Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/399

 to see Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt a confirmed esteem. He had always talked to her with comfortable candour, but now he made her the confidant of his innermost worries. Roderick and Roderick's concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural course to talk of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Mrs. Hudson's companion. In respect to certain equivocations, however, that he had not been ashamed to practise in regard to this young lady, she lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell. "At one moment you tell me the girl 's plain," she said; "the next you tell me she 's lovely. I 'll call on them, I 'll invite them. But one thing 's very clear; you 're in love with her down to the ground." Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her, and it was odd to him that he should so like her saying it.

"More than that," she added, "you 've been in love with her these two years. There was that certain something about you—! I knew you were of what we Germans call a subjective turn of mind; but you had a twist of it more than was natural. Why did n't you tell me at once? You would have saved me a great deal of trouble. And poor Augusta Blanchard too!" With which Madame Grandoni produced, for their consumption, a colloquial plum. Miss Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth were going to make a match; the young lady had been staying for a month at Albano, and as Mr. Leavenworth had been dancing attendance the event was a matter of course. Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself with 365