THE AMERICAN
whomsoever approached her and yet detaching for his own especial benefit a glance that seemed to say: "See how completely I'm interested, how agreeably I'm occupied, how deeply I'm absorbed." He often wondered what those supposedly honoured by this intensity of participation thought of her at such moments, and he sometimes answered her look by looking at them; but no one, for all the fine community of taste, that air in the place as of bitter convictions dissolved in iced indifference and partaken of for refreshment with small rare old family spoons, appeared to meet him on any such particular question any more intimately than on any other—and all by direct default of ability; which would have made him again ask himself, but for his constant anxious ache, what he was doing in so deadly a hole at all. To ache very hard at one point, he found, was practically to be unconscious of punctures at any other. When he at all events made his bow to the old lady by the fire he always asked her with a laugh whether she could "stand him" another evening, and she replied without a laugh, that, thank God, she had always been able to do her duty. Talking of her once to Mrs. Tristram he had remarked that, after all, it was very easy to get on with her; it always was easy to get on with out-and-out rascals.
"And is it by that elegant term that you designate the Marquise?"
"Well, she's a bad, bold woman. She's a wicked old sinner."
"What then has been her sin?"
He thought a little. "I should n't wonder if she
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