with the simplest economy of life, not to be wasteful of any
odd gleaning. To haunt Eaton Square, in fine, would be to show that
he had not, like his brilliant associate, a sufficiency of work in the
world. It was just his having that sufficiency, it was just their having
it together, that, so strangely and so blessedly, made, as they put it
to each other, everything possible. What further propped up the case,
moreover, was that the "world," by still another beautiful perversity of
their chance, included Portland Place without including to anything like
the same extent Eaton Square. The latter residence, at the same time, it
must promptly be added, did, on occasion, wake up to opportunity and,
as giving itself a frolic shake, send out a score of invitations--one
of which fitful flights, precisely, had, before Easter, the effect of
disturbing a little our young man's measure of his margin. Maggie, with
a proper spirit, held that her father ought from time to time to give a
really considered dinner, and Mr. Verver, who had as little idea as ever
of not meeting expectation, was of the harmonious opinion that his wife
ought. Charlotte's own judgment was, always, that they were ideally
free--the proof of which would always be, she maintained, that everyone
they feared they might most have alienated by neglect would arrive,
wreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal. Wreathed
in smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck
Amerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked,
in the great London bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own,
an investing amenity and humanity. Everybody came, everybody rushed;
but all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere
multitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot
of the fine staircase, with the overcoats and sh