Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/533

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called on the immense, the comical Duchess and found her at home. An old gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired, and our hero supposed him one of the high personages with whom he had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde's party. The Duchess, in her armchair, from which she did n't move, with a great flower-pot on one side of her, a pile of pink-covered novels on the other and a large piece of tapestry depending from her lap, presented an expansive and imposing front; but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious and there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence. She talked to him of flowers and books, getting launched with marvellous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris, about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this had a large free flow on the part of the Duchess, who, like many of her countrywomen, was a person of an affirmative rather than an interrogative cast, who uttered good things and put them herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present of a convenient little opinion neatly enveloped in the gilt paper of a happy Gallicism. Newman had come 503