she had ventured.  They had risen together to come upstairs; he had been talking at the last about some of the people, at the very last of all about Lady Castledean and Mr. Blint; after which she had once more broken ground on the matter of the “type” of Gloucester.  It brought her, as he came round the table to join her, yet another of his kind conscious stares, one of the looks, visibly beguiled, but at the same time not invisibly puzzled, with which he had already shown his sense of this charming grace of her curiosity.  It was as if he might for a moment be going to say:—­“You needn’t pretend, dearest, quite so hard, needn’t think it necessary to care quite so much!”—­it was as if he stood there before her with some such easy intelligence, some such intimate reassurance, on his lips.  Her answer would have been all ready—­that she wasn’t in the least pretending; and she looked up at him, while he took her hand, with the maintenance, the real persistence, of her lucid little plan in her eyes.  She wanted him to understand from that very moment that she was going to be with him again, quite with them, together, as she doubtless hadn’t been since the “funny” changes—­that was really all one could call them—­into which they had each, as for the sake of the others, too easily and too obligingly slipped.  They had taken too much for granted that their life together required, as people in London said, a special “form”—­which was very well so long as the form was kept only for the outside world and was made no more of among themselves than the pretty mould of an iced pudding, or something of that sort, into which, to help yourself, you didn’t hesitate to break with the spoon.  So much as that she would, with an opening, have allowed herself furthermore to observe; she wanted him to understand how her scheme embraced Charlotte too; so that if he had but uttered the acknowledgment she judged him on the point of making—­the acknowledgment of his catching at her brave little idea for their case—­she would have found herself, as distinctly, voluble almost to eloquence.

What befell, however, was that even while she thus waited she felt herself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him than the occasion, on the whole, appeared to require—­ a process of weighing something in the balance, of considering, deciding, dismissing.  He had guessed that she was there with an idea, there in fact by reason of her idea; only this, oddly enough, was what at the last stayed his words.  She was helped to these perceptions by his now looking at her still harder than he had yet done—­which really brought it to the turn of a hair, for her, that she didn’t make sure his notion of her idea was the right one.  It was the turn of a hair, because he had possession of her hands and was bending toward her, ever so kindly, as if to see, to understand, more, or possibly give more—­she didn’t know which; and that had the effect of simply putting her, as she would