"What do you mean?" she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting him as if he had mistaken the "period" of one of her pieces, gave him afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun to tread.
"What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?"
"Why exactly the wrong thing.
I've made a frantic friend of little Bilham."
"Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been allowed for from the first." And it was only after this that, quite as a minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be.
When she learned that he was a friend of Chad's and living for the time in Chad's rooms in Chad's absence, quite as if acting in Chad's spirit and serving Chad's cause, she showed, however, more interest.
"Should you mind my seeing him?
Only once, you know," she added.
"Oh the oftener the better: he's amusing—he's original."
"He doesn't shock you?" Miss Gostrey threw out.
"Never in the world!
We escape that with a perfection—!
I feel it to be largely, no doubt, because I don't half-understand him; but our modus vivendi isn't spoiled even by that.
You must dine with me to meet him," Strether went on. "Then you'll see.'
"Are you giving dinners?"
"Yes—there I am.
That's what I mean."
All her kindness wondered.
"That you're spending too much money?"
"Dear no—they seem to cost so little.
But that I do it to THEM.
I ought to hold off."
She thought again—she laughed.
"The money you must be spending to think it cheap!
But I must be out of it—to the naked eye."
He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him.
"Then you won't meet them?" It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected personal prudence.
She hesitated.
"Who are they—first?"
"Why little Bilham to begin with."
He kept back for the moment Miss Barrace.
"And Chad—when he comes—you must absolutely see."
"When then does he come?"
"When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me.
Bilham, however," he pursued, "will report favourably—favourably for Chad.
That will make him not afraid to come.
I want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff."
"Oh you'll do yourself for your bluff." She was perfectly easy.
"At the rate you've gone I'm quiet."
"Ah but I haven't," said Strether, "made one protest."
She turned it over.
"Haven't you been seeing what there's to protest about?"
He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth.
"I haven't yet found a single thing."
"Isn't there any one WITH him then?"
"Of the sort I came out about?"
Strether took a moment.
"How do I know?
And what do I care?"
"Oh oh!"—and her laughter spread.