Oh, if she went by faces her visitor’s sudden whiteness, at this, might have carried her far!  Fanny Assingham turned pale for it, but there was something in such an appearance, in the look it put into the eyes, that renewed Maggie’s conviction of what this companion had been expecting.  She had been watching it come, come from afar, and now that it was there, after all, and the first convulsion over, they would doubtless soon find themselves in a more real relation.  It was there because of the Sunday luncheon they had partaken of alone together; it was there, as strangely as one would, because of the bad weather, the cold perverse June rain, that was making the day wrong; it was there because it stood for the whole sum of the perplexities and duplicities among which our young woman felt herself lately to have picked her steps; it was there because Amerigo and Charlotte were again paying together alone a “week end” visit which it had been Maggie’s plan infernally to promote—­just to see if, this time, they really would; it was there because she had kept Fanny, on her side, from paying one she would manifestly have been glad to pay, and had made her come instead, stupidly, vacantly, boringly, to luncheon:  all in the spirit of celebrating the fact that the Prince and Mrs. Verver had thus put it into her own power to describe them exactly as they were.  It had abruptly occurred, in truth, that Maggie required the preliminary help of determining how they were; though, on the other hand, before her guest had answered her question everything in the hour and the place, everything in all the conditions, affected her as crying it out.  Her guest’s stare of ignorance, above all—­that of itself at first cried it out. “‘Between them?’ What do you mean?”

“Anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have been—­all this time.  Do you believe there is—­or what’s your idea?”

Fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard.  “Do you speak from a suspicion of your own?”

“I speak, at last, from a torment.  Forgive me if it comes out.  I’ve been thinking for months and months, and I’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.”

“You’ve been thinking for months and months?” Mrs. Assingham took it in.  “But what then, dear Maggie, have you been thinking?”

“Well, horrible things—­like a little beast that I perhaps am.  That there may be something—­something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up.”

The elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly.  “You imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love?  Is that it?”

But Maggie for a minute only stared back at her.  “Help me to find out what I imagine.  I don’t know—­I’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety.  Have you any?—­do you see what I mean?  If you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.”