Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/197

Rh impossible." He had begged the young man would present his excuses, and had trusted him to understand that it couldn't really strike one as quite the straight thing. He had not reported to Mrs. Newsome that he had promised to "save" Mme. de Vionnet; but, so far as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn't, at any rate, promised to haunt her house. What Chad had understood could only, in truth, be inferred from Chad's behaviour, which had been in this connection as easy as in every other. He was easy always when he understood; he was easier still, if possible, when he didn't; he had replied that he would make it all right; and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present occasion—as he was ready to substitute others—for any, for every occasion as to which his old friend should have a funny scruple.

"Oh, but I'm not a little foreign girl; I'm just as English as I can be," Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon, he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her, vacated by Mme. Gloriani at his approach. Mme. Gloriani, who was in black velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty melted at any contact into the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked—making the most of the advantage of his years—that it frightened him quite enough to find himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There were girls he wasn't afraid of—he was quite bold with little Americans. Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end—"Oh, but I'm almost American too. That's what mamma has wanted me to be—I mean like that, for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom. She has known such good results from it."

She was fairly beautiful to him—a faint pastel in an oval frame; he thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died young. Little Jeanne wasn't, doubtless, to die young,