Mrs. Assingham had seemed to wonder; Mr. Verver's reluctances not having, she in fact quite intimated, hitherto struck her. Charlotte responded at any rate that his indisposition to go out had lately much increased--even though to-night, as she admitted, he had pleaded his not feeling well.
Maggie had wished to stay with him--for the Prince and she, dining out, had afterwards called in Portland Place, whence, in the event, they had brought her, Charlotte, on. Maggie had come but to oblige her father--she had urged the two others to go without her; then she had yielded for the time to Mr. Verver's persuasion. But here, when they had, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up the stairs and with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing her: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present therefore, as Charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together a little party at home. But it was all right--so Charlotte also put it: there was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched felicities, little parties, long talks, with "I'll come to you to-morrow," and "No, I'll come to YOU," make-believe renewals of their old life. They were fairly at times, the dear things, like children playing at paying visits, playing at "Mr. Thompson and Mrs.
Fane," each hoping that the other would really stay to tea. Charlotte was sure she should find Maggie there on getting home--a remark in which Mrs.
(253) Verver's immediate response to her friend's enquiry had culminated.
She had thus on the spot the sense of having given her plenty to think about, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had expected.
She had plenty to think about herself, and there was already something in Fanny that made it seem still more.
"You say your husband's ill? He felt too ill to come?"
"No, my dear--I think not. If he had been too ill I would n't have left him."
"And yet Maggie was worried?" Mrs. Assingham asked.
"She worries easily, you know. She's afraid of influenza--of which he has had at different times several attacks, though never with the least gravity."
"But you're not afraid of it?"
Charlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her that really to have her case "out," as they said, with the person in the world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred themselves, would help her on the whole more than hinder; and under that feeling ALL her opportunity, with nothing kept back, with a thing or TWO perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. Besides, did n't Fanny at bottom half-expect, absolutely at the bottom half-want, things?--so that she'd be disappointed if, after what must just have occurred for her, she did n't get something to put between the teeth of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which our young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have "gone too far" in her (254) irrepressible interest in other lives. What had just happened--it pieced itself together for Charlotte-- was that the Assingham sposi, drifting like every one else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the Colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the Prince. His very dryness in this encounter would have, as always, struck a spark from his wife's curiosity, and, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he must have thrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of her young friends was "going on" with another. He knew perfectly--such at least was Charlotte's liberal assumption--that she was n't going on with any one, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was inevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous intercourse of the inimitable pair. The Prince meanwhile had also, under coercion, sacrificed her; the Ambassador had come up to him with a message from Royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had talked for five minutes with Sir John Brinder, who had been of the Ambassador's company and who had rather artlessly remained with her. Fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as some one else she did n't know, some one who knew Mrs. Assingham and also knew Sir John. Charlotte had left it to her friend's competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters. This was the little history of the vision in her that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that (255) might n't again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. Her point was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was her own. She had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even Amerigo--Amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it--had given her aid. To make it now with force for Fanny Assingham's benefit would see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned, than any other spring she should doubtless yet awhile be able to press. The direction was that of her greater freedom--which was all in the world she had in mind. Her opportunity had accordingly, after a few minutes of Mrs. Assingham's almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm's length and consulting it with a special turn of the head.
It was in a word with this value of her chance that she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to Fanny's last question: "Don't you remember what you told me, on the occasion of something or other, the other day?
That you believe there's nothing I 'm afraid of? So, my dear, don't ask me!"
"May n't I ask you," Mrs. Assingham returned, how the case stands with your poor husband?"