"What of course will pull them up, if they turn out to have less imagination than you assume, is the profit you can have found in furthering Mrs.Verver's marriage.

You weren't at least in love with Charlotte." "Oh," Mrs.Assingham, at this, always brought out, "my hand in that is easily accounted for by my desire to be agreeable to HIM." "To Mr.Verver ?" "To the Prince--by preventing her in that way from taking, as he was in danger of seeing her do, some husband with whom he wouldn't be able to open, to keep open, so large an account as with his father-in-law.

I've brought her near him, kept her within his reach, as she could never have remained either as a single woman or as the wife of a different man." "Kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress ?" "Kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress." She brought it out grandly--it had always so, for her own ear as well as, visibly, for her husband's, its effect.

"The facilities in the case, thanks to the particular conditions, being so quite ideal." "Down even to the facility of your minding everything so little--from your own point of view--as to have supplied him with the enjoyment of TWO beautiful women." "Down even to THAT--to the monstrosity of my folly.

But not," Mrs.
Assingham added, "'two' of anything.