"For them? Oh, easily! We can be anything."
"Absolute idiots then?"
"Absolute idiots. And oh," Fanny breathed, "the way it will rest
us!"
Well, he looked as if there were something in that. "But won't
they know we're not?"
She barely hesitated. "Charlotte and the Prince think we are--
which is so much gained. Mr. Verver believes in our
intelligence--but he doesn't matter."
"And Maggie? Doesn't SHE know--?"
"That we see before our noses?" Yes, this indeed took longer.
"Oh, so far as she may guess it she'll give no sign. So it comes
to the same thing."
He raised his eyebrows. "Comes to our not being able to help
her?"
"That's the way we SHALL help her."
"By looking like fools?"
She threw up her hands. "She only wants, herself, to look like a
bigger! So there we are!" With which she brushed it away--his
conformity was promised. Something, however, still held her; it
broke, to her own vision, as a last wave of clearness.
"Moreover NOW," she said, "I see! I mean," she added,--what you
were asking me: how I knew to-day, in Eaton Square, that Maggie's
awake." And she had indeed visibly got it. "It was by seeing them
together."
"Seeing her with her father?" He fell behind again. "But you've
seen her often enough before."
"Never with my present eyes. For nothing like such a test--that
of this length of the others' absence together--has hitherto
occurred."
"Possibly! But if she and Mr. Verver insisted upon it--?"
"Why is it such a test? Because it has become one without their
intending it. It has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands."
"It has soured, eh?" the Colonel said.
"The word's horrible--say rather it has 'changed.' Perhaps,"
Fanny went on, "she did wish to see how much she can bear. In
that case she HAS seen. Only it was she alone who--about the
visit--insisted. Her father insists on nothing. And she watches
him do it."