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By Root 7223 0

as she could say to herself all the rest of the day, that was what they did while they continued to sit there in their penny chairs, that was what they had done as much as they would now ever, ever, have out anything. The measure of this at least had been given, that each would fight to the last for the protection, for the perversion, of any real anxiety. She had confessed instantly, with her humbugging grin, not flinching by a hair, meeting his eyes as mildly as he met hers, she had confessed to her fancy that they might both, he and his son-in-law, have welcomed such an escapade, since they had both been so long so furiously domestic. She had almost cocked her hat under the inspiration of this opportunity to hint how a couple of spirited young men, reacting from confinement and sallying forth arm-in-arm, might encounter the agreeable in forms that would strike them for the time at least as novel. She had felt for fifty seconds, with her eyes all so sweetly and falsely in her companion’s, horribly vulgar; yet without minding it either – such luck should she have if to be nothing worse than horribly vulgar would see her through. ‘And I thought Amerigo might like it better,’ she had said, ‘than wandering off alone.’

‘Do you mean that he won’t go unless I take him?’

She had considered here, and never in her life had she considered so promptly and so intently. If she really put it that way her husband, challenged, might belie the statement; so that what would that do but make her father wonder, make him perhaps ask straight out, why she was exerting pressure? She couldn’t of course afford to be suspected for an instant of exerting pressure; which was why she was obliged only to make answer: ‘Wouldn’t that be just what you must have out with him?’

‘Decidedly – if he makes me the proposal. But he hasn’t made it yet.’

Oh once more how she was to feel she had smirked! ‘Perhaps he’s too shy!’

‘Because you’re so sure he so really wants my company?’

‘I think he has thought you might like it.’

‘Well, I should –!’ But with this he looked away from her, and she held her breath to hear him either ask if she wished him to address the question to Amerigo straight, or enquire if she should be greatly disappointed by his letting it drop. What had ‘settled’ her, as she was privately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and had thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw out her reason. To attenuate on the other hand this appearance, and quite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made so musingly by his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason – had positively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged Charlotte not to have approved. He had taken everything on himself – that was what had settled her. She had had to wait very little more to feel with this how much he was taking. The point he made was his lack of any eagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and his wife. He wasn’t so unhappy with her – far from it, and Maggie was to hold that he had grinned back, paternally, through 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.’ With which 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