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By Root 7061 0

was for a while after this divided between the sense of it as a fact somehow to reckon with and deal with, which was a perception that made in its degree for the prudence, the pusillanimity of postponement, of avoidance – and a quite other feeling, an impatience that presently ended by prevailing, an eagerness, really, to be suspected, sounded, veritably arraigned, if only that she might have the bad moment over, if only that she might prove to herself, let alone to Mrs Assingham also, that she could convert it to good; if only in short to be ‘square’, as they said, with her question. For herself indeed particularly it wasn’t a question; but something in her bones told her that Fanny would treat it as one, and there was truly nothing that from this friend she wasn’t bound in decency to take. She might hand things back with every tender precaution, with acknowledgements and assurances, but she owed it to them in any case, and owed it to all Mrs Assingham had done for her, not to get rid of them without having well unwrapped them and turned them over.

To-night, as happened – and she recognised it more and more, with the ebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her – to-night exactly she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she might at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process with the right temper and tone. She said after a little to the Prince ‘Stay with me; let no one take you; for I want her, yes, I do want her, to see us together, and the sooner the better’ – said it to keep her hand on him through constant diversions, and made him in fact by saying it profess a momentary vagueness. She had to explain to him that it was Fanny Assingham she wanted to see – who clearly would be there, since the Colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned himself for her fate; and she had further, after Amerigo had met her with ‘See us together? why in the world? hasn’t she often seen us together?’ to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened didn’t now matter and that she at any rate well knew for the occasion what she was about. ‘You’re strange, cara mia,’ he consentingly enough dropped; but, for whatever strangeness, he kept her, as they circulated, from being waylaid, even remarking to her afresh, as he had often done before, on the help rendered in such situations by the intrinsic oddity of the London ‘squash’, a thing of vague slow senseless eddies, revolving as in fear of some menace of conversation suspended over it, the drop of which, with a consequent refreshing splash or spatter, yet never took place. Of course she was strange; this, as they went, Charlotte knew for herself: how could she be anything else when the situation holding her, and holding him, for that matter, just as much, had so the stamp of it? She had already accepted her consciousness, as we have already noted, that a crisis for them all was in the air; and when such hours weren’t depressing, which was the form indeed in which she had mainly known them, they were apparently in a high degree exhilarating.

Later on, in a corner to which, at sight of an empty sofa, Mrs Assingham had, after a single attentive arrest, led her with a certain earnestness, this vision of the critical was much more sharpened than blurred. Fanny had taken it from her: yes, she was there with Amerigo alone, Maggie having come with them and then, within ten minutes, changed her mind, repented and departed. ‘So you’re staying on together without her?’ the elder woman had asked; and it was Charlotte’s answer to this that had determined for them, quite indeed according to the latter’s expectation, the need of some seclusion and her companion’s pounce at the sofa. They were staying on together alone, and – oh distinctly! – it was alone that Maggie had driven away, her father, as usual, not having managed to come. ‘ “As usual” –?’ Mrs Assingham had seemed to wonder; Mr Verver’s reluctances not having, she in fact quite intimated, hitherto struck her. Charlotte responded at any rate that his indisposition to