Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/405

 flagrantly strayed: they were rejoicingly conscious of but one young woman, who filled for him, though all by no motion of her own, the part of heroine of the occasion. Madame Grandoni had said that he sometimes spoke of this person as pretty and sometimes as plain; to-night if he had had occasion to describe her type he would recklessly have pronounced it "rich." It was as if she had somehow put lights in her dim windows and you could hear somewhere behind them the tuning of mystic fiddles. She was dressed more than he had ever seen her; it was becoming and gave her an importance, all attaching, for the eye. Two or three persons were apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them with her brilliant natural smile. Rowland, from an opposite corner, reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard's classic contour, but that somehow to-night it impressed him hardly more than an effigy stamped on a bad modern medal. Roderick could not be accused of rancour, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied familiarity and, lounging against the wall with hands in pockets, held him evidently under the spell of the good gentleman's not quite being able to decide as to the biggest hat, as it were, that his dignity could put on. Now that he had done him an impertinence the young man apparently found him less intolerable. Mr. Leavenworth stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth, without looking at his interlocutor; he might have been a large drowsy dog snapping at flies. Rowland had found it agitating to be told Miss Blanchard would have married him for the asking, and he would 371