She came out with
her impression of Madame de Vionnet--of whom she had "heard so
much"; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom she had
been "dying to see": she brought it out with a blandness by which
her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early
that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts
of things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes--clothes
that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves eternal--to call in the
Rue de Bellechasse.
At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he
couldn't have sounded them first--and yet couldn't either have
justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn't
have begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he
should ever have had to spend. It was as friends of Chad's, friends
special, distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of
them, and she beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard
of them--though she didn't say how or where, which was a touch of
her own--she had found them beyond her supposition. She abounded in
praise of them, and after the manner of Woollett--which made the
manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to Strether. He had never
so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming companion
pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too
fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was
perfectly ideal, a real little monster of charm.
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