 the first occasion as to name the ground of his present recognition.
Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own side as well - which
would only have added to the mystery. All she now began by saying to him
nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his enquiry, she was moved to
ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a question of Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose
Connecticut - Mr. Waymarsh the American lawyer.
    »Oh yes,« he replied, »my very well-known friend. He's to meet me here,
coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he'd already have arrived. But he doesn't
come till later, and I'm relieved not to have kept him. Do you know him?«
Strether wound up.
    It wasn't till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much there
had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder, as well as the
play of something more in her face - something more, that is, than its
apparently usual restless light - seemed to notify him. »I've met him at Milrose
- where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to stay; I had friends there who
were friends of his, and I've been at his house. I won't answer for it that he
would know me,« Strether's new acquaintance pursued; »but I should be delighted
to see him. Perhaps,« she added, »I shall - for I'm staying over.« She paused
while our friend took in these things, and it was as if a good deal of talk had
already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and Strether presently observed
that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be seen. This, however, appeared
to affect the lady as if she might have advanced too far. She appeared to have
no reserves about anything. »Oh,« she said, »he won't care!« - and she
immediately thereupon remarked that she believed Strether knew the Munsters; the
Munsters being the people he had seen her with at Liverpool.
    But he didn't, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the case
much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the mere laid table
of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned connexion had rather removed
than placed a dish, and there seemed nothing else to serve. Their attitude
remained, none the less, that of not forsaking the
