te, as he had been directed by all the
terms of the intercourse between Portland Place and Eaton Square, once
steeped, at Matcham, in the enjoyment of a splendid hospitality, he
found everything, for his interpretation, for his convenience, fall
easily enough into place; and all the more that Mrs. Verver was at hand
to exchange ideas and impressions with. The great house was full of
people, of possible new combinations, of the quickened play of possible
propinquity, and no appearance, of course, was less to be cultivated
than that of his having sought an opportunity to foregather with his
friend at a safe distance from their respective sposi. There was a happy
boldness, at the best, in their mingling thus, each unaccompanied,
in the same sustained sociability--just exactly a touch of that
eccentricity of associated freedom which sat so lightly on the
imagination of the relatives left behind. They were exposed as much
as one would to its being pronounced funny that they should, at such a
rate, go about together--though, on the other hand, this consideration
drew relief from the fact that, in their high conditions and with
the easy tradition, the almost inspiring allowances, of the house in
question, no individual line, however freely marked, was pronounced
anything more than funny. Both our friends felt afresh, as they had felt
before, the convenience of a society so placed that it had only its own
sensibility to consider--looking as it did well over the heads of all
lower growths; and that moreover treated its own sensibility quite as
the easiest, friendliest, most informal and domesticated party to the
general alliance. What anyone "thought" of anyone else--above all of
anyone else with anyone else--was a matter incurring in these lulls so
little awkward formulation that hovering judgment, the spirit with the
scales, might perfectly have been imaged there as some rather snubbed
and subdued, but quite trained and tactful poor relation, of equal, of
the properest, lineage, only of aspect a little dingy, doubtless from
too limited a change of dress, for whose tacit and abstemious presence,
never betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine, a room in the attic and
a plate at the side-table were decently usual. It was amusing, in such
lightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to
speak for the Princess, so unfortunately unable, again, to leave home;
and that Mrs. Verver should as regularly figure as an