Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/410

 she had not yet treated him. In a simpler person he would have called it a great and direct kindness, but in this young lady's deportment the flower was apt to be one thing and the perfume another. "Tell me about these people," she went on again: "I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I 've not seen. What are they all talking about? It 's all very clever, I suppose, and quite beyond me. There 's Miss Blanchard detaching herself as usual against the darkest object she can find. She would find means to make the Great Desert resemble a photographer's studio. But she 's too much like a head on a postage-stamp. And there 's that nice little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman for a mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancée, of course she 's here. Ah, I see!" She paused; she was looking intently at Mary Garland. Rowland measured the sincerity of her glance and suddenly acquired a conviction. "I should like so much to know her!" she said, turning to Madame Grandoni. "She has a charming face; I 'm sure she 's the nicest person here. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second thoughts I would rather you did n't. I 'll speak to her bravely myself, as a friend of her—what do you call it in English?—her promesso sposo." Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous, crumpled it together and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a corner, gave it in charge to her poodle, who straightway proceeded to squat on it with upright vigilance. Christina 376