often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings.  Maggie had liked, in London, and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise, in this case, such a lapse of all the sequences.  It was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her—­that is wondered about her as Amerigo’s wife, and wondered, moreover, with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity, almost, of surprise.

The point of view—­that one—­was what she read in their free contemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in Amerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give.  She might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate, with a rare imitation of nature, “Oh yes, I’m here all the while; I’m also in my way a solid little fact and I cost originally a great deal of money:  cost, that is, my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains—­toward my training—­that money would scarce represent.”  Well, she would meet them in some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner, before they dispersed, by engaging them all, unconventionally, almost violently, to dine with her in Portland Place, just as they were, if they didn’t mind the same party, which was the party she wanted.  Oh she was going, she was going—­she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song.  There were breaks in the connection, as there would be hitches in the process; she didn’t wholly see, yet, what they would do for her, nor quite how, herself, she should handle them; but she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least begun something—­she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for convergence of wonder.  It wasn’t after all, either, that their wonder so much signified—­that of the cornered six, whom it glimmered before her that she might still live to drive about like a flock of sheep:  the intensity of her consciousness, its sharpest savour, was in the theory of her having diverted, having, as they said, captured the attention of Amerigo and Charlotte, at neither of whom, all the while, did she so much as once look.  She had pitched them in with the six, for that matter, so far as they themselves were concerned; they had dropped, for the succession of minutes, out of contact with their function—­ had, in short, startled and impressed, abandoned their post.  “They’re paralysed, they’re paralysed!” she commented, deep within; so much it helped her own apprehension to hang together that they should suddenly lose their bearings.