o
SEE our happiness."

She wondered again--and this time also, for him, as publicly as
possible. "So much as that?"

"Do you think it's too much?"

She continued to think plainly. "They weren't to have started for
another week."

"Well, what then? Isn't our situation worth the little sacrifice? We'll
go back to Rome as soon as you like WITH them."

This seemed to hold her--as he had previously seen her held, just a
trifle inscrutably, by his allusions to what they would do together on a
certain contingency. "Worth it, the little sacrifice, for whom? For us,
naturally--yes," she said. "We want to see them--for our reasons. That
is," she rather dimly smiled, "YOU do."

"And you do, my dear, too!" he bravely declared. "Yes then--I do too,"
she after an instant ungrudging enough acknowledged. "For us, however,
something depends on it."

"Rather! But does nothing depend on it for them?"

"What CAN--from the moment that, as appears, they don't want to nip
us in the bud? I can imagine their rushing up to prevent us. But an
enthusiasm for us that can wait so very little--such intense eagerness,
I confess," she went on, "more than a little puzzles me. You may think
me," she also added, "ungracious and suspicious, but the Prince can't
at all want to come back so soon. He wanted quite too intensely to get
away."

Mr. Verver considered. "Well, hasn't he been away?"

"Yes, just long enough to see how he likes it. Besides," said Charlotte,
"he may not be able to join in the rosy view of our case that you impute
to her. It can't in the least have appeared to him hitherto a matter of
course that you should give his wife a bouncing stepmother."

Adam Verver, at this, looked grave. "I'm afraid then he'll just have
to accept from us whatever his wife accepts; and accept it--if he can
imagine no better reason--just because she does. That," he declared,
"will have to do for him."

His tone made her for a moment meet his face; after which, "Let me," she
abruptly said, "see it again"--taking from him the folded leaf that she
had given back and he had kept in his hand. "Isn't the whole thing,"
she asked when she had read it over, "perhaps but a way like another for
their gaining time?"

He again stood staring; but the next minute, with that upward spring of
his shoulders and that downward pressure of his pockets which she had
already, more than once, at disconcerted moments, determined in him, he
turned sharply away and wande