eptibly the special shade of consecration conferred by unanimities
of silence. The effect, she might have considered, had been almost
awkward--the promptitude of her separation from Charlotte, as if
they had been discovered in some absurdity, on her becoming aware
of spectators. The spectators, on the other hand--that was the
appearance--mightn't have supposed them, in the existing relation,
addicted to mutual endearments; and yet, hesitating with a fine scruple
between sympathy and hilarity, must have felt that almost any spoken
or laughed comment could be kept from sounding vulgar only by sounding,
beyond any permitted measure, intelligent. They had evidently looked,
the two young wives, like a pair of women "making up" effusively, as
women were supposed to do, especially when approved fools, after
a broil; but taking note of the reconciliation would imply, on
her father's part, on Amerigo's, and on Fanny Assingham's, some
proportionate vision of the grounds of their difference. There had
been something, there had been but too much, in the incident, for each
observer; yet there was nothing any one could have said without
seeming essentially to say: "See, see, the dear things--their quarrel's
blissfully over!" "Our quarrel? What quarrel?" the dear things
themselves would necessarily, in that case, have demanded; and the
wits of the others would thus have been called upon for some agility of
exercise. No one had been equal to the flight of producing, off-hand, a
fictive reason for any estrangement--to take, that is, the place of the
true, which had so long, for the finer sensibility, pervaded the air;
and every one, accordingly, not to be inconveniently challenged, was
pretending, immediately after, to have remarked nothing that any one
else hadn't.

Maggie's own measure had remained, all the same, full of the reflection
caught from the total inference; which had acted, virtually, by enabling
every one present--and oh Charlotte not least!--to draw a long breath.
The message of the little scene had been different for each, but it
had been this, markedly, all round, that it reinforced--reinforced even
immensely--the general effort, carried on from week to week and of late
distinctly more successful, to look and talk and move as if nothing in
life were the matter. Supremely, however, while this glass was held
up to her, had Maggie's sense turned to the quality of the success
constituted, on the spot, for Charlotte. Most of