And yet another of these concomitants of feverish success, all
the while, was the perception that in another quarter too things
were being made easy. Charlotte's alacrity in meeting her had, in
one sense, operated slightly overmuch as an intervention: it had
begun to reabsorb her at the very hour of her husband's showing
her that, to be all there, as the phrase was, he likewise only
required--as one of the other phrases was too--the straight tip.
She had heard him talk about the straight tip, in his moods of
amusement at English slang, in his remarkable displays of
assimilative power, power worthy of better causes and higher
inspirations; and he had taken it from her, at need, in a way
that, certainly in the first glow of relief, had made her brief
interval seem large. Then, however, immediately, and even though
superficially, there had declared itself a readjustment of
relations to which she was, once more, practically a little
sacrificed. "I must do everything," she had said, "without
letting papa see what I do--at least till it's done!" but she
scarce knew how she proposed, even for the next few days, to
blind or beguile this participant in her life. What had in fact
promptly enough happened, she presently recognised, was that if
her stepmother had beautifully taken possession of her, and if
she had virtually been rather snatched again thereby from her
husband's side, so, on the other hand, this had, with as little
delay, entailed some very charming assistance for her in Eaton
Square. When she went home with Charlotte, from whatever happy
demonstration, for the benefit of the world in which they
supposed themselves to live, that there was no smallest reason
why their closer association shouldn't be public and acclaimed--
at these times she regularly found that Amerigo had come either
to sit with his father-in-law in the absence of the ladies, or to