noon
She sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her window-seat , where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing that his idea could only be to wait , whatever might come , at her side . It was to her buried face that she thus , for a long time , felt him draw nearest ; though after a while , when the strange wail of the gallery began to repeat its inevitable echo , she was conscious of how that brought out his pale hard grimace . The resemblance had not been present to her on first coming out into the hot , still brightness of the Sunday afternoon -- only the second Sunday , of all the summer , when the party of six , the party of seven including the Principino , had practically been without accessions or invasions ; but within sight of Charlotte , seated far away , very much where she had expected to find her , the Princess fell to wondering if her friend would n't be affected quite as she herself had been , that night on the terrace , under Mrs. Verver 's perceptive pursuit . The relation , to-day , had turned itself round ; Charlotte was seeing her come , through patches of lingering noon , quite as she had watched Charlotte menace her through the starless dark ; and there was a moment , that of her waiting a little as they thus met across the distance , when the interval was bridged by a recognition not less soundless , and to all appearance not less charged with strange meanings , than that of the other occasion . The point , however , was that they had changed places ; Maggie had from her window , seen her stepmother leave the house -- at so unlikely an hour , three o'clock of a canicular August , for a ramble in garden or grove -- and had thereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that had made the spring of her companion 's three weeks before . It was the hottest day of the season , and the shaded siesta , for people all at their ease , would certainly rather have been prescribed ; but our young woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such refinements of repose , among them , constituted the empty chair at the feast . This was the more distinct as the feast , literally , in the great bedimmed dining-room , the cool , ceremonious semblance of luncheon , had just been taking place without Mrs. Verver .