A light, however, broke for him in season, and when once it had done so it made him more than ever aware of Mrs.Verver's vaguely, yet quite exquisitely, contingent participation--a mere hinted or tendered discretion; in short of Mrs.
Verver's indescribable, unfathomable relation to the scene.

Her placed condition, her natural seat and neighbourhood, her intenser presence, her quieter smile, her fewer jewels, were inevitably all as nothing compared with the preoccupation that burned in Maggie like a small flame and that had in fact kindled in each of her cheeks a little attesting, but fortunately by no means unbecoming, spot.

The party was her father's party, and its greater or smaller success was a question having for her all the importance of his importance; so that sympathy created for her a sort of visible suspense, under pressure of which she bristled with filial reference, with little filial recalls of expression, movement, tone.

It was all unmistakable, and as pretty as possible, if one would, and even as funny; but it put the pair so together, as undivided by the marriage of each, that the Princess il n'y avait pas a dire--might sit where she liked: she would still, always, in that house, be irremediably Maggie Verver.

The Prince found himself on this occasion so beset with that perception that its natural complement for him would really have been to wonder if Mr.Verver had produced on people something of the same impression in the recorded cases of his having dined with his daughter.
This backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over Amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different hours.