How sure she should have to be of so many things before she might thus find a weariness in Amerigo's expression and a logic in his weariness! One of her dissimulated arts for meeting their tension, meanwhile, was to interweave Mrs.Assingham as plausibly as possible with the undulations of their surface, to bring it about that she should join them, of an afternoon, when they drove together or if they went to look at things--looking at things being almost as much a feature of their life as if they were bazaar-opening royalties.

Then there were such combinations, later in the day, as her attendance on them, and the Colonel's as well, for such whimsical matters as visits to the opera no matter who was singing, and sudden outbreaks of curiosity about the British drama.

The good couple from Cadogan Place could always unprotestingly dine with them and "go on" afterwards to such publicities as the Princess cultivated the boldness of now perversely preferring.
It may be said of her that, during these passages, she plucked her sensations by the way, detached, nervously, the small wild blossoms of her dim forest, so that she could smile over them at least with the spacious appearance, for her companions, for her husband above all, of bravely, of altogether frivolously, going a-maying.

She had her intense, her smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations; she had in particular the extravagant, positively at moments the amused, sense of using her friend to the topmost notch, accompanied with the high luxury of not having to explain.

Never, no never, should she have to explain to Fanny Assingham again--who, poor woman, on her own side, would be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher ingenuity.