It was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting.

They were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on Charlotte's VALUE--the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the Prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger acquaintance.

If Maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values.

Somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of Charlotte's! What else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great?
Great for the world that was before her--that he proposed she should be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan.
Maggie held to this then--that she wasn't to be wasted.

To let his daughter know it he had sought this brief privacy.