never forgotten either their talk or their faces, the impression altogether made by them, and, if she really wished to know, now, what had perhaps most moved him, it was the thought that she should ignorantly have gone in for a thing not good enough for other buyers.  He had been immensely struck—­that was another point—­with this accident of their turning out, after so long, friends of hers too:  they had disappeared, and this was the only light he had ever had upon them.  He had flushed up, quite red, with his recognition, with all his responsibility—­had declared that the connexion must have had, mysteriously, something to do with the impulse he had obeyed.  And Maggie had made, to her husband, while he again stood before her, no secret of the shock, for herself, so suddenly and violently received.  She had done her best, even while taking it full in the face, not to give herself away; but she wouldn’t answer—­no, she wouldn’t—­for what she might, in her agitation, have made her informant think.  He might think what he would—­there had been three or four minutes during which, while she asked him question upon question, she had doubtless too little cared.  And he had spoken, for his remembrance, as fully as she could have wished; he had spoken, oh, delightedly, for the “terms” on which his other visitors had appeared to be with each other, and in fact for that conviction of the nature and degree of their intimacy under which, in spite of precautions, they hadn’t been able to help leaving him.  He had observed and judged and not forgotten; he had been sure they were great people, but no, ah no, distinctly, hadn’t “liked” them as he liked the Signora Principessa.  Certainly—­she had created no vagueness about that—­he had been in possession of her name and address, for sending her both her cup and her account.  But the others he had only, always, wondered about—­he had been sure they would never come back.  And as to the time of their visit, he could place it, positively, to a day—­by reason of a transaction of importance, recorded in his books, that had occurred but a few hours later.  He had left her, in short, definitely rejoicing that he had been able to make up to her for not having been quite “square” over their little business by rendering her, so unexpectedly, the service of this information.  His joy, moreover, was—­as much as Amerigo would!—­a matter of the personal interest with which her kindness, gentleness, grace, her charming presence and easy humanity and familiarity, had inspired him.  All of which, while, in thought, Maggie went over it again and again —­oh, over any imputable rashness of her own immediate passion and pain, as well as over the rest of the straight little story she had, after all, to tell—­might very conceivably make a long sum for the Prince to puzzle out.