The sharp, successful, almost primitive wail in it made Charlotte turn, and this movement attested for the Princess the felicity of her deceit.  Something in her throbbed as it had throbbed the night she stood in the drawing-room and denied that she had suffered.  She was ready to lie again if her companion would but give her the opening.  Then she should know she had done all.  Charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare her face with her note of resentment; and Maggie, feeling this, met it with the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of defeat.  “I want really to possess him,” said Mrs. Verver.  “I happen also to feel that he’s worth it.”

Maggie rose as if to receive her.  “Oh—­worth it!” she wonderfully threw off.

The tone, she instantly saw, again had its effect:  Charlotte flamed aloft—­might truly have been believing in her passionate parade.  “You’ve thought you’ve known what he’s worth?”

“Indeed then, my dear, I believe I have—­as I believe I still do.”

She had given it, Maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed.  Charlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the words—­Maggie had known they would come—­of which she had pressed the spring.  “How I see that you loathed our marriage!”

“Do you ask me?” Maggie after an instant demanded.

Charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again:  she was in presence, visibly, of her last word.  She opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. “‘Ask’ you?  Do I need?  How I see,” she broke out, “that you’ve worked against me!”

“Oh, oh, oh!” the Princess exclaimed.

Her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare.  “You haven’t worked against me?”

Maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast.  Then she opened her eyes to speak.  “What does it matter—­if I’ve failed?”

“You recognise then that you’ve failed?” asked Charlotte from the threshold.

Maggie waited; she looked, as her companion had done a moment before, at the two books on the seat; she put them together and laid them down; then she made up her mind.  “I’ve failed!” she sounded out before Charlotte, having given her time, walked away.  She watched her, splendid and erect, float down the long vista; then she sank upon a seat.  Yes, she had done all.

PART SIXTH.

XL