are of his
relation to Maggie, as he took care, and apparently always would, of
everything else. He relieved him of all anxiety about his married
life in the same manner in which he relieved him on the score of his
bank-account. And as he performed the latter office by communicating
with the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his
good understanding with his daughter. This understanding had,
wonderfully--THAT was in high evidence--the same deep intimacy as the
commercial, the financial association founded, far down, on a community
of interest. And the correspondence, for the Prince, carried itself
out in identities of character the vision of which, fortunately, rather
tended to amuse than to--as might have happened--irritate him. Those
people--and his free synthesis lumped together capitalists and
bankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors, American
fathers-in-law, American fathers, little American daughters, little
American wives--those people were of the same large lucky group, as one
might say; they were all, at least, of the same general species and had
the same general instincts; they hung together, they passed each other
the word, they spoke each other's language, they did each other "turns."
In this last connection it of course came up for our young man at a
given moment that Maggie's relation with HIM was also, on the perceived
basis, taken care of. Which was in fact the real upshot of the matter.
It was a "funny" situation--that is it was funny just as it stood. Their
married life was in question, but the solution was, not less strikingly,
before them. It was all right for himself, because Mr. Verver worked
it so for Maggie's comfort; and it was all right for Maggie, because he
worked it so for her husband's.

The fact that time, however, was not, as we have said, wholly on the
Prince's side might have shown for particularly true one dark day on
which, by an odd but not unprecedented chance, the reflections just
noted offered themselves as his main recreation. They alone, it
appeared, had been appointed to fill the hours for him, and even to fill
the great square house in Portland Place, where the scale of one of the
smaller saloons fitted them but loosely. He had looked into this room
on the chance that he might find the Princess at tea; but though the
fireside service of the repast was shiningly present the mistress of the
table was not, and he had waited for her, if waiting it could