Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/87

 ours, Mr. Christopher Newman. I've spoken of you to him, and he has an extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come and dine I should have offered him an opportunity."

The stranger presented her face with a still brightness of kindness. He was not embarrassed, for his unconscious equanimity was boundless; but as he became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintré, the finest creature in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed ideal, he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together. Through the slight preoccupation it produced he had a sense of a longish fair face and of the look of a pair of eyes that were both intense and mild.

"I should have been most happy," said Madame de Cintré. "Unfortunately, as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go next week to the country."

Newman had made a solemn bow. "I'm very very sorry."

"Paris is really getting too hot," Madame de Cintré added, taking her friend's hand again in farewell.

Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome resolution, and she smiled more gaily, as women do when they become more earnest. "I want Mr. Newman to know you," she said, dropping her head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintré's bonnet-ribbons.

Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, and his native penetration admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to address him a word of encouragement which should be more 57