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 the grace that's in everything that Maggie does. It isn't my due"--she kept it up-- "but, taking from you that we may still expect it, it will have the touch. It will be beautiful."

"Then come out to breakfast." Mr. Verver had looked at his watch. "It will be here when we get back."

"If it isn't"--and Charlotte smiled as she looked about for a feather boa that she had laid down on descending from her room-- "if it isn't it will have had but THAT slight fault."

He saw her boa on the arm of the chair from which she had moved to meet him, and, after he had fetched it, raising it to make its charming softness brush his face--for it was a wondrous product of Paris, purchased under his direct auspices the day before--he held it there a minute before giving it up. "Will you promise me then to be at peace?"

She looked, while she debated, at his admirable present. "I promise you."

"Quite for ever?"

"Quite for ever."

"Remember," he went on, to justify his demand, "remember that in wiring you she'll naturally speak even more for her husband than she has done in wiring me."

It was only at a word that Charlotte had a demur. "'Naturally'--?"

"Why, our marriage puts him for you, you see--or puts you for him--into a new relation, whereas it leaves his relation to me unchanged. It therefore gives him more to say to you about it."

"About its making me his stepmother-in-law--or whatever I SHOULD become?" Over which, for a little, she not undivertedly mused. "Yes, there may easily be enough for a gentleman to say to a young woman about that."

"Well, Amerigo can always be, according to the case, either as funny or as serious as you like; and whichever he may be for you, in sending you a message, he'll be it ALL." And then as the girl, with one of her so deeply and oddly, yet so tenderly, critical looks at him, failed to take up the remark, he found himself moved, as by a vague anxiety, to add a question. "Don't you think he's charming?"