Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/151

THE AMERICAN I can do for you, my dear lady?" the young man asked with quite extravagant solicitude.

"Present me to monsieur," said his sister-in-law. And then when he had pronounced their visitor's name: "I can't curtsey to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea. So Claire receives strangers like this?" she covertly added, in French to her brother-in-law.

"Apparently! Is n't it fun?" he returned with enthusiasm.

Newman stood a moment and then approached Madame de Cintré, who looked up at him as if she were thinking of something to say. She seemed to think of nothing, however—she simply smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him his cup. For a few moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he kept taking her in. He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her "perfection" and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant things that he dreamed of finding. This made him consider her not only without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from the first moment he looked at her, had been so in her favour. And yet if she was beautiful it was not from directly dazzling him. She was tall and moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair and features uneven and harmonious. Her wide grey eyes were like a brace of deputed and garlanded maidens waiting with a compliment at the gate of a city, but they failed of that lamp-like quality and those many-coloured fires that light up, as in a constant celebration of anniversaries, the fair front of the conquering type. Madame de Cintré was of attenuated substance 121