So I've waited."
"You need wait no longer," she returned. "It reached me yesterday--
roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from one
of the young man's own people--as a thing quite settled. I was only
keeping it for you."
"You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?"
She hesitated. "Well, if he hasn't--"
"He hasn't. And yet the thing appears to have been practically his
doing. So there we are."
"There we are!" Maria candidly echoed.
"That's why I jumped. I jumped," he continued to explain, "because
it means, this disposition of the daughter, that there's now
nothing else: nothing else but him and the mother."
"Still--it simplifies."
"It simplifies"--he fully concurred. "But that's precisely where we
are. It marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer to
Mrs. Newsome's demonstration."
"It tells," Maria asked, "the worst?"
"The worst."
"But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?"
"He doesn't care for Sarah."
At which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up. "You mean she has already
dished herself?"
Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again
before this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer. "He
wants his good friend to know the best.
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