Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/515

THE AMERICAN better for you than what you propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I'm going into the Pare Monceau to give my little girl a walk, and my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit by the same opportunity to take the air. We're to wait for her in the park, where my husband is to join us with her. Follow me now; just within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I'll bring them near you. There's devotion for you! Le reste vous regard."

This proposal Newman eagerly caught at; it revived his drooping spirit and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not quite the featherhead she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the carriage drove away.

The Pare Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but Newman, passing into it, had little care for its elegant vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found the young Marquise promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she had spoken, while before her in the alley her little girl, attended by the footman and the lapdog, walked up and down as if to take a lesson in deportment. Newman seated himself by his friend, who began to chatter afresh, apparently with the design of convincing him that—if he would only see it—poor dear Claire did n't belong to the most pleasing type of woman. She was too long, too lean, too flat, too stiff, too cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had n't such a thing as a dimple, or even as a pretty curve—or call it 485