other. You may call such
a mistake as that by what ever name you please; it at any rate means,
all round, their case. It illustrates the misfortune," said Mrs.
Assingham gravely, "of being too, too charming."

This was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel again
did his best. "Yes, but to whom?--doesn't it rather depend on that? To
whom have the Prince and Charlotte then been too charming?"

"To each other, in the first place--obviously. And then both of them
together to Maggie."

"To Maggie?" he wonderingly echoed.

"To Maggie." She was now crystalline. "By having accepted, from the
first, so guilelessly--yes, so guilelessly, themselves--her guileless
idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life."

"Then isn't one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn't
quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn't
drink or kick up rows--isn't one supposed to keep one's aged parent in
one's life?"

"Certainly--when there aren't particular reasons against it. That there
may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what is
before us. In the first place Mr. Verver isn't aged."

The Colonel just hung fire--but it came. "Then why the deuce does
he--oh, poor dear man!--behave as if he were?"

She took a moment to meet it. "How do you know how he behaves?"

"Well, my own love, we see how Charlotte does!" Again, at this, she
faltered; but again she rose. "Ah, isn't my whole point that he's
charming to her?"

"Doesn't it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?"

She faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of
dignity she brushed it away. "It's Mr. Verver who's really young--it's
Charlotte who's really old. And what I was saying," she added, "isn't
affected!"

"You were saying"--he did her the justice--"that they're all guileless."

"That they were. Guileless, all, at first--quite extraordinarily. It's
what I mean by their failure to see that the more they took for granted
they could work together the more they were really working apart. For I
repeat," Fanny went on, "that I really believe Charlotte and the Prince
honestly to have made up their minds, originally, that their very esteem
for Mr. Verver--which was serious, as well it might be!--would save
them."

"I see." The Colonel inclined himself. "And save HIM."

"It comes to the same thing!"

"Then save Maggie."

"That comes," said Mrs. Assingham, "to