the funny
betrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played
the game so happily. To this end, on her way home, she had loitered
everywhere; quite too deludedly among the old books and the old
prints, which had yielded nothing to her purpose, but with a strange
inconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian,
a queer little foreign man, who had shown her a number of things,
shown her finally something that, struck with it as rather a rarity and
thinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively
do, she had bought--bought really, when it came to that, for a price.
"It appears now it won't do at all," said Maggie, "something has
happened since that puts it quite out of the question. I had only my day
of satisfaction in it, but I feel, at the same time, as I keep it here
before me, that I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

She had talked, from the first of her friend's entrances coherently
enough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm; but she held
her breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and to prove she
didn't pant--all of which marked for Fanny the depth of her commotion:
her reference to her thought about her father, about her chance to
pick up something that might divert him, her mention, in fine, of his
fortitude under presents, having meanwhile, naturally, it should be
said, much less an amplitude of insistence on the speaker's lips than a
power to produce on the part of the listener herself the prompt
response and full comprehension of memory and sympathy, of old amused
observation. The picture was filled out by the latter's fond fancy. But
Maggie was at any rate under arms; she knew what she was doing and
had already her plan--a plan for making, for allowing, as yet, "no
difference"; in accordance with which she would still dine out, and
not with red eyes, nor convulsed features, nor neglected items of
appearance, nor anything that would raise a question. Yet there was some
knowledge that, exactly to this support of her not breaking down, she
desired, she required, possession of; and, with the sinister rise
and fall of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, it played before Mrs.
Assingham's eyes that she herself should have, at whatever risk or
whatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need. All our
friend's instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the
ground would bear; she would take no step nearer