Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/141

Rh made sure of her again with the aid of that question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were, moreover, such as would help him to make surer still. She showed at first, none the less, as only amused.

"You say there are two? An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost necessarily be innocent."

Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. "Mayn't he be still in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he likes best?"

She gave it more thought. "Oh, it must be the daughter—at his age."

"Possibly. Yet what do we know," Strether asked, "about her? She may be old enough."

"Old enough for what?"

"Why, to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a pinch, could do with it—that is if she doesn't prevent repatriation—why, it may be plain sailing yet."

It was always the case for him in these councils that each of her remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one. "I don't see why, if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady, he hasn't already done it, or hasn't been prepared with some statement to you about it. And if he wants both to marry her and is on good terms with them, why isn't he 'free'?"

Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. "Perhaps the girl doesn't like him."

"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?"

Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it. "Perhaps it's with the mother that he's on good terms."

"As against the daughter?"

"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what could make him like the mother more? Only," Strether threw out, "why shouldn't the daughter consent to him?"

"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "mayn't it be that everyone else isn't quite so struck with him as you?"

"Doesn't regard him, you mean, as such an 'eligible' young man? Is that what I've come to?" he audibly and