"Nothing," she said
of Jeanne, "ought ever to happen to her--she's so awfully right as
she is. Another touch will spoil her--so she oughtn't to BE touched."
"Ah but things, here in Paris," Strether observed, "do happen to
little girls." And then for the joke's and the occasion's sake:
"Haven't you found that yourself?"
"That things happen--? Oh I'm not a little girl. I'm a big
battered blowsy one. I don't care," Mamie laughed, "WHAT happens."
Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn't happen that
he should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer
than he had really dreamed--a pause that ended when he had said to
himself that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact
perhaps already made this out. He risked accordingly a different
question--though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he
seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. "But that
Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married--I suppose you've heard of
THAT."
For all, he then found, he need fear! "Dear, yes; the gentleman
was there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet
presented to us."
"And was he nice?"
Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. "Any
man's nice when he's in love.
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