Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/359

THE PRINCE (and he could have scarce said why) a sharpness of importance: she had never lied to him before—if only because it had never come up for her, properly, logically, morally, that she must. As soon as she had put to him the question of what he would do—by which she meant of what Charlotte would also do—in that event of Maggie's and Mr. Verver's not embracing the proposal they had appeared for a day or two resignedly to entertain; as soon as she had betrayed her curiosity as to the line the other pair, so left to themselves, might take, a desire to avoid the appearance of at all too directly prying had become marked in her. Betrayed by the solicitude of which she had already three weeks before given him a view, she had been obliged on a second thought to name intelligibly a reason for her appeal; while the Prince, on his side, had had, not without mercy, his glimpse of her momentarily groping for one and yet remaining unprovided. Not without mercy because, absolutely, he had on the spot, in his friendliness, invented one for her use, presenting it to her with a look no more significant than if he had picked up, to hand back to her, a dropped flower. "You ask if I'm likely also to back out then, because it may make a difference in what you and the Colonel decide?"—he had gone as far as that for her, fairly inviting her to assent, though not having had his impression, from any indication offered him by Charlotte, that the Assinghams were really in question for the large Matcham party. The wonderful thing after this was that the active couple had in the interval managed to inscribe themselves on the golden roll; an exertion of a sort that, to do 329