Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/163

Rh heard a great deal about you," she said as they went; but he had an answer to it that made her stop short. "Well, about you, Mme. de Vionnet, I've heard, I'm bound to say, almost nothing"—those struck him as the only words he himself could, with any lucidity, utter; conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to be, in respect to the rest of his business, perfectly plain and go perfectly straight. It had not at any rate been in the least his idea to spy on Chad's proper freedom. It was possibly, however, at this very instant and under the impression of Mme. de Vionnet's pause, that going straight began to announce itself as a matter for care. She had only, after all, to smile at him ever so gently to make him ask himself if he weren't already going crooked. It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear that she intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to him. This was what passed between them while, for another instant, they stood still; he couldn't at least remember afterwards what else it might have been. The thing indeed really unmistakable was that it rolled over him as a wave that he had been, in conditions incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of discussion. He had been on some ground that concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should never be able to match.

"Hasn't Miss Gostrey," she asked, "said a good word for me?"

What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady; and he wondered what account Chad would have given of their acquaintance. Something not as yet traceable, at all events, had obviously happened. "I didn't even know of her knowing you."

"Well, now she'll tell you all. I'm so glad you're in relation with her."

This was one of the things—the "all" Miss Gostrey would now tell him—that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost for Strether after they had taken their seat. One of the others was, at the end of five minutes, that she—oh, incontestably, yes—differed less; differed, that is, scarcely at all—well, superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs, Pocock. She was