Book ONE, Part 2, chapter 10
[Adam Verver’s eyes] There was something in Adam Verver’s eyes that both admitted the morning and the evening in unusual quantities and gave the modest area the outward extension of a view that was “big” even when restricted to stars. Deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically large, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their ambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor’s vision out or most opened themselves to your own.
[Maggie to her father, suggesting the visit of Charlotte] “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
She had a silence that made him right. “Well, when I tell you you’ll understand. It’s only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter I got this morning. All day, yes—it HAS been in my mind. I’ve been asking myself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you if you could stand just now another woman.”
It relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner made it in a degree portentous. “Stand one—?”
“Well, mind her coming.”
He stared—then he laughed. “It depends on who she is.”
“Charlotte? Is SHE coming?”
“She writes me, practically, that she’d like to if we’re so good as to ask her.”
Mr. Verver continued to gaze, but rather as if waiting for more. Then, as everything appeared to have come, his expression had a drop. If this was all it was simple. “Then why in the world not?”
Maggie’s face lighted anew, but it was now another light. “It isn’t a want of tact?”
“To ask her?”
“To propose it to you.”
“That I should ask her?”
He put the question as an effect of his remnant of vagueness, but this had also its own effect. Maggie wondered an instant; after which, as with a flush of recognition, she took it up. “It would be too beautiful if you WOULD!”
This, clearly, had not been her first idea—the chance of his words had prompted it. “Do you mean write to her myself?”
“Yes—it would be kind. It would be quite beautiful of you. That is, of course,” said Maggie, “if you sincerely CAN.”
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