ing to see in Charlotte," said the
Princess--and speaking now as with high and free expectation--"more than
I've ever seen."

"Then I'll try to do so too. She WAS"--it came back to Mr. Verver
more--"the one of your friends I thought the best for you."

His companion, however, was so launched in her permitted liberty of
appreciation that she for the moment scarce heard him. She was lost
in the case she made out, the vision of the different ways in which
Charlotte had distinguished herself.

"She would have liked for instance--I'm sure she would have liked
extremely--to marry; and nothing in general is more ridiculous, even
when it has been pathetic, than a woman who has tried and has not been
able."

It had all Mr. Verver's attention. "She has 'tried'--?"

"She has seen cases where she would have liked to."

"But she has not been able?"

"Well, there are more cases, in Europe, in which it doesn't come to
girls who are poor than in which it does come to them. Especially," said
Maggie with her continued competence, "when they're Americans."

Well, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides.
"Unless you mean," he suggested, "that when the girls are American there
are more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor."

She looked at him good-humouredly. "That may be--but I'm not going to be
smothered in MY case. It ought to make me--if I were in danger of being
a fool--all the nicer to people like Charlotte. It's not hard for ME,"
she practically explained, "not to be ridiculous--unless in a very
different way. I might easily be ridiculous, I suppose, by behaving as
if I thought I had done a great thing. Charlotte, at any rate, has done
nothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it's rather strange;
and yet no one--no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would
like, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite
RIGHT. That's what it is to have something about you that carries things
off."

Mr. Verver's silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused
her story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps
even sharper. "And is it also what you mean by Charlotte's being
'great'?"

"Well," said Maggie, "it's one of her ways. But she has many."

Again for a little her father considered. "And who is it she has tried
to marry?"

Maggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect;
but she after a minute either ren