She was there, inordinately, as a value, but as a value only for the clear negation of everything.

She was their general sign, precisely, of unimpaired beatitude--and she was to live up to that somewhat arduous character, poor thing, as she might.
She might privately lapse from it, if she must, with Amerigo or with Charlotte--only not, of course, ever, so much as for the wink of an eye, with the master of the house.

Such lapses would be her own affair, which Maggie at present could take no thought of.

She treated her young friend meanwhile, it was to be said, to no betrayal of such wavering; so that from the moment of her alighting at the door with the Colonel everything went on between them at concert pitch.

What had she done, that last evening in Maggie's room, but bring the husband and wife more together than, as would seem, they had ever been?
Therefore what indiscretion should she not show by attempting to go behind the grand appearance of her success ?--which would be to court a doubt of her beneficent work.
She knew accordingly nothing but harmony and diffused, restlessly, nothing but peace--an extravagant, expressive, aggressive peace, not incongruous, after all, with the solid calm of the place; a kind of helmetted, trident-shaking pax Britannica.
The peace, it must be added, had become, as the days elapsed, a peace quite generally animated and peopled--thanks to that fact of the presence of "company" in which Maggie's ability to preserve an appearance had learned, from so far back, to find its best resource.