uld feel the effect as prodigious even
while sticking to her policy of giving the pair no look. There were thus
some five wonderful minutes during which they loomed, to her sightless
eyes, on either side of her, larger than they had ever loomed before,
larger than life, larger than thought, larger than any danger or any
safety. There was thus a space of time, in fine, fairly vertiginous for
her, during which she took no more account of them than if they were not
in the room.

She had never, never treated them in any such way--not even just now,
when she had plied her art upon the Matcham band; her present manner was
an intenser exclusion, and the air was charged with their silence while
she talked with her other companion as if she had nothing but him to
consider. He had given her the note amazingly, by his allusion to the
pleasantness--that of such an occasion as his successful dinner--which
might figure as their bribe for renouncing; so that it was all as if
they were speaking selfishly, counting on a repetition of just such
extensions of experience. Maggie achieved accordingly an act of
unprecedented energy, threw herself into her father's presence as by the
absolute consistency with which she held his eyes; saying to herself,
at the same time that she smiled and talked and inaugurated her system,
"What does he mean by it? That's the question--what does he mean?"
but studying again all the signs in him that recent anxiety had made
familiar and counting the stricken minutes on the part of the others. It
was in their silence that the others loomed, as she felt; she had had
no measure, she afterwards knew, of this duration, but it drew out
and out--really to what would have been called in simpler conditions
awkwardness--as if she herself were stretching the cord. Ten minutes
later, however, in the homeward carriage, to which her husband, cutting
delay short, had proceeded at the first announcement, ten minutes later
she was to stretch it almost to breaking. The Prince had permitted her
to linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually
lingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all
responsive, took for a sign of his impatience to modify for her the
odd effect of his not having, and of Charlotte's not having, instantly
acclaimed the issue of the question debated, or more exactly, settled,
before them. He had had time to become aware of this possible impression
in her, and his virtually