There was none surely in which, as Maria remembered
her, she mustn't be charming; and this frankly in spite of the stigma
of failure in the tie where failure always most showed. It was no test
there--when indeed WAS it a test there?--for Monsieur de Vionnet
had been a brute. She had lived for years apart from him--which was
of course always a horrid position; but Miss Gostrey's impression
of the matter had been that she could scarce have made a better
thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable. She
was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily
not the case for her husband. He was so impossible that she had the
advantage of all her merits.
It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet--it
being also history that the lady in question was a Countess--should
now, under Miss Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high
distinguished polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a
mysterious order; it was history, further, that the charming girl
so freely sketched by his companion should have been married out of
hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full of dark
personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this
company was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations
as put divorce out of the question.
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