 clear that she intended
very definitely to be what he would have called nice to him. This was what
passed between them while, for another instant, they stood still; he couldn't at
least remember afterwards what else it might have been. The thing indeed really
unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that he had been, in conditions
incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of discussion. He had been, on some
ground that concerned her, answered for; which gave her an advantage he should
never be able to match.
    »Hasn't Miss Gostrey,« she asked, »said a good word for me?«
    What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady; and
he wondered what account Chad would have given of their acquaintance. Something
not as yet traceable, at all events, had obviously happened. »I didn't even know
of her knowing you.«
    »Well, now she'll tell you all. I'm so glad you're in relation with her.«
    This was one of the things - the all Miss Gostrey would now tell him - that,
with every deference to present preoccupation, was uppermost for Strether after
they had taken their seat. One of the others was, at the end of five minutes,
that she - oh incontestably, yes - differed less; differed, that is, scarcely at
all - well, superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock.
She was ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other; but
what was there in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he should
meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on the bench
together not the same as would have been found adequate for a Woollett
garden-party? - unless perhaps truly in not being quite so bright. She observed
to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge, taken extraordinary pleasure in
his visit; but there was no good lady at Woollett who wouldn't have been at
least up to that. Was there in Chad, by chance, after all, deep down, a
principle of aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for sentimental ends, attach
himself to elements, happily encountered, that would remind him most of the old
air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a flutter - Strether could even put
it that way - about this unfamiliar phenomenon of the femme du monde? On these
terms Mrs. Newsome herself was as much of one. Little Bilham verily
