frivolously, going a-maying.  She had her intense, her smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations; she had in particular the extravagant, positively at moments the amused, sense of using her friend to the topmost notch, accompanied with the high luxury of not having to explain.  Never, no never, should she have to explain to Fanny Assingham again—­ who, poor woman, on her own side, would be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher ingenuity.  She put it all off on Fanny, and the dear thing herself might henceforth appraise the quantity.  More and more magnificent now in her blameless egoism, Maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only signified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her.  She didn’t care for what devotions, what dinners of their own the Assinghams might have been “booked”; that was a detail, and she could think without wincing of the ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them.  It all fell in beautifully, moreover; so that, as hard, at this time, in spite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the Princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the creative hand.  She had but to have the fancy of presenting herself, of presenting her husband, in a certain high and convenient manner, to make it natural they should go about with their gentleman and their lady.  To what else but this, exactly, had Charlotte, during so many weeks of the earlier season, worked her up?—­herself assuming and discharging, so far as might be, the character and office of one of those revolving subordinate presences that float in the wake of greatness.

The precedent was therefore established and the group normally constituted.  Mrs. Assingham, meanwhile, at table, on the stairs, in the carriage or the opera-box, might—­with her constant overflow of expression, for that matter, and its singularly resident character where men in especial were concerned—­look across at Amerigo in whatever sense she liked:  it was not of that Maggie proposed to be afraid.  She might warn him, she might rebuke him, she might reassure him, she might—­if it were impossible not to—­absolutely make love to him; even this was open to her, as a matter simply between them, if it would help her to answer for the impeccability he had guaranteed.  And Maggie desired in fact only to strike her as acknowledging the efficacy of her aid when she mentioned to her one evening a small project for the morrow, privately entertained—­the idea, irresistible, intense, of going to pay, at the Museum, a visit to Mr. Crichton.  Mr. Crichton, as Mrs. Assingham could easily remember, was the most accomplished and obliging of public functionaries, whom every one knew and who knew every one—­who had from the first, in particular, lent himself freely, and for the love of art and history, to becoming one of the steadier lights of Mr. Verver’s adventurous path.  The custodian of one of the richest departments