The question was provisionally answered, at all events, by the time the party at luncheon had begun to disperse—­with Maggie’s version of Mrs. Verver sharp to the point of representing her pretext for absence as a positive flight from derision.  She met the good priest’s eyes before they separated, and priests were really, at the worst, so to speak, such wonderful people that she believed him for an instant on the verge of saying to her, in abysmal softness:  “Go to Mrs. Verver, my child—­you go:  you’ll find that you can help her.”  This didn’t come, however; nothing came but the renewed twiddle of thumbs over the satisfied stomach and the full flush, the comical candour, of reference to the hand employed at Fawns for mayonnaise of salmon.  Nothing came but the receding backs of each of the others—­her father’s slightly bent shoulders, in especial, which seemed to weave his spell, by the force of habit, not less patiently than if his wife had been present.  Her husband indeed was present to feel anything there might be to feel—­which was perhaps exactly why this personage was moved promptly to emulate so definite an example of “sloping.”  He had his occupations—­books to arrange perhaps even at Fawns; the idea of the siesta, moreover, in all the conditions, had no need to be loudly invoked.  Maggie, was, in the event, left alone for a minute with Mrs. Assingham, who, after waiting for safety, appeared to have at heart to make a demonstration.  The stage of “talking over” had long passed for them; when they communicated now it was on quite ultimate facts; but Fanny desired to testify to the existence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped.  She was like the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl—­the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents—­and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest.  What was clearest, always, in our young woman’s imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach.  She was essentially there to bear the burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions, and it was eminently to that office she had been to-day abandoned—­with this one alleviation, as appeared, of Mrs. Assingham’s keeping up with her.  Mrs. Assingham suggested that she too was still on the ramparts—­though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist not a little of her curiosity.  She had looked about and seen their companions beyond earshot.

“Don’t you really want us to go—?”

Maggie found a faint smile.  “Do you really want to—?”

It made her friend colour.  “Well then—­no.  But we would, you know, at a look from you.  We’d pack up and be off—­as a sacrifice.”

“Ah, make no sacrifice,” said Maggie.  “See me through.”

“That’s it—­that’s all I want.  I should be too base—!  Besides,” Fanny went on, “you’re too splendid.”