ed for as vulgar,
prolonged its sharpness to her ear--that of an electric bell under
continued pressure. Stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly,
that the feasibility of Charlotte's "getting at" the man who for so
long had loved her should now be in question? Strangest of all things,
doubtless, this care of Maggie's as to what might make for it or make
against it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague
calculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband,
of some direct sounding of the subject. Would it be too monstrous, her
suddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks:
"Wouldn't it really seem that you're bound in honour to do something for
her, privately, before they go?" Maggie was capable of weighing the
risk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense
little absences, even while conversing, as now, with the person who had
most of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities.
It was true that Mrs. Assingham could at such times somewhat restore
the balance--by not wholly failing to guess her thought. Her thought,
however, just at present, had more than one face--had a series that it
successively presented. These were indeed the possibilities involved in
the adventure of her concerning herself for the quantity of compensation
that Mrs. Verver might still look to. There was always the possibility
that she WAS, after all, sufficiently to get at him--there was in fact
that of her having again and again done so. Against this stood
nothing but Fanny Assingham's apparent belief in her privation--more
mercilessly imposed, or more hopelessly felt, in the actual relation
of the parties; over and beyond everything that, from more than three
months back, of course, had fostered in the Princess a like conviction.
These assumptions might certainly be baseless--inasmuch as there were
hours and hours of Amerigo's time that there was no habit, no pretence
of his accounting for; inasmuch too as Charlotte, inevitably, had had
more than once, to the undisguised knowledge of the pair in Portland
Place, been obliged to come up to Eaton Square, whence so many of her
personal possessions were in course of removal. She didn't come to
Portland Place--didn't even come to ask for luncheon on two separate
occasions when it reached the consciousness of the household there
that she was spending the day in London. Maggie hated, she scorned, to