“Oh well then, she shall have all we can give her.  I’ll write to her,” he said, “with pleasure.”

“Angel!” she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him.

True as this might be, however, there was one thing more—­he was an angel with a human curiosity.  “Has she told you she likes me much?”

“Certainly she has told me—­but I won’t pamper you.  Let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking her.”

“Then she’s indeed not beyond everything,” Mr. Verver more or less humorously observed.

“Oh it isn’t, thank goodness, that she’s in love with you.  It’s not, as I told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear.”

He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected.  “Oh, my dear, I’ve always thought of her as a little girl.”

“Ah, she’s not a little girl,” said the Princess.

“Then I’ll write to her as a brilliant woman.”

“It’s exactly what she is.”

Mr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something.  They had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more.  What it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion’s last emphasis.  “Well, she has a famous friend in you, Princess.”

Maggie took this in—­it was too plain for a protest.  “Do you know what I’m really thinking of?” she asked.

He wondered, with her eyes on him—­eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn’t such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it.  “Why, of your finding her at last yourself a husband.”

“Good for you!” Maggie smiled.  “But it will take,” she added, “some looking.”

“Then let me look right here with you,” her father said as they walked on.

XI

Mrs. Assingham and the Colonel, quitting Fawns before the end of September, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question of their return left to depend, on matters that were rather hinted at than importunately named.  The Lutches and Mrs. Rance had also, by the action of Charlotte Stant’s arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awakening the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed still a property of the air.  It was on this admirable spot that, before her October afternoon had waned, Fanny Assingham spent with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her husband’s final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point the moral of all