“Certainly she has told me—but I won’t pamper you. Let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking HER.”
“Then she’s indeed not beyond everything,” Mr. Verver more or less humorously observed.
“Oh it isn’t, thank goodness, that she’s in love with you. It’s not, as I told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear.”
He had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. “Oh, my dear, I’ve always thought of her as a little girl.”
“Ah, she’s not a little girl,” said the Princess.
“Then I’ll write to her as a brilliant woman.”
“It’s exactly what she is.”
Mr. Verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. They had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. What it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion’s last emphasis. “Well, she has a famous friend in you, Princess.”
Maggie took this in—it was too plain for a protest. “Do you know what I’m really thinking of?” she asked.
He wondered, with her eyes on him—eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn’t such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. “Why, of your finding her at last yourself a husband.”