Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/193

Rh Strether hesitated. "She didn't send me out to 'like' you."

"Oh," she charmingly remonstrated, "she sent you out to face the facts."

He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. "But how can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him," he then braced himself to ask, "to marry your daughter?"

She gave a head-shake as noble as it was prompt. "No—not that."

"And he really doesn't want to himself?"

She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face. "He likes her too much."

Strether wondered. "To be willing to consider, you mean, the question of taking her to America?"

"To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and nice—really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You must see her again."

Strether felt awkward. "Ah, with pleasure—she's so remarkably attractive."

The mother's eagerness with which Mme. de Vionnet jumped at this was to come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. "The dear thing did please you?" Then as he met it with the largest "Oh!" of enthusiasm: "She's perfect. She's my joy."

"Well, I'm sure that—if one were near her and saw more of her—she would be mine."

"Then," said Mme. de Vionnet, "tell Mrs. Newsome that!"

He wondered the more. "What good will that do you?" As she only hesitated, however, he brought out something else. "Is your daughter in love with our friend?"

"Ah," she rather startlingly answered, "I wish you'd find out!"

He showed his surprise. "I? A stranger?"

"Oh, you won't be a stranger—presently. You shall see her quite, I assure you, as if you weren't."

It remained for him, none the less, an extraordinary notion. "It seems to me, surely, that if her mother can't"