immediate two or three hours. He paused
on corners, at crossings; there kept rising for him, in waves, that
consciousness, sharp as to its source while vague as to its end, which I
began by speaking of--the consciousness of an appeal to do something
or other, before it was too late, for himself. By any friend to whom
he might have mentioned it the appeal could have been turned to frank
derision. For what, for whom indeed but himself and the high advantages
attached, was he about to marry an extraordinarily charming girl, whose
"prospects," of the solid sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability?
He wasn't to do it, assuredly, all for her. The Prince, as happened,
however, was so free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose
before him after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had
often found ironic. He withheld the tribute of attention from passing
faces only to let his impulse accumulate. Youth and beauty made him
scarcely turn, but the image of Mrs. Assingham made him presently stop a
hansom. HER youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past,
but to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be "doing" what
he still had time for, would put something of a reason into his
restlessness and thereby probably soothe it. To recognise the propriety
of this particular pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long Cadogan
Place--was already in fact to work it off a little. A perception of the
propriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as he
happened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was obviously all
that had been the matter with him. It was true that he had mistaken the
mood of the moment, misread it rather, superficially, as an impulse
to look the other way--the other way from where his pledges had
accumulated. Mrs. Assingham, precisely, represented, embodied his
pledges--was, in her pleasant person, the force that had set them
successively in motion. She had MADE his marriage, quite as truly as his
papal ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she
had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic. He had
neither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing--scarce
even till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to think of it
vulgarly--must have all had to come from the Ververs.
Yet he was far, he could still remind himself, from supposing that she
had been grossly remunerated. He was wholly sure she hadn't; for if
th
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