"But my poor child," Charlotte might under this pressure have been on the point of replying, "that's the way nice people ARE, all round--so that why should one be surprised about it?
We're all nice together--as why shouldn't we be?
If we hadn't been we wouldn't have gone far--and I consider that we've gone very far indeed.

Why should you 'take on' as if you weren't a perfect dear yourself, capable of all the sweetest things ?--as if you hadn't in fact grown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of all the good things that I recognised, even of old, as soon as I came near you, and that you've allowed me now, between you, to make so blessedly my own." Mrs.Verver might in fact have but just failed to make another point, a point charmingly natural to her as a grateful and irreproachable wife.

"It isn't a bit wonderful, I may also remind you, that your husband should find, when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about with mine.

I happen, love, to appreciate my husband--I happen perfectly to understand that his acquaintance should be cultivated and his company enjoyed." Some such happily-provoked remarks as these, from Charlotte, at the other house, had been in the air, but we have seen how there was also in the air, for our young woman, as an emanation from the same source, a distilled difference of which the very principle was to keep down objections and retorts.

That impression came back--it had its hours of doing so; and it may interest us on the ground of its having prompted in Maggie a final reflection, a reflection out of the heart of which a light flashed for her like a great flower grown in a night.