Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/540

THE AMERICAN has not turned out badly. I was not at all deceived in Lizzie for instance; I always had my doubts about her. Whatever you may think of my present situation I must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open. Now suppose you had got into something like this box with your grand cold Countess. You may depend upon it she 'd have turned out a stiff one. And upon my word I don't see where you could have found your comfort. Not from the Marquis, my dear Newman; he was n't a man you could go and talk things over with in an easy and natural way. Did he ever seem to want to have you on the premises? Did he ever try to see you alone? Did he ever ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening or step in, when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something? I don't think you 'd have got much out of him. And as for that daughter of a hundred earls his mother, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose. They have a great expression here, you know; they call any damned thing 'sympathetic'—that is when it is n't it ought to be. Now Madame de Bellegarde's about as sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They're a d—d stony-faced, cold-blooded lot anyway; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs. I felt as if I were walking up and down the Armoury in the Tower of London—every one cased in ancestral steel, every one perched up in a panoply. My dear boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting it, but, you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money. I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money. Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose 510