The Prince's shining star may, no doubt, having been nothing more precious than his private subtlety; but whatever the object was he just now fingered it a good deal, out of sight--amounting as it mainly did for him to a restless play of memory and a fine embroidery of thought.

Something had rather momentously occurred, in Eaton Square, during his enjoyed minutes with his old friend: his present perspective made definitely clear to him that she had plumped out for him her first little lie.

That took on--and he could scarce have said why--a sharpness of importance: she had never lied to him before--if only because it had never come up for her, properly, intelligibly, morally, that she must.

As soon as she had put to him the question of what he would do--by which she meant of what Charlotte would also do--in that event of Maggie's and Mr.Verver's not embracing the proposal they had appeared for a day or two resignedly to entertain; as soon as she had betrayed her curiosity as to the line the other pair, so left to themselves, might take, a desire to avoid the appearance of at all too directly prying had become marked in her.

Betrayed by the solicitude of which she had, already, three weeks before, given him a view, she had been obliged, on a second thought, to name, intelligibly, a reason for her appeal; while the Prince, on his side, had had, not without mercy, his glimpse of her momentarily groping for one and yet remaining unprovided.