it? We're all nice together--as why shouldn't we be? If we hadn't
been we wouldn't have gone far--and I consider that we've gone
very far indeed. Why should you 'take on' as if you weren't a
perfect dear yourself, capable of all the sweetest things?--as if
you hadn't in fact grown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of
all the good things that I recognised, even of old, as soon as I
came near you, and that you've allowed me now, between you, to
make so blessedly my own." Mrs. Verver might in fact have but
just failed to make another point, a point charmingly natural to
her as a grateful and irreproachable wife. "It isn't a bit
wonderful, I may also remind you, that your husband should find,
when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about
with mine. I happen, love, to appreciate my husband--I happen
perfectly to understand that his acquaintance should be
cultivated and his company enjoyed."

Some such happily-provoked remarks as these, from Charlotte, at
the other house, had been in the air, but we have seen how there
was also in the air, for our young woman, as an emanation from
the same source, a distilled difference of which the very
principle was to keep down objections and retorts. That
impression came back--it had its hours of doing so; and it may
interest us on the ground of its having prompted in Maggie a
final reflection, a reflection out of the heart of which a light
flashed for her like a great flower grown in a night. As soon as
this light had spread a little it produced in some quarters a
surprising distinctness, made her of a sudden ask herself why
there should have been even for three days the least obscurity.
The perfection of her success, decidedly, was like some strange
shore to which she had been noiselessly ferried and where, with a