She showed an interest in their arrangements, an inquiring tenderness almost for their economies; so that her hostess not unnaturally, as they might have said, put it all down--the tone and the freedom of which she set the example--to the effect wrought in her afresh by one of the lessons learned, in the morning, at the altar of the past.

Hadn't she picked it up, from an anecdote or two offered again to her attention, that there were, for princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a heroine?
Maggie's way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by the extravagance of her affability.

She was doubtless not positively boisterous; yet, though Mrs.Assingham, as a bland critic, had never doubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it into being what might have been called assertive.

It was all a tune to which Fanny's heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy, happy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was making the Prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps always enabling him to find it absolutely not foolish.

Foolish, in public, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his wife's being thought to be; so that there hovered before their friend the possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in the carriage or at home, of slightly sarcastic inquiry, of promptly invited explanation; a scene that, according as Maggie should play her part in it, might or might not precipitate developments.