"

"Ah but things, here in Paris," Strether observed, "do happen to little
girls." And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake: "Haven't you
found that yourself?"

"That things happen--? Oh I'm not a little girl. I'm a big battered
blowsy one. I don't care," Mamie laughed, "WHAT happens."

Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that he
should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than
he had really dreamed--a pause that ended when he had said to himself
that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps
already made this out. He risked accordingly a different
question--though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to
place it in relation to her last speech. "But that Mademoiselle de
Vionnet is to be married--I suppose you've heard of THAT." For all, he
then found, he need fear! "Dear, yes; the gentleman was there:
Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us."

"And was he nice?"

Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. "Any man's
nice when he's in love."

It made Strether laugh. "But is Monsieur de Montbron in
love--already--with YOU?"

"Oh that's not necessary--it's so much better he should be so with HER:
which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He's
perfectly gone--and I couldn't have borne it for her if he hadn't been.
She's just too sweet."

Strether hesitated. "And through being in love too?"

On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a
wonderful answer. "She doesn't know if she is or not."

It made him again laugh out. "Oh but YOU do!"

She was willing to take it that way. "Oh yes, I know everything." And
as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of
it--only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out--the
momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their
affair, seemed stupid.

"Know that poor little Jeanne doesn't know what's the matter with her?"

It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love
with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which
was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she
appealed to something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie
would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person
who, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender. "If I
see a little more of her,