XXXIX

The resemblance had not been present to her on first coming out into the hot, still brightness of the Sunday afternoon—­only the second Sunday, of all the summer, when the party of six, the party of seven including the Principino, had practically been without accessions or invasions; but within sight of Charlotte, seated far away, very much where she had expected to find her, the Princess fell to wondering if her friend wouldn’t be affected quite as she herself had been, that night on the terrace, under Mrs. Verver’s perceptive pursuit.  The relation, to-day, had turned itself round; Charlotte was seeing her come, through patches of lingering noon, quite as she had watched Charlotte menace her through the starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little as they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by a recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged with strange meanings, than that of the other occasion.  The point, however, was that they had changed places; Maggie had from her window, seen her stepmother leave the house—­at so unlikely an hour, three o’clock of a canicular August, for a ramble in garden or grove—­and had thereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that had made the spring of her companion’s three weeks before.  It was the hottest day of the season, and the shaded siesta, for people all at their ease, would certainly rather have been prescribed; but our young woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such refinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the feast.  This was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great bedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had just been taking place without Mrs. Verver.  She had been represented but by the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company by her husband, but offered directly to Mr. Verver himself, on their having assembled, by her maid, deputed for the effect and solemnly producing it.

Maggie had sat down, with the others, to viands artfully iced, to the slow circulation of precious tinkling jugs, to marked reserves of reference in many directions—­poor Fanny Assingham herself scarce thrusting her nose out of the padded hollow into which she had withdrawn.  A consensus of languor, which might almost have been taken for a community of dread, ruled the scene—­relieved only by the fitful experiments of Father Mitchell, good holy, hungry man, a trusted and overworked London friend and adviser, who had taken, for a week or two, the light neighbouring service, local rites flourishing under Maggie’s munificence, and was enjoying, as a convenience, all the bounties of the house.  He conversed undiscouraged, Father Mitchell—­ conversed mainly with the indefinite, wandering smile of the entertainers, and the Princess’s power to feel him on the whole a blessing for these occasions was not impaired by what was awkward in her consciousness