precisely, represented, embodied his pledges--was, in her
pleasant person, the force that had set them successively in
motion. She had MADE his marriage, quite as truly as his papal
ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she
had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic.
He had neither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing--
scarce even till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to
think of it vulgarly--must have all had to come from the Ververs.

Yet he was far, he could still remind himself, from supposing
that she had been grossly remunerated. He was wholly sure she
hadn't; for if there were people who took presents and people who
didn't she would be quite on the right side and of the proud
class. Only then, on the other hand, her disinterestedness was
rather awful--it implied, that is, such abysses of confidence.
She was admirably attached to Maggie--whose possession of such a
friend might moreover quite rank as one of her "assets"; but the
great proof of her affection had been in bringing them, with her
design, together. Meeting him during a winter in Rome, meeting
him afterwards in Paris, and "liking" him, as she had in time
frankly let him know from the first, she had marked him for her
young friend's own and had then, unmistakably, presented him in a
light. But the interest in Maggie--that was the point--would have
achieved but little without her interest in HIM. On what did that
sentiment, unsolicited and unrecompensed, rest? what good,
again--for it was much like his question about Mr. Verver--should
he ever have done her? The Prince's notion of a recompense to
women--similar in this to his notion of an appeal--was more or
less to make love to them. Now he hadn't, as he believed, made
love the least little bit to Mrs. Assingham--nor did he think she