It really consisted, he was soon enough to feel, in just one
great little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature, she was
thoroughly--he had to cast about for the word, but it came--bred.
He couldn't of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her
nature, but the idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped
into his mind. He had never yet known it so sharply presented. Her
mother gave it, no doubt; but her mother, to make that less sensible,
gave so much else besides, and on neither of the two previous occasions,
extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything like what she was giving
tonight. Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case of education;
whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that
denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of--well, he didn't know what.
"He has wonderful taste, notre jeune homme": this was what Gloriani
said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture
suspended near the door of the room. The high celebrity in question
had just come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet,
but while Strether had got up from beside her their fellow guest,
with his eye sharply caught, had paused for a long look. The thing
was a landscape, of no size, but of the French school, as our
friend was glad to feel he knew, and also of a quality--which he
liked to think he should also have guessed; its frame was large out
of proportion to the canvas, and he had never seen a person look at
anything, he thought, just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and
quick movements of the head from side to side and bottom to top,
examined this feature of Chad's collection.
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