Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/97

Rh All her kindness wondered. "That you're spending too much money?"

"Dear, no—they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to them. I ought to hold off."

She thought again—she laughed. "The money you must be spending—to think it cheap! But I must be out of it—to the naked eye."

He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. "Then you won't meet them?" It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected personal prudence.

She hesitated. "Who are they—first?"

"Why, little Bilham—to begin with." He kept back for the moment Miss Barrace. "And Chad—when he comes—you must absolutely see."

"When then does he come?"

"When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him, about me. Bilham, however," he pursued, "will report favourably—favourably for Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I want you the more, therefore, you see, for my bluff."

"Oh, you'll do yourself for your bluff." She was perfectly easy. "At the rate you've gone I'm quiet."

"Ah, but I haven't," said Strether, "made one protest."

She turned it over. "Haven't you been seeing what there is to protest about?"

He let her with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth.

"I haven't yet found a single thing."

"Isn't there anyone with him then?"

"Of the sort I came out about?" Strether took a moment. "How do I know? And what do I care?"

"Oh, oh!"—and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by the effect on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. She saw, however, still other things. But in an instant she had hidden them. "You've got at no facts at all?"

He tried to muster them. "Well, he has a lovely home."

"Ah, that, in Paris," she quickly returned, "proves nothing. That is, rather, it disproves nothing. They may very well, you see, the people your mission is concerned with, have done it for him."