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Maggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so prompt. "Oh no. She's beyond nothing. For she has had nothing."

"I see. You must have had things to be them. It's a kind of law of perspective."

Maggie didn't know about the law, but she continued definite. "She's not, for example, beyond help."

"Oh well then, she shall have all we can give her. I'll write to her," he said, "with pleasure."

"Angel!" she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him.

True as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was an angel with a human curiosity. "Has she told you she likes me much?"

"Certainly she has told me--but I won't pamper you. Let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking HER."

"Then she's indeed not beyond everything," Mr. Verver more or less humorously observed.

"Oh it isn't, thank goodness, that she's in love with you. It's not, as I told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear."

He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. "Oh, my dear, I've always thought of her as a little girl."

"Ah, she's not a little girl," said the Princess.

"Then I'll write to her as a brilliant woman."

"It's exactly what she is."

Mr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. They had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. What it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion's last emphasis. "Well, she has a famous friend in you, Princess."

Maggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. "Do you know what I'm really thinking of?" she asked.

He wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn't such a fool, h