him that she should have shown as more
vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!--which would be
indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two
gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this
accident stayed for the time further developments.

They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she
rose to speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though
mature and by no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the
range of expensive reference, that he had, as might have been said,
made his plans for. Madame de Vionnet greeted her as "Duchesse" and
was greeted in turn, while talk started in French, as "Ma toute-belle";
little facts that had their due, their vivid interest for Strether.
Madame de Vionnet didn't, none the less, introduce him--a note he was
conscious of as false to the Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity;
though it didn't prevent the Duchess, who struck him as confident and
free, very much what he had obscurely supposed duchesses, from looking
at him as straight and as hard--for it WAS hard--as if she would have
liked, all the same, to know him. "Oh yes, my dear, it's all right,
it's ME; and who are YOU, with your interesting wrinkles and your most
effective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?"--some
such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to
fling at him. Strether almost wondered--at such a pace was he
going--if some divination of the influence of either party were what
determined Madame de Vionnet's abstention. One of the gentlemen, in
any case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our
friend's companion; a gentleman rather stout and importantly short, in
a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock coat buttoned
with an effect of superlative decision. His French had quickly turned
to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one
of the ambassadors. His design was evidently to assert a claim to
Madame de Vionnet's undivided countenance, and he made it good in the
course of a minute--led her away with a trick of three words; a trick
played with a social art of which Strether, looking after them as the
four, whose backs were now all turned, moved off, felt himself no
master.

He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party,
reflected, as he had done before, on Chad's strange communities. He
s