prudence, with the simplest economy of life, not to be wasteful of any odd gleaning.  To haunt Eaton Square, in fine, would be to show that he had not, like his brilliant associate, a sufficiency of work in the world.  It was just his having that sufficiency, it was just their having it together, that, so strangely and so blessedly, made, as they put it to each other, everything possible.  What further propped up the case, moreover, was that the “world,” by still another beautiful perversity of their chance, included Portland Place without including to anything like the same extent Eaton Square.  The latter residence, at the same time, it must promptly be added, did, on occasion, wake up to opportunity and, as giving itself a frolic shake, send out a score of invitations—­one of which fitful flights, precisely, had, before Easter, the effect of disturbing a little our young man’s measure of his margin.  Maggie, with a proper spirit, held that her father ought from time to time to give a really considered dinner, and Mr. Verver, who had as little idea as ever of not meeting expectation, was of the harmonious opinion that his wife ought.  Charlotte’s own judgment was, always, that they were ideally free—­the proof of which would always be, she maintained, that everyone they feared they might most have alienated by neglect would arrive, wreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal.  Wreathed in smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck Amerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked, in the great London bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own, an investing amenity and humanity.  Everybody came, everybody rushed; but all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere multitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot of the fine staircase, with the overcoats and shawls.  The entertainment offered a few evenings before Easter, and at which Maggie and he were inevitably present as guests, was a discharge of obligations not insistently incurred, and had thereby, possibly, all the more, the note of this almost Arcadian optimism:  a large, bright, dull, murmurous, mild-eyed, middle-aged dinner, involving for the most part very bland, though very exalted, immensely announceable and hierarchically placeable couples, and followed, without the oppression of a later contingent, by a brief instrumental concert, over the preparation of which, the Prince knew, Maggie’s anxiety had conferred with Charlotte’s ingenuity and both had supremely revelled, as it were, in Mr. Verver’s solvency.

The Assinghams were there, by prescription, though quite at the foot of the social ladder, and with the Colonel’s wife, in spite of her humility of position, the Prince was more inwardly occupied than with any other person except Charlotte.  He was occupied with Charlotte because, in the first place, she looked so inordinately handsome and held so high, where so much else was mature and sedate, the torch