Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/297

THE PRINCE "She had better in such a case not be known at all."

"But I assure you I never, just now, so much as mentioned her. Do you suppose I asked them," said the young man, still amused, "if they didn't want to see her? You surely don't need to be shown that Charlotte speaks for herself—that she does so above all on such an occasion as this and looking as she does to-night. How, so looking, can she pass unnoticed? How can she not have 'success'? Besides," he added while she watched his face, letting him say what he would, as if but wanting to see how he would say it, "besides, there is always the fact that we're of the same connexion, of—what is your word?—the same 'concern.' We're certainly not, with the relation of our respective sposi, simply formal acquaintances. We're in the same boat"—and the Prince smiled with a candour that added an accent to his emphasis. Fanny Assingham was full of the special sense of his manner: it caused her to turn for a moment's refuge to a corner of her general consciousness in which she could say to herself that she was glad she wasn't in love with such a man. As with Charlotte, just before, she was embarrassed by the difference between what she took in and what she could say, what she felt and what she could show. "It only appears to me of great importance that—now that you all seem more settled here—Charlotte should be known, for any presentation, any further circulation or introduction, as in particular her husband's wife; known in the least possible degree as anything else. I don't know what you mean by the 'same' boat. Charlotte is naturally in Mr. Verver's boat." 267