Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/537

THE AMERICAN thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had ever encountered, related examples of its Machiavellian power to calculate its perils and profits, and at last declared that for her the race were half arithmetic and half ice. The Prince became flame and rhetoric to refute her, and his visit really proved charming.

Newman was naturally out of the fray; he sat with his head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors. The Duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile, as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that it lay only with him to say something very much to the point. But he said nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander. A singular feeling came over him—a sudden sense of the folly of his errand. What under the sun had he after all to say to the Duchess? Wherein would it profit him to denounce the Bellegardes to her for traitors and the Marquise into the bargain for a murderess? He seemed morally to have turned a high somersault and to find things looking differently in consequence. He felt, as by the effect of some colder current of the air, his will stiffen in another direction and the mantle of his reserve draw closer. What in the world had he been thinking of when he fancied Madame d'Outreville could help him and that it would conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes? What did her opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him? It was only a shade more important than the opinion the Bellegardes entertained of herself. The Duchess help him, that cold, stout, soft, artificial woman help him?—she 507