Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/213

THE PRINCE 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'd have liked for instance—I'm sure she'd 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 hasn't been able."

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

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

"But she hasn't 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 shrewdly 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 any one can see it, and see also that it's rather strange; and yet no one—no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive—would like, 183