She had held herself for months with a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on any chance--and chances were specious enough--that she might interfere to her profit.

She had turned her back on the dream that Mrs.Newsome's rupture, their friend's forfeiture--the engagement the relation itself, broken beyond all mending--might furnish forth her advantage; and, to stay her hand from promoting these things, she had on private, difficult, but rigid, lines, played strictly fair.

She couldn't therefore but feel that, though, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called interested, elation remained rather vague.

Strether might easily have made out that she had been asking herself, in the hours she had just sat through, if there were still for her, or were only not, a fair shade of uncertainty.

Let us hasten to add, however, that what he at first made out on this occasion he also at first kept to himself.