It had all Mr. Verver’s attention.  “She has ’tried’—?”

“She has seen cases where she would have liked to.”

“But she has not been able?”

“Well, there are more cases, in Europe, in which it doesn’t come to girls who are poor than in which it does come to them.  Especially,” said Maggie with her continued competence, “when they’re Americans.”

Well, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides.  “Unless you mean,” he suggested, “that when the girls are American there are more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor.”

She looked at him good-humouredly.  “That may be—­but I’m not going to be smothered in my case.  It ought to make me—­if I were in danger of being a fool—­all the nicer to people like Charlotte.  It’s not hard for me,” she practically explained, “not to be ridiculous—­unless in a very different way.  I might easily be ridiculous, I suppose, by behaving as if I thought I had done a great thing.  Charlotte, at any rate, has done nothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it’s rather strange; and yet no one—­no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would like, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite right.  That’s what it is to have something about you that carries things off.”

Mr. Verver’s silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused her story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps even sharper.  “And is it also what you mean by Charlotte’s being ’great’?”

“Well,” said Maggie, “it’s one of her ways.  But she has many.”

Again for a little her father considered.  “And who is it she has tried to marry?”

Maggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect; but she after a minute either renounced or encountered an obstacle.  “I’m afraid I’m not sure.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Well, I don’t know”—­and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic.  “I only make it out for myself.”

“But you must make it out about someone in particular.”

She had another pause.  “I don’t think I want even for myself to put names and times, to pull away any veil.  I’ve an idea there has been, more than once, somebody I’m not acquainted with—­and needn’t be or want to be.  In any case it’s all over, and, beyond giving her credit for everything, it’s none of my business.”

Mr. Verver deferred, yet he discriminated.  “I don’t see how you can give credit without knowing the facts.”

“Can’t I give it—­generally—­for dignity?  Dignity, I mean, in misfortune.”

“You’ve got to postulate the misfortune first.”

“Well,” said Maggie, “I can do that.  Isn’t it always a misfortune to be—­when you’re so fine—­so wasted?  And yet,” she went on, “not to wail about it, not to look even as if you knew it?”

Mr. Verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then, after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop.  “Well, she mustn’t be wasted.  We won’t at least have waste.”