ty at Matcham breaking up and
multitudinously dispersing, he should be able to meet the question of
the social side of the process of repatriation with due presence of
mind. It was impossible, for reasons, that he should travel to town with
the Assinghams; it was impossible, for the same reasons, that he
should travel to town save in the conditions that he had for the
last twenty-four hours been privately, and it might have been said
profoundly, thinking out. The result of his thought was already precious
to him, and this put at his service, he sufficiently believed, the right
tone for disposing of his elder friend's suggestion, an assumption in
fact equally full and mild, that he and Charlotte would conveniently
take the same train and occupy the same compartment as the Colonel and
herself. The extension of the idea to Mrs. Verver had been, precisely,
a part of Mrs. Assingham's mildness, and nothing could better have
characterised her sense for social shades than her easy perception that
the gentleman from Portland Place and the lady from Eaton Square might
now confess, quite without indiscretion, to simultaneity of movement.
She had made, for the four days, no direct appeal to the latter
personage, but the Prince was accidental witness of her taking a fresh
start at the moment the company were about to scatter for the last night
of their stay. There had been, at this climax, the usual preparatory
talk about hours and combinations, in the midst of which poor
Fanny gently approached Mrs. Verver. She said "You and the Prince,
love,"--quite, apparently, without blinking; she took for granted their
public withdrawal together; she remarked that she and Bob were alike
ready, in the interest of sociability, to take any train that would
make them all one party. "I feel really as if, all this time, I had seen
nothing of you"--that gave an added grace to the candour of the dear
thing's approach. But just then it was, on the other hand, that the
young man found himself borrow most effectively the secret of the right
tone for doing as he preferred. His preference had, during the evening,
not failed of occasion to press him with mute insistences; practically
without words, without any sort of straight telegraphy, it had arrived
at a felt identity with Charlotte's own. She spoke all for their friend
while she answered their friend's question, but she none the less
signalled to him as definitely as if she had fluttered a white
handker