The season had been one at which Mrs.Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had broken on them all as a blessing that their absentee HAD perhaps a conscience--that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of variety.

The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had determined, on the part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in fact, as he now recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm.
But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the curtain.

The son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve--his effective little use of the name of which, like his allusion to the best French, appeared to have been but one of the notes of his rough cunning.

The light refreshment of these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of them very far.

On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more direct and more deep.