zlingly,
though quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which
she wasn't, oh no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian,
anything one would, in a way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes
and parchments, at least of every "part," whether memorised or
improvised, in the curtained costumed school repertory, and in especial
of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about
"home," among their variegated mates.

It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English,
to name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss
Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who don't keep you
explaining--minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of
confessionals at Saint Peter's. You might confess to her with
confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins. Therefore--! But
Strether's narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by
which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also
perhaps sufficiently protected. He had a moment of wondering, while
his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went
on at all events to the mention of her having met the young
thing--again by some Swiss lake--in her first married state, which had
appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently
disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to HER, full
of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders,
and then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but
differently charming--touching and rather mystifying for the five
minutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which
it had come out that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had
understood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had
beautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless. There were
doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if
she wasn't. She was another person however--that had been promptly
marked--from the small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little
person quite made over (as foreign women WERE, compared with American)
by marriage. Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there
would have been--all that was possible--a judicial separation. She had
settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat. It was no
very pleasant boat--especially there--to be in; but Marie de Vionnet
would ha