 his reply?« And then as she this time gave it
up: »Why that he has two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter,
about to arrive in Paris - coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so
furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by
kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see
them again himself. Is that,« Strether enquired, »the way he's going to try to
get off? These are the people,« he explained, »that he must have gone down to
see before I arrived. They're the best friends he has in the world, and they
take more interest than any one else in what concerns him. As I'm his next best
he sees a thousand reasons why we should comfortably meet. He hasn't broached
the question sooner because their return was uncertain - seemed in fact for the
present impossible. But he more than intimates that - if you can believe it -
their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting
difficulties.«
    »They're dying to see you?« Miss Gostrey asked.
    »Dying. Of course,« said Strether, »they're the virtuous attachment.« He had
already told her about that - had seen her the day after his talk with little
Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing of the revelation.
She had helped him to put into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it
slightly deficient. Strether hadn't pressed him as to the object of the
preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of
his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the
quite other article worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a
small principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name;
wishing to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous attachments were
none of his business. He had wanted from the first not to think too much of his
dignity, but that was no reason for not allowing it any little benefit that
might turn up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference
might pass for interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be
seen whenever he could that he didn't interfere. That had of course at the same
time not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which
however he had reduced to some order before
