Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/283

THE AMERICAN "On the stairs, you mean?"

"Yes, sir. When you've been coming to see the Countess. I've taken the liberty of noticing that you come often."

"Oh yes; I come very often," he laughed. "You need n't have been very much emancipated to notice that."

"I've noticed it with pleasure, sir," said this interesting member of the family. And she stood looking at him with a strange expression of face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent self-effacement and the knowledge of her appointed orbit. But there mingled with it an impulse born of the occasion and of a sense, probably, of this free stranger's unprecedented affability; and, beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties, as if my lady's own woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person, she had a slight reversionary property in herself.

"You take a great interest in our friends?" he asked.

She looked at him as if she admired that expression and had never heard anything quite like it. "A deep interest, sir. Especially in the Countess."

"I'm glad of that," said Newman. And he smilingly followed it up. "You can't take more than I do!"

"So I supposed, sir. We can't help noticing these things and having our ideas; can we, sir?"

"You mean as an old employee?"

"Ah, there it is, sir. I'm afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle with such matters I rather step 253