eatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of
her, or--as she now put it--of their position. When the pair could
do nothing else, in Cadogan Place, they could still talk of marvellous
little Maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having
to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight
discussion at which we have been present was so far from having
exhausted. It came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had
planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner
to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense
of fascination. Mrs. Assingham declared at such moments that in the
interest of this admirable young thing--to whom, she also declared, she
had quite "come over"--she was ready to pass with all the world else,
even with the Prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of
her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar,
indelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an
abandoned old age. The Colonel's confessed attention had been enlisted,
we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any
guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew,
was not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had
let herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened,
he couldn't keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost
intelligently, on the Princess. If he was in love with HER now, however,
so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they
would have to do for her. Mrs. Assingham had come back to that, whenever
he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment--since Maggie's
little march WAS positively beguiling--let him lose sight of the grim
necessity awaiting them. "We shall have, as I've again and again told
you, to lie for her--to lie till we're black in the face."

"To lie 'for' her?" The Colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague
vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from
lucidity.

"To lie TO her, up and down, and in and out--it comes to the same thing.
It will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the Prince
about one's belief in HIM; to Charlotte about one's belief in HER; to
Mr. Verver, dear sweet man, about one's belief in everyone. So we've
work cut out--with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we LIKE to
be there for such a purp