He performed the movement which was so frequent with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his taking mental possession of a scene--he extended his legs.

The impression Madame de Cintre had made upon him on their first meeting came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew.

She was pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention.
She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs.Tristram, how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there, how he liked it.

She spoke English without an accent, or rather with that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women, he had come to like extremely.

Here and there Madame de Cintre's utterance had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten minutes Newman found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses.