Her appearance was really indeed funnier than anything else--the spirit in which he felt her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of obscurity that cleared up for him as soon as he was seated with her in the small salon de lecture that had, for the most part, in all the weeks, witnessed the wane of his early vivacity of discussion with Waymarsh.

It was an immense thing, quite a tremendous thing, for her to have come: this truth opened out to him in spite of his having already arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it.

He had done exactly what he had given Waymarsh his word for--had walked and re-walked the court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this exercise an amount of light that affected him at the time as flooding the scene.

She had decided upon the step in order to give him the benefit of a doubt, in order to be able to say to her mother that she had, even to abjectness, smoothed the way for him.

The doubt had been as to whether he mightn't take her as not having smoothed it--and the admonition had possibly come from Waymarsh's more detached spirit.
Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly, thrown his weight into the scale--he had pointed to the importance of depriving their friend of a grievance.