She couldn’t so challenge him, because it would have been—­and there she was paralysed—­the note.  It would have translated itself on the spot, for his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion, would have reached her father’s exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep.  It had been for many days almost as difficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as it had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old—­the time, so strangely, seemed already far away—­an inevitability in her longer passages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability, round about them, of everything.  But at present Charlotte was almost always there when Amerigo brought her to Eaton Square, where Amerigo was constantly bringing her; and Amerigo was almost always there when Charlotte brought her husband to Portland Place, where Charlotte was constantly bringing him.  The fractions of occasions, the chance minutes that put them face to face had, as yet, of late, contrived to count but little, between them, either for the sense of opportunity or for that of exposure; inasmuch as the lifelong rhythm of their intercourse made against all cursory handling of deep things.  They had never availed themselves of any given quarter-of-an-hour to gossip about fundamentals; they moved slowly through large still spaces; they could be silent together, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than hurriedly expressive.  It appeared indeed to have become true that their common appeal measured itself, for vividness, just by this economy of sound; they might have been talking “at” each other when they talked with their companions, but these latter, assuredly, were not in any directer way to gain light on the current phase of their relation.  Such were some of the reasons for which Maggie suspected fundamentals, as I have called them, to be rising, by a new movement, to the surface—­suspected it one morning late in May, when her father presented himself in Portland Place alone.  He had his pretext—­of that she was fully aware:  the Principino, two days before, had shown signs, happily not persistent, of a feverish cold and had notoriously been obliged to spend the interval at home.  This was ground, ample ground, for punctual inquiry; but what it wasn’t ground for, she quickly found herself reflecting, was his having managed, in the interest of his visit, to dispense so unwontedly—­as their life had recently come to be arranged—­with his wife’s attendance.  It had so happened that she herself was, for the hour, exempt from her husband’s, and it will at once be seen that the hour had a quality all its own when I note that, remembering how the Prince had looked in to say he was going out, the Princess whimsically wondered if their respective sposi mightn’t frankly be meeting, whimsically hoped indeed they were temporarily so disposed of.  Strange was her need, at moments, to think of them