"And I thought Amerigo might like it better," she had said, "than wandering off alone." "Do you mean that he won't go unless I take him ?" She had considered here, and never in her life had she considered so promptly and so intently.

If she really put it that way, her husband, challenged, might belie the statement; so that what would that do but make her father wonder, make him perhaps ask straight out, why she was exerting pressure?
She couldn't of course afford to be suspected for an instant of exerting pressure; which was why she was obliged only to make answer: "Wouldn't that be just what you must have out with HIM ?" "Decidedly--if he makes me the proposal.

But he hasn't made it yet." Oh, once more, how she was to feel she had smirked! "Perhaps he's too shy!" "Because you're so sure he so really wants my company ?" "I think he has thought you might like it." "Well, I should--!" But with this he looked away from her, and she held her breath to hear him either ask if she wished him to address the question to Amerigo straight, or inquire if she should be greatly disappointed by his letting it drop.

What had "settled" her, as she was privately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and had thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw out her reason.

To attenuate, on the other hand, this appearance, and quite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made, so musingly, by his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason--had positively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged Charlotte not to have approved.