Mr. Verver's persuasion. But here, when they
had, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up
the stairs, with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing
her: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present
therefore, as Charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together
a little party at home. But it was all right--so Charlotte also put it:
there was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched
felicities, little parties, long talks, with "I'll come to you
to-morrow," and "No, I'll come to you," make-believe renewals of their
old life. They were fairly, at times, the dear things, like children
playing at paying visits, playing at "Mr. Thompson" and "Mrs. Fane,"
each hoping that the other would really stay to tea. Charlotte was sure
she should find Maggie there on getting home--a remark in which Mrs.
Verver's immediate response to her friend's inquiry had culminated. She
had thus, on the spot, the sense of having given her plenty to think
about, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had
expected. She had plenty to think about herself, and there was already
something in Fanny that made it seem still more.

"You say your husband's ill? He felt too ill to come?"

"No, my dear--I think not. If he had been too ill I wouldn't have left
him."

"And yet Maggie was worried?" Mrs. Assingham asked.

"She worries, you know, easily. She's afraid of influenza--of which
he has had, at different times, though never with the least gravity,
several attacks."

"But you're not afraid of it?"

Charlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her
that really to have her case "out," as they said, with the person in
the world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred
themselves, would help her, on the whole, more than hinder; and under
that feeling all her opportunity, with nothing kept back; with a thing
or two perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. Besides,
didn't Fanny at bottom half expect, absolutely at the bottom half WANT,
things?--so that she would be disappointed if, after what must just
have occurred for her, she didn't get something to put between the teeth
of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which
our young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have "gone
too far" in her irrepressible interest in other lives. What had
just happened--it pieced itself together