Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/229

THE PRINCE was by this time conscious of addressing many remarks, that it was absolutely, when she came to think, the first thing Amerigo had ever asked of her. "She doesn't count of course his having asked of her to marry him"—this was Mr. Verver's indulgent criticism; but he found Charlotte, equally touched by the ingenuous Maggie, in easy agreement with him over the question. If the Prince had asked something of his wife every day in the year this would be still no reason why the poor dear man shouldn't, in a beautiful fit of homesickness, revisit without reproach his native country.

What his father-in-law frankly counselled was that the reasonable, the really too reasonable pair should, while they were about it, take three or four weeks of Paris as well—Paris being always for Mr. Verver in any stress of sympathy a suggestion that rose of itself to the lips. If they would only do that, on their way back or however they preferred it, Charlotte and he would go over to join them there for a small look—though even then, assuredly, as he had it at heart to add, not in the least because they should have found themselves bored at being left together. The fate of this last proposal indeed was that it reeled for the moment under an assault of destructive analysis from Maggie, who—having, as she granted, to choose between being an unnatural daughter or an unnatural mother, and "electing" for the former—wanted to know what would become of the Principino if the house were cleared of every one but the servants. Her question had fairly resounded, but it had afterwards, like many of her questions, dropped still more 199