The extent to which they enjoyed their indifference to any judgment of their want of ceremony, what did that of itself speak but for the way that, as a rule, they almost equally had others on their mind?  They each knew that both were full of the superstition of not “hurting,” but might precisely have been asking themselves, asking in fact each other, at this moment, whether that was to be, after all, the last word of their conscientious development.  Certain it was, at all events, that, in addition to the Assinghams and the Lutches and Mrs. Rance, the attendance at tea, just in the right place on the west terrace, might perfectly comprise the four or five persons—­among them the very pretty, the typically Irish Miss Maddock, vaunted, announced and now brought—­from the couple of other houses near enough, one of these the minor residence Of their proprietor, established, thriftily, while he hired out his ancestral home, within sight and sense of his profit.  It was not less certain, either, that, for once in a way, the group in question must all take the case as they found it.  Fanny Assingham, at any time, for that matter, might perfectly be trusted to see Mr. Verver and his daughter, to see their reputation for a decent friendliness, through any momentary danger; might be trusted even to carry off their absence for Amerigo, for Amerigo’s possible funny Italian anxiety; Amerigo always being, as the Princess was well aware, conveniently amenable to this friend’s explanations, beguilements, reassurances, and perhaps in fact rather more than less dependent on them as his new life—­since that was his own name for it—­opened out.  It was no secret to Maggie—­it was indeed positively a public joke for her—­that she couldn’t explain as Mrs. Assingham did, and that, the Prince liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner of book-plates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition of this luxury had to be met.  He didn’t seem to want them as yet for use—­rather for ornament and amusement, innocent amusement of the kind he most fancied and that was so characteristic of his blessed, beautiful, general, slightly indolent lack of more dissipated, or even just of more sophisticated, tastes.

However that might be, the dear woman had come to be frankly and gaily recognised—­and not least by herself—­as filling in the intimate little circle an office that was not always a sinecure.  It was almost as if she had taken, with her kind, melancholy Colonel at her heels, a responsible engagement; to be within call, as it were, for all those appeals that sprang out of talk, that sprang not a little, doubtless too, out of leisure.  It naturally led her position in the household, as, she called it, to considerable frequency of presence, to visits, from the good couple, freely repeated and prolonged, and not so much as under form of protest.  She was there to keep him quiet—­it was Amerigo’s own description of her influence; and it would only