Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/343

THE AMERICAN In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was illumined with flaring torches and the portico draped and carpeted. When Newman arrived there were but few persons present. The Marquise and her two daughters were on the top landing of the staircase, where the ancient marble nymph peeped out from a bower of plants. Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and pearls and fine laces, resembled some historic figure painted by Vandyke; she made her daughter, in comparative vaguenesses of white, splendid and pale, seem, for his joy of possession, infinitely modern and near. His hostess greeted him with a fine hard urbanity and, looking round, called to several of the persons standing at hand. They were elderly gentlemen with faces as marked and featured and filled-in, for some science of social topography, as, to Newman's whimsical sense, any of the little towered and battered old towns, on high eminences, that his tour of several countries during the previous summer had shown him; they were adorned with strange insignia, cordons and ribbons and orders, as if the old cities were flying flags and streamers and hanging out shields for a celebration, and they approached with measured alertness while the Marquise presented them the good friend of the family who was to marry her daughter. The good friend heard a confused enumeration of titles and names that matched, to his fancy, the rest of the paraphernalia; the gentlemen bowed and smiled and murmured without reserve, and he indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, 313