He was so impossible that she had the advantage of all her merits.
It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet—it being also history that the lady in question was a Countess—should now, under Miss Gostrey's sharp touch, rise before him as a high distinguished polished impertinent reprobate, the product of a mysterious order; it was history, further, that the charming girl so freely sketched by his companion should have been married out of hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full of dark personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out of the question.
"Ces gens-la don't divorce, you know, any more than they emigrate or abjure—they think it impious and vulgar"; a fact in the light of which they seemed but the more richly special.
It was all special; it was all, for Strether's imagination, more or less rich.
The girl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting attaching creature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother who, early left a widow, had married again—tried afresh with a foreigner; in her career with whom she had apparently given her child no example of comfort.
All these people—the people of the English mother's side—had been of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite rhymed to.
It was in any case her belief that the mother, interested and prone to adventure, had been without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself most quickly of a possible, an actual encumbrance.
The father, by her impression, a Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter, leaving his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of a prey later on.
She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly, though quite booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which she wasn't, oh no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian, anything one would, in a way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes and parchments, at least of every "part," whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained costumed school repertory, and in especial of all mysteries of race and vagueness of reference, all swagger about "home," among their variegated mates.
It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English, to name her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss Gostrey felt, as one of those convenient types who don't keep you explaining—minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of confessionals at Saint Peter's.
You might confess to her with confidence in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins.
Therefore—!
But Strether's narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of a sense of the lurid in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected.
He had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian.
She went on at all events to the mention of her having met the young thing—again by some Swiss lake—in her first married state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to HER, full of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders, and then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but differently charming—touching and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which it had come out that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless.
There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if she wasn't.
She was another person however—that had been promptly marked—from the small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little person quite made over (as foreign women WERE, compared with American) by marriage.
Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there would have been—all that was possible—a judicial separation.
She had settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat.
It was no very pleasant boat—especially there—to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight.
She would have friends, certainly—and very good ones.
There she was at all events—and it was very interesting.
Her knowing Mr. Chad didn't in the least prove she hadn't friends; what it proved was what good ones HE had.
"I saw that," said Miss Gostrey, "that night at the Francais; it came out for me in three minutes. I saw HER—or somebody like her.
And so," she immediately added, "did you."
"Oh no—not anybody like her!" Strether laughed.
"But you mean," he as promptly went on, "that she has had such an influence on him?"
Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go.
"She has brought him up for her daughter."
Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled glasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again took in the whole place. They were quite alone there now.
"Mustn't she rather—in the time then—have rushed it?"
"Ah she won't of course have lost an hour.
But that's just the good mother—the good French one.
You must remember that of her—that as a mother she's French, and that for them there's a special providence.
It precisely however—that she mayn't have been able to begin as far back as she'd have liked—makes her grateful for aid."
Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out.
"She counts on me then to put the thing through?"
"Yes—she counts on you.
Oh and first of all of course," Miss Gostrey added, "on her—well, convincing you."
"Ah," her friend returned, "she caught Chad young!"
"Yes, but there are women who are for all your 'times of life.'
They're the most wonderful sort."
She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next thing, to a stand.
"Is what you mean that she'll try to make a fool of me?"
"Well, I'm wondering what she WILL—with an opportunity—make."
"What do you call," Strether asked, "an opportunity?
My going to see her?"
"Ah you must go to see her"—Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive.
"You can't not do that.
You'd have gone to see the other woman. I mean if there had been one—a different sort.