Besides which there would be always Charlotte herself to draw him off.

Charlotte would help him again, doubtless, to study anything, right or left, that might be symptomatic; but Maggie could see that this very fact might perhaps contribute, in its degree, to protect the secret of her own fermentation.

It is not even incredible that she may have discovered the gleam of a comfort that was to broaden in the conceivable effect on the Prince's spirit, on his nerves, on his finer irritability, of some of the very airs and aspects, the light graces themselves, of Mrs.Verver's too perfect competence.
What it would most come to, after all, she said to herself, was a renewal for him of the privilege of watching that lady watch her.

Very well, then: with the elements after all so mixed in him, how long would he go on enjoying mere spectatorship of that act?
For she had by this time made up her mind that in Charlotte's company he deferred to Charlotte's easier art of mounting guard.

Wouldn't he get tired--to put it only at that--of seeing her always on the rampart, erect and elegant, with her lace-flounced parasol now folded and now shouldered, march to and fro against a gold-coloured east or west?
Maggie had gone far, truly for a view of the question of this particular reaction, and she was not incapable of pulling herself up with the rebuke that she counted her chickens before they were hatched.