in Maggie most melted and went to pieces—­ every thing, that is, that belonged to her disposition to challenge the perfection of their common state.  It divided them again, that was true, this particular turn of the tide—­cut them up afresh into pairs and parties; quite as if a sense for the equilibrium was what, between them all, had most power of insistence; quite as if Amerigo himself were all the while, at bottom, equally thinking of it and watching it.  But, as against that, he was making her father not miss her, and he could have rendered neither of them a more excellent service.  He was acting in short on a cue, the cue given him by observation; it had been enough for him to see the shade of change in her behaviour; his instinct for relations, the most exquisite conceivable, prompted him immediately to meet and match the difference, to play somehow into its hands.  That was what it was, she renewedly felt, to have married a man who was, sublimely, a gentleman; so that, in spite of her not wanting to translate all their delicacies into the grossness of discussion, she yet found again and again, in Portland Place, moments for saying:  “If I didn’t love you, you know, for yourself, I should still love you for him.”  He looked at her, after such speeches, as Charlotte looked, in Eaton Square, when she called her attention to his benevolence:  through the dimness of the almost musing smile that took account of her extravagance, harmless though it might be, as a tendency to reckon with.  “But my poor child,” Charlotte might under this pressure have been on the point of replying, “that’s the way nice people are, all round—­so that why should one be surprised about it?  We’re all nice together—­as why shouldn’t we be?  If we hadn’t been we wouldn’t have gone far—­and I consider that we’ve gone very far indeed.  Why should you ‘take on’ as if you weren’t a perfect dear yourself, capable of all the sweetest things?—­as if you hadn’t in fact grown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of all the good things that I recognised, even of old, as soon as I came near you, and that you’ve allowed me now, between you, to make so blessedly my own.”  Mrs. Verver might in fact have but just failed to make another point, a point charmingly natural to her as a grateful and irreproachable wife.  “It isn’t a bit wonderful, I may also remind you, that your husband should find, when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about with mine.  I happen, love, to appreciate my husband—­I happen perfectly to understand that his acquaintance should be cultivated and his company enjoyed.”