had capered, before the
footlights of an empty theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box.

Her best comprehension of Amerigo's success in not committing himself
was in her recall, meanwhile, of the inquiries he had made of her on
their only return to the subject, and which he had in fact explicitly
provoked their return in order to make. He had had it over with her
again, the so distinctly remarkable incident of her interview at home
with the little Bloomsbury shopman. This anecdote, for him, had, not
altogether surprisingly, required some straighter telling, and the
Prince's attitude in presence of it had represented once more his
nearest approach to a cross-examination. The difficulty in respect to
the little man had been for the question of his motive--his motive in
writing, first, in the spirit of retraction, to a lady with whom he had
made a most advantageous bargain, and in then coming to see her so that
his apology should be personal. Maggie had felt her explanation weak;
but there were the facts, and she could give no other. Left alone, after
the transaction, with the knowledge that his visitor designed the object
bought of him as a birthday-gift to her father--for Maggie confessed
freely to having chattered to him almost as to a friend--the vendor of
the golden bowl had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any
class, and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel. He
hadn't liked what he had done, and what he had above all made such a
"good thing" of having done; at the thought of his purchaser's good
faith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquestion
which would make it, verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing
of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he
had known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more
remarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having
troubled him in other connexions. She had recognised the oddity of
her adventure and left it to show for what it was. She had not been
unconscious, on the other hand, that if it hadn't touched Amerigo so
nearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflection.
He had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and
a howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing: "Oh, most
certainly, he TOLD me his reason was because he 'liked' me"--though she
remained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked
most