“And was he nice?”
Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “Any man’s nice when he’s in love.”
It made Strether laugh. “But is Monsieur de Montbron in love—already—with you?”
“Oh that’s not necessary—it’s so much better he should be so with her: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He’s perfectly gone—and I couldn’t have borne it for her if he hadn’t been. She’s just too sweet.”
Strether hesitated. “And through being in love too?”
On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful answer. “She doesn’t know if she is or not.”
It made him again laugh out. “Oh but you do!”
She was willing to take it that way. “Oh yes, I know everything.” And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of it—only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out—the momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their affair, seemed stupid.
“Know that poor little Jeanne doesn’t know what’s the matter with her?”
It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she appealed to something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person who, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender. “If I see a little more of her, as I hope I shall, I think she’ll like me enough—for she seemed to like me to-day—to want me to tell her.”