Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/423

THE PRINCE having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly—yes, so guilelessly themselves—her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life."

"Then isn't one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn't quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn't drink or kick up rows—isn't one supposed to keep one's aged parent in one's life?"

"Certainly—when there aren't particular reasons against it. That there may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what's before us. In the first place Mr. Verver isn't aged."

The Colonel just hung fire—but it came. "Then why the deuce does he—oh poor dear man!—behave as if he were?"

She took a moment to meet it. "How do you know how he behaves?"

"Well, my own love, we see how Charlotte does!"

Again, at this, she faltered; but again she rose. "Ah isn't my whole point that he's charming to her?"

"Doesn't it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?"

She faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of dignity she brushed it away. "It's Mr. Verver who's really young—it's Charlotte who's really old. And what I was saying," she added, "isn't affected!"

"You were saying"—he did her the justice—"that they're all guileless."

"That they were. Guileless all at first—extraordinarily. It's what I mean by their failure to see 393