"Do you call Mr.Verver's perfectly natural interest in his daughter-- ?" "The greatest affection of which he is capable ?" Charlotte took it up in all readiness.

"I do distinctly--and in spite of my having done all I could think of--to make him capable of a greater.

I've done, earnestly, everything I could--I've made it, month after month, my study.

But I haven't succeeded--it has been vividly brought home to me to-night.
However," she pursued, "I've hoped against hope, for I recognise that, as I told you at the time, I was duly warned." And then as she met in her friend's face the absence of any such remembrance: "He did tell me that he wanted me just BECAUSE I could be useful about her." With which Charlotte broke into a wonderful smile.

"So you see I AM!" It was on Fanny Assingham's lips for the moment to reply that this was, on the contrary, exactly what she didn't see; she came in fact within an ace of saying: "You strike me as having quite failed to help his idea to work--since, by your account, Maggie has him not less, but so much more, on her mind.