Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/214

 particularly provokes me to make the remarks my mother so inconsolably deplores. I noticed it the first time I saw you. I think it 's because your face is so broad. For some reason or other broad faces exasperate me; they fill me with a kind of rabbia. Last summer at Carlsbad there was an Austrian count with enormous estates and some great office at court. He was very attentive — seriously so; he was really very far gone. Cela ne tenait qu'à moi! But I could n't; he was impossible. He must have measured from ear to ear at least a yard and a half. And he was tow-coloured too, which made it worse — almost as fair as Stenterello — though of course Stenterello's face, like his conversation, is full of point. So I said to him frankly: 'Many thanks, Herr Graf; your uniform's magnificent, but your face is too fat.'"

"I 'm afraid that mine also," said Rowland with a smile, "seems just now to have assumed an unpardonable latitude."

"Oh, I take it you know very well that we're hunting for a husband and that none but tremendous swells need apply. Surely before these gentlemen, mamma, I may speak freely; they 're so perfectly disinterested. Mr. Mallet won't do, because, though he 's rich, he 's not rich enough. Mamma made that discovery the day after we went to see you, moved to it by the promising look of your furniture. I hope she was right, eh? Unless you have millions, you know, you need n't apply."

"You reduce me to the sense of beggary," said Rowland.

"Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, 180