One of her surprises was, that after that first visit she said no more to Littlemore about Mrs. Dolphin. He did her perhaps the grossest injustice, but he had quite expected her to bring up this lady whenever they met. “If she’ll only leave Agnes alone she may do what she will,” he said to Waterville, expressing his satisfaction. “My sister would never look at her, and it would be very awkward to have to tell her so.” She counted on aid; she made him feel this simply by the way she looked at him; but for the moment she demanded no definite service. She held her tongue but waited, and her patience itself was a deeper admonition. In the way of society, it had to be noted, her privileges were meagre, Sir Arthur Demesne and her two compatriots being, so far as the latter could discover, her only visitors. She might have had other friends, but she held her head very high and liked better to see no one than not to see the best company. She went in, clearly, for producing the effect of being by no means so neglected as fastidious. There were plenty of Americans in Paris, but in this direction she failed to extend her acquaintance; the nice people wouldn’t come to her, and nothing would have induced her to receive the others. She had a perfect and inexorable view of those she wished to avoid. Littlemore expected her every day to ask why he didn’t bring some of his friends—as to which he had his answer ready. It was rather a poor one, for it consisted but of the “academic” assurance that he wished to keep her for himself. She would be sure to retort that this was “too thin,” as indeed it was; yet the days went by without her calling him to account. The little American colony in Paris abounded in amiable women, but there were none to whom Littlemore could make up his mind to say that it would be a favour to him they should call on Mrs. Headway. He shouldn’t like them the better for doing so, and he wished to like those of whom he might ask a favour. Except, therefore, that he occasionally spoke of her as a full-blown flower of the West, still very pretty, but of not at all orthodox salon scent, who had formerly been a great chum of his, she remained unknown in the circles of the Avenue Gabriel and the streets that encircle the Arch of Triumph. To ask the men to go see her without asking the ladies would only accentuate the fact that he didn’t ask the ladies; so he asked no one at all. Besides, it was true—just a little—that he wished to keep her to himself, and he was fatuous enough to believe she really cared more for him than for any outsider. Of course, however, he would never dream of marrying her, whereas her Englishman apparently was capable of that quaintness. She hated her old past; she often made that point, talking of this “dark backward” as if it were an appendage of the same order as a thieving cook or a noisy bedroom or even an inconvenient protrusion of drapery.