Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/315

THE AMERICAN mother-in-law. Madame de Bellegarde looked up at last with a prodigious extemporised grace. "I can't think of letting you offer me a fête until I've offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we 'll invite them all. We have it very much at heart. We must do things in order. Come to me about the twenty-fifth; I 'll let you know the exact day immediately. We shall not have any one so fine as Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very good people. After that you may talk of your own party." She spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling more agreeably as she went on.

It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always touched the sources of his good-nature. He replied after a little discussion that he would be glad to come on the twenty-fifth or any other day, and that it mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or his own. We have noted him for observant, yet on this occasion he failed to catch a thin sharp eyebeam, as cold as a flash of steel, which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and the Marquis and which we may presume to have been a commentary on the innocence displayed in that latter clause of his speech.

Count Valentin walked away with him that evening and, when they had left the scene of so many anxieties well behind them, said reflectively: "My mother's very strong—ah, but uncommonly strong." Then in answer to an interrogative movement of Newman's: "She was driven to the wall, but you 'd never have thought it. Her party on the twenty-fifth was an invention of the moment. She had no idea 285