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 myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest of you on the scent; neither Maggie, nor the Prince, nor yourself, nor even Charlotte HERself, if you didn't happen to notice. Since you didn't, apparently, I perhaps now strike you as extravagant. But I'm not--I followed it all. One SAW the consciousness I speak of come over the poor things, very much as I suppose people at the court of the Borgias may have watched each other begin to look queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. My comparison's only a little awkward, for I don't in the least mean that Charlotte was consciously dropping poison into their cup. She was just herself their poison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them--but she didn't know it."

"Ah, she didn't know it?" Mr. Verver had asked with interest.

"Well, I THINK she didn't"--Mrs. Assingham had to admit that she hadn't pressingly sounded her. "I don't pretend to be sure, in every connection, of what Charlotte knows. She doesn't, certainly, like to make people suffer--not, in general, as is the case with so many of us, even other women: she likes much rather to put them at their ease with her. She likes, that is--as all pleasant people do--to be liked."

"Ah, she likes to be liked?" her companion had gone on.

"She did, at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us at our ease. That is she wanted to put you--and to put Maggie about you. So far as that went she had a plan. But it was only AFTER--it was not before, I really believe--that she saw how effectively she could work."

Again, as Mr. Verver felt, he must have taken it up. "Ah, she wanted to help us?--wanted to help ME?"

"Why," Mrs. Assingham asked after an instant, "should it surprise you?"

He just thought. "Oh, it doesn't!"

"She saw, of course, as soon as she came, with her quickness, where we all were. She didn't need each of us to go, by appointment, to her room at night, or take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. No doubt even she was rather impatient."

"OF the poor things?" Mr. Verver had here inquired while he waited.