gh his rather shielding
glasses, in easy emphasis of this--as to be able to hint that he
required the relief of absence. Therefore, unless it was for the Prince
himself--!

"Oh, I don't think it would have been for Amerigo himself. Amerigo and
I," Maggie had said, "perfectly rub on together."

"Well then, there we are."

"I see"--and she had again, with sublime blandness, assented. "There we
are."

"Charlotte and I too," her father had gaily proceeded, "perfectly rub on
together." And then he had appeared for a little to be making time. "To
put it only so," he had mildly and happily added--"to put it only so!"
He had spoken as if he might easily put it much better, yet as if the
humour of contented understatement fairly sufficed for the occasion.
He had played then, either all consciously or all unconsciously,
into Charlotte's hands; and the effect of this was to render trebly
oppressive Maggie's conviction of Charlotte's plan. She had done what
she wanted, his wife had--which was also what Amerigo had made her do.
She had kept her test, Maggie's test, from becoming possible, and had
applied instead a test of her own. It was exactly as if she had known
that her stepdaughter would be afraid to be summoned to say, under the
least approach to cross-examination, why any change was desirable; and
it was, for our young woman herself, still more prodigiously, as if
her father had been capable of calculations to match, of judging it
important he shouldn't be brought to demand of her what was the matter
with her. Why otherwise, with such an opportunity, hadn't he demanded
it? Always from calculation--that was why, that was why. He was
terrified of the retort he might have invoked: "What, my dear, if you
come to that, is the matter with YOU?" When, a minute later on, he had
followed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to
conjure away the ghost of the anomalous, at that climax verily she
would have had to be dumb to the question. "There seems a kind of charm,
doesn't there? on our life--and quite as if, just lately, it had got
itself somehow renewed, had waked up refreshed. A kind of wicked selfish
prosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed everything, fixed everything,
down to the last lovely object for the last glass case of the last
corner, left over, of my old show. That's the only take-off, that it has
made us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid--lying like gods together, all
careless of mankind."

"Do