At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he couldn’t have sounded them first—and yet couldn’t either have justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn’t have begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have had to spend. It was as friends of Chad’s, friends special, distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them—though she didn’t say how or where, which was a touch of her own—she had found them beyond her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after the manner of Woollett—which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little monster of charm. “Nothing,” she said of Jeanne, “ought ever to happen to her—she’s so awfully right as she is. Another touch will spoil her—so she oughtn’t to _be_ touched.” “Ah but things, here in Paris,” Strether observed, “do happen to little girls.” And then for the joke’s and the occasion’s sake: “Haven’t you found that yourself?” “That things happen—? Oh I’m not a little girl. I’m a big battered blowsy one. _I_ don’t care,” Mamie laughed, “_what_ happens.” Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn’t happen that he should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than he had really dreamed—a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this out. He risked accordingly a different question—though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. “But that Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married—I suppose you’ve heard of _that_.” For all, he then found, he need fear! “Dear, yes; the gentleman was there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.” “And was he nice?” Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “Any man’s nice when he’s in love.” It made Strether laugh. “But is Monsieur de Montbron in love—already—with _you?_” “Oh that’s not necessary—it’s so much better he should be so with _her_: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He’s perfectly gone—and I couldn’t have borne it for her if he hadn’t been. She’s just too sweet.” Strether hesitated. “And through being in love too?” On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful answer. “She doesn’t know if she is or not.” It made him again laugh out. “Oh but _you_ do!”