He was always lonely at great parties, the dear Colonel—­it wasn’t in such places that the seed he sowed at home was ever reaped by him; but nobody could have seemed to mind it less, to brave it with more bronzed indifference; so markedly that he moved about less like one of the guests than like some quite presentable person in charge of the police arrangements or the electric light.  To Mrs. Verver, as will be seen, he represented, with the perfect good faith of his apparent blankness, something definite enough; though her bravery was not thereby too blighted for her to feel herself calling him to witness that the only witchcraft her companion had used, within the few minutes, was that of attending Maggie, who had withdrawn from the scene, to her carriage.  Notified, at all events, of Fanny’s probable presence, Charlotte was, for a while after this, divided between the sense of it as a fact somehow to reckon with and deal with, which was a perception that made, in its degree, for the prudence, the pusillanimity of postponement, of avoidance—­and a quite other feeling, an impatience that presently ended by prevailing, an eagerness, really, to be suspected, sounded, veritably arraigned, if only that she might have the bad moment over, if only that she might prove to herself, let alone to Mrs. Assingham also, that she could convert it to good; if only, in short, to be “square,” as they said, with her question.  For herself indeed, particularly, it wasn’t a question; but something in her bones told her that Fanny would treat it as one, and there was truly nothing that, from this friend, she was not bound in decency to take.  She might hand things back with every tender precaution, with acknowledgments and assurances, but she owed it to them, in any case, and it to all Mrs. Assingham had done for her, not to get rid of them without having well unwrapped and turned them over.

To-night, as happened—­and she recognised it more and more, with the ebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her—­ to-night exactly, she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she might at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process with the right temper and tone.  She said, after a little, to the Prince, “Stay with me; let no one take you; for I want her, yes, I do want her to see us together, and the sooner the better”—­said it to keep her hand on him through constant diversions, and made him, in fact, by saying it, profess a momentary vagueness.  She had to explain to him that it was Fanny Assingham, she wanted to see—­who clearly would be there, since the Colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned himself for her fate; and she had, further, after Amerigo had met her with “See us together? why in the world? hasn’t she often seen us together?” to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened didn’t now matter and that she at any rate well knew, for the occasion, what she was about.  “You’re