It would in that case have come up vividly, and for each of them alike, that the truth, on the Princess's lips, presented no difficulty.

If the latter's mood, in fact, could have turned itself at all to private gaiety it might have failed to resist the diversion of seeing so clever a creature so beguiled.
Charlotte's theory of a generous manner was manifestly to express that her stepdaughter's word, wiping out, as she might have said, everything, had restored them to the serenity of a relation without a cloud.

It had been, in short, in this light, ideally conclusive, so that no ghost of anything it referred to could ever walk again.

What was the ecstasy of that, however, but in itself a trifle compromising ?--as truly, within the week, Maggie had occasion to suspect her friend of beginning, and rather abruptly, to remember.

Convinced as she was of the example already given her by her husband, and in relation to which her profession of trust in his mistress had been an act of conformity exquisitely calculated, her imagination yet sought in the hidden play of his influence the explanation of any change of surface, any difference of expression or intention.