Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/333

Rh happen to little girls." And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake, "Haven't you found that yourself?"

"That things happen? Oh, I'm not a little girl. I'm a big, battered, blowsy one. I don't care," Mamie laughed, "what happens."

Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that he should give her the pleasure of hearing from him that he found her nicer than he had really dreamed—a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this out. He risked accordingly a different question, though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. "But that Mlle. de Vionnet is to be married—I suppose you've heard of that."

For all, he then found, he need fear! "Dear, yes; the gentleman was there—M. de Montbron, whom Mme. de Vionnet presented to us."

"And was he nice?"

Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. "Any man's nice when he's in love."

It made Strether laugh. "But is M. de Montbron in love—already—with you?"

"Oh, that's not necessary—it's so much better he should be so with her: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He's perfectly gone—and I couldn't have borne it for her if he hadn't been. She's just too sweet."

Strether hesitated. "And through being in love too?"

On which, with a smile that struck him as wonderful, Mamie had a wonderful answer. "She doesn't know if she is or not."

It made him again laugh out. "Oh, but you do?"

She was willing to take it that way. "Oh yes, I know everything." And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of it—only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out—the momentary effect for Strether was that everyone else, in all their affair, seemed stupid.

"Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't know what's the matter with her?"