off, "can
always help a woman. I'm sure you 'know'--but we know perhaps
different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; but it
was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight. She smiled
in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs.
Pocock; she put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and
it came to him in the course of a minute and in the oddest way
that--yes, positively--she was giving him over to ruin. She was all
kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so giving him; she was
exquisite, and her being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush
of meaning into his own equivocations. How could she know how she was
hurting him? She wanted to show as simple and humble--in the degree
compatible with operative charm; but it was just this that seemed to
put him on her side. She struck him as dressed, as arranged, as
prepared infinitely to conciliate--with the very poetry of good taste
in her view of the conditions of her early call. She was ready to
advise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the
disposition of Chad's family. Strether noticed her card on the
table--her coronet and her "Comtesse"--and the imagination was sharp in
him of certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind. She had never, he
was sure, sat with a "Comtesse" before, and such was the specimen of
that class he had been keeping to play on her. She had crossed the sea
very particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet's
own eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully met as that
she herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of him. She looked
much as she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in
fact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress. It
seemed to speak--perhaps a little prematurely or too finely--of the
sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops. The way that
lady took her in, moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss
Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had escaped. He winced as he saw
himself but for that timely prudence ushering in Maria as a guide and
an example. There was however a touch of relief for him in his
glimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah's line. She "knew Paris."
Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly taken this up. "Ah
then you've a turn for that, an affinity that belongs to your family.
Your brother, though his long experience makes a