She continued to smile, and he took her smile; wondering again a little by this time, however; struck more and more by an intensity in it that belied a light tone.  “What do you want,” he demanded, “to do to me?” And he added, as she didn’t say:  “You’ve got something in your mind.”  It had come to him within the minute that from the beginning of their session there she had been keeping something back, and that an impression of this had more than once, in spite of his general theoretic respect for her present right to personal reserves and mysteries, almost ceased to be vague in him.  There had been from the first something in her anxious eyes, in the way she occasionally lost herself, that it would perfectly explain.  He was therefore now quite sure.

“You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

She had a silence that made him right.  “Well, when I tell you you’ll understand.  It’s only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter I got this morning.  All day, yes—­it has been in my mind.  I’ve been asking myself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you if you could stand just now another woman.”

It relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner made it in a degree portentous.  “Stand” one—?”

“Well, mind her coming.”

He stared—­then he laughed.  It depends on who she is.”

“There—­you see!  I’ve at all events been thinking whether you’d take this particular person but as a worry the more.  Whether, that is, you’d go so far with her in your notion of having to be kind.”

He gave at this the quickest shake to his foot.  How far would she go in her notion of it.

“Well,” his daughter returned, “you know how far, in a general way, Charlotte Stant goes.”

“Charlotte?  Is she coming?”

“She writes me, practically, that she’d like to if we’re so good as to ask her.”

Mr. Verver continued to gaze, but rather as if waiting for more.  Then, as everything appeared to have come, his expression had a drop.  If this was all it was simple.  “Then why in the world not?”

Maggie’s face lighted anew, but it was now another light.  “It isn’t a want of tact?”

“To ask her?”

“To propose it to you.”

“That I should ask her?”

He put the question as an effect of his remnant of vagueness, but this had also its own effect.  Maggie wondered an instant; after which, as with a flush of recognition, she took it up.  “It would be too beautiful if you would!”

This, clearly, had not been her first idea—­the chance of his words had prompted it.  “Do you mean write to her myself?”

“Yes—­it would be kind.  It would be quite beautiful of you.  That is, of course,” said Maggie, “if you sincerely can.”

He appeared to wonder an instant why he sincerely shouldn’t, and indeed, for that matter, where the question of sincerity came in.  This virtue, between him and his daughter’s friend, had surely been taken for granted.  “My dear child,” he returned, “I don’t think I’m afraid of Charlotte.”