tively
something to do, and that she mustn't be weak for this, must much rather
be strong. For many hours after, none the less, she remained weak--if
weak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success,
since her agitated overture had been, after all, so unmistakably met.

She recovered soon enough on the whole, the sense that this left her
Charlotte always to deal with--Charlotte who, at any rate, however
SHE might meet overtures, must meet them, at the worst, more or less
differently. Of that inevitability, of such other ranges of response as
were open to Charlotte, Maggie took the measure in approaching her, on
the morrow of her return from Matcham, with the same show of desire to
hear all her story. She wanted the whole picture from her, as she had
wanted it from her companion, and, promptly, in Eaton Square, whither,
without the Prince, she repaired, almost ostentatiously, for the
purpose, this purpose only, she brought her repeatedly back to the
subject, both in her husband's presence and during several scraps of
independent colloquy. Before her father, instinctively, Maggie took the
ground that his wish for interesting echoes would be not less than her
own--allowing, that is, for everything his wife would already have had
to tell him, for such passages, between them, as might have occurred
since the evening before. Joining them after luncheon, reaching them, in
her desire to proceed with the application of her idea, before they
had quitted the breakfast-room, the scene of their mid-day meal, she
referred, in her parent's presence, to what she might have lost by
delay, and expressed the hope that there would be an anecdote or two
left for her to pick up. Charlotte was dressed to go out, and her
husband, it appeared, rather positively prepared not to; he had left
the table, but was seated near the fire with two or three of the morning
papers and the residuum of the second and third posts on a stand beside
him--more even than the usual extravagance, as Maggie's glance made
out, of circulars, catalogues, advertisements, announcements of sales,
foreign envelopes and foreign handwritings that were as unmistakable as
foreign clothes. Charlotte, at the window, looking into the side-street
that abutted on the Square, might have been watching for their visitor's
advent before withdrawing; and in the light, strange and coloured, like
that of a painted picture, which fixed the impression for her, objects
too