Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/310

304 "Certainly—but not for the first time. He's an old friend." At which Strether had a slow, amused, significant headshake that made her go on: "You mean that for her at least he's a new person—that she sees him as different?"

"She sees him as different."

"And how does she see him?"

Strether gave it up. "How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep young man?"

"Is everyone so deep? Is she so too?"

"So it strikes me—deeper than I thought. But wait a little, and, between us, we'll make it out. You'll judge, for that matter, for yourself."

Mme. de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. "Then she will come with her? I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?"

"Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that. But leave it all to Chad."

"Ah," wailed Mme. de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, "the things I leave to Chad!"

The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his vision of her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. "Oh well, trust him. Trust him all the way." He had indeed no sooner so spoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared again to come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a short laugh, immediately checked. He became still more advisory. "When they do come, give them plenty of Miss Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well."

She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. "For Mamie to hate her?"

He had another of his corrective headshakes. "Mamie will do nothing of the sort. Trust them."

She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always come back to: "It's you I trust. But I was sincere," she said, "at the hotel. I did, I do, want my child"

"Well?" Strether waited with deference while she appeared to hesitate as to how to put it.

"Well, to do what she can for me."

Strether, for a little, met her eyes on it; after which