they might say, it had wanted another, and what had Charlotte done from the first but begin to act, on the spot, and ever so smoothly and beautifully, as a fourth?  Nothing had been, immediately, more manifest than the greater grace of the movement of the vehicle—­as to which, for the completeness of her image, Maggie was now supremely to feel how every strain had been lightened for herself.  So far as she was one of the wheels she had but to keep in her place; since the work was done for her she felt no weight, and it wasn’t too much to acknowledge that she had scarce to turn round.  She had a long pause before the fire during which she might have been fixing with intensity her projected vision, have been conscious even of its taking an absurd, fantastic shape.  She might have been watching the family coach pass and noting that, somehow, Amerigo and Charlotte were pulling it while she and her father were not so much as pushing.  They were seated inside together, dandling the Principino and holding him up to the windows, to see and be seen, like an infant positively royal; so that the exertion was all with the others.  Maggie found in this image a repeated challenge; again and yet again she paused before the fire:  after which, each time, in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly broken, she gave herself to livelier movement.  She had seen herself at last, in the picture she was studying, suddenly jump from the coach; whereupon, frankly, with the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened wider and her heart stood still for a moment.  She looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else, waiting with intensity to see what would follow.  The person had taken a decision—­which was evidently because an impulse long gathering had at last felt a sharpest pressure.  Only how was the decision to be applied?—­ what, in particular, would the figure in the picture do?  She looked about her, from the middle of the room, under the force of this question, as if there, exactly, were the field of action involved.  Then, as the door opened again, she recognised, whatever the action, the form, at any rate, of a first opportunity.  Her husband had reappeared—­he stood before her refreshed, almost radiant, quite reassuring.  Dressed, anointed, fragrant, ready, above all, for his dinner, he smiled at her over the end of their delay.  It was as if her opportunity had depended on his look—­and now she saw that it was good.  There was still, for the instant, something in suspense, but it passed more quickly than on his previous entrance.  He was already holding out his arms.  It was, for hours and hours, later on, as if she had somehow been lifted aloft, were floated and carried on some warm high tide beneath which stumbling blocks had sunk out of sight.  This came from her being again, for the time, in the enjoyment of confidence, from her knowing, as she believed, what to do.  All the next day, and all the next, she appeared to herself to know it.  She had a plan,