 fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of different colors
attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one. »No, I don't find it at
all strange,« he said slowly, smiling. »That a clever woman should turn up in
Boston, or its suburbs - that does not require so much explanation. Boston is a
very nice place.«
    »If you wish to make me contradict you,« said the Baroness, »vous vous y
prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable of agreeing to.
Boston is a paradise, and we are in the suburbs of Paradise.«
    »Just now I am not at all in the suburbs; I am in the place itself,«
rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair. He was, however, not
always lounging; and when he was he was not quite so relaxed as he pretended. To
a certain extent, he sought refuge from shyness in this appearance of
relaxation; and like many persons in the same circumstances he somewhat
exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this, the air of being much at his ease was a
cover for vigilant observation. He was more than interested in this clever
woman, who, whatever he might say, was clever not at all after the Boston
fashion; she plunged him into a kind of excitement, held him in vague suspense.
He was obliged to admit to himself that he had never yet seen a woman just like
this - not even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the
vivacity of his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking, still
superficially, the humorous view of Madame Münster. It was not at all true that
he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might
have been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian to regard in
the light of an eccentricity the desire of even the remotest alien to visit the
New England metropolis. This was an impulse for which, surely, no apology was
needed; and Madame Münster was the fortunate possessor of several New England
cousins. In fact, however, Madame Münster struck him as out of keeping with her
little circle; she was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying
anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections too
crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked to the old gentleman that
he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And indeed he had no great desire to
share his
