Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/296

290 depths below it and behind it as he had not yet had—ministered in a way that almost frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still, in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of sympathy with her petitioner. "Let me say then, dear lady, to back your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all—is charming among the charming."

Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get into motion in time. "Yes, Countess, the American girl is a thing that your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we can show you. But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of her."

"Ah then," smiled Mme. de Vionnet, "that's exactly what I want to do. I'm sure she has much to teach us."

It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way. "Oh, that may be! But don't speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she were not pure perfection. Mlle, de Vionnet," he explained in considerable form to Mrs. Pocock, "is is pure perfection. Mlle. de Vionnet is exquisite."

It had been perhaps a little portentous, but "Ah?" Sarah simply glittered.

Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an inclination to his ally. "Miss Jane is strikingly handsome—in the regular French style."

It somehow made both Strether and Mme. de Vionnet laugh out, though at the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a vague but unmistakable "You too?" It made Waymarsh in fact look consciously over her head. Mme. de Vionnet meanwhile, however, made her point in her own way. "I wish indeed I could offer you my poor child as a dazzling attraction; it would make one's position simple enough! She's as good as she can be, but of course she's different, and the question is now—in the light of the way things seem to go—if she isn't, after all, too different; too different, I mean, from the splendid type everyone is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On the other hand, of course, Mr.