Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 2.djvu/99

THE PRINCESS either ask if she wished him to address the question to Amerigo straight, or enquire if she should be greatly disappointed by his letting it drop. What had "settled" her, as she was privately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and had thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw out her reason. To attenuate on the other hand this appearance, and quite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made so musingly by his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason—had positively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged Charlotte not to have approved. He had taken everything on himself—that was what had settled her. She had had to wait very little more to feel with this how much he was taking. The point he made was his lack of any eagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and his wife. He wasn't so unhappy with her—far from it, and Maggie was to hold that he had grinned back, paternally, through his rather shielding glasses, in easy emphasis of this—as to be able to hint that he required the relief of absence. Therefore unless it was for the Prince himself—!

"Oh I don't think it would have been for Amerigo himself. Amerigo and I," Maggie had said, "perfectly rub on together."

"Well then there we are."

"I see"—and she had again with sublime blandness assented. "There we are."

"Charlotte and I too," her father had gaily proceeded, "perfectly rub on together." With which he had appeared for a little to be making time. "To put it only so," he had mildly and happily added—"to 89