open and beginning to explore the grounds, Mrs. Verver had gone still further—­with the increase of the oddity, moreover, of her having exchanged the protection of her room for these exposed and shining spaces.  It was not, fortunately, however, at last, that by persisting in pursuit one didn’t arrive at regions of admirable shade:  this was the asylum, presumably, that the poor wandering woman had had in view—­ several wide alleys, in particular, of great length, densely overarched with the climbing rose and the honeysuckle and converging, in separate green vistas, at a sort of umbrageous temple, an ancient rotunda, pillared and statued, niched and roofed, yet with its uncorrected antiquity, like that of everything else at Fawns, conscious hitherto of no violence from the present and no menace from the future.  Charlotte had paused there, in her frenzy, or what ever it was to be called; the place was a conceivable retreat, and she was staring before her, from the seat to which she appeared to have sunk, all unwittingly, as Maggie stopped at the beginning of one of the perspectives.

It was a repetition more than ever then of the evening on the terrace; the distance was too great to assure her she had been immediately seen, but the Princess waited, with her intention, as Charlotte on the other occasion had waited—­allowing, oh allowing, for the difference of the intention!  Maggie was full of the sense of that—­so full that it made her impatient; whereupon she moved forward a little, placing herself in range of the eyes that had been looking off elsewhere, but that she had suddenly called to recognition.  Charlotte had evidently not dreamed of being followed, and instinctively, with her pale stare, she stiffened herself for protest.  Maggie could make that out—­as well as, further, however, that her second impression of her friend’s approach had an instant effect on her attitude.  The Princess came nearer, gravely and in silence, but fairly paused again, to give her time for whatever she would.  Whatever she would, whatever she could, was what Maggie wanted—­wanting above all to make it as easy for her as the case permitted.  That was not what Charlotte had wanted the other night, but this never mattered—­the great thing was to allow her, was fairly to produce in her, the sense of highly choosing.  At first, clearly, she had been frightened; she had not been pursued, it had quickly struck her, without some design on the part of her pursuer, and what might she not be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the pursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose?  It had sunk into Maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and Mrs. Verver had felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance of pressure successfully applied had naturally, till now, remained with her.  But her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure, so dishonestly come by, for which her companion’s still countenance, at the hour and afterwards, had