Ralph of course has _told_ his Excellency nothing; not a syllable of repetition of all that we've been having, of course, issues from him for his friend's illumination. He has only cross-questioned, only extracted everything about Aurora; only taken in _how_ his triumph is complete and how that young woman has come down and round. It is thus a question then of his sending her a message, and of his sending it by the Ambassador for whom he sees her (justified thereto very vividly by the latter) simply and all so wonderingly wait. Yes, the message he sends is that he shall be glad to see her. He summons her to him--doesn't offer to go to her. He has said to his companion at first and for their going into the Square that he is not staying at the House, and that his lodgings are elsewhere. The Ambassador, taking the message, has the question, virtually: "She's to come then to you at your hotel?" On which, after an hesitation and resting his eyes a moment over on the house, Ralph says: "No, no. Over there." But I should say I needn't here and now draw this out, and that I have it all and more than all, were it not that I just want to note more emphatically that I provide for everything, provide against the need of any "small" scene with the young woman from New York as a sequence to this full passage with the Ambassador, and as a wind up to the whole thing, together with the balance of such a chapter against the preliminary Book First--I provide for everything, I say, by putting _into_ this _finale_ between the two men in the Square, by making Ralph acquaint his visitor with, so to speak, _all_ the requisite meaning resident in the appeal, from their young woman, that his Excellency has called to report on. I said above that Ralph "tells" the Ambassador nothing--but only receives his own statement and cross-questions him on it; but that qualification refers only to what has been happening to R., in his prodigious alternate character, during the previous six months or whatever. Not a word about all that; but on the other hand every word required to enable us to dispense with another scene for the young woman from N.Y. On that subject Ralph is fully informing, and what I mean and want is that this action in him, holding his interlocutor extraordinarily interested, shall so suffice for our own interest and satisfaction, shall so vividly take the place of it, that we simply shan't in the least miss, but shall find ourselves admirably do without, any bringing "on" again of Aurora. The present and conclusive scene in the Square all sufficiently brings her on, all sufficiently prefigures Ralph's reunion, not to say union, with her, and in short acquits me of everything. A far more ingenious stroke, surely, and to be made more ministrant to effect and to the kind of note of the strange that I want than the comparatively platitudinous direct _duo_ between the parties! He has only to give us in advance all that the duo must and will consist