Chad and Miss Gostrey had rummaged and purchased and picked up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, comparing; whereas the mistress of the scene before him, beautifully passive under the spell of transmission--transmission from her father's line, he quite made up his mind--had only received, accepted and been quiet.

When she hadn't been quiet she had been moved at the most to some occult charity for some fallen fortune.

There had been objects she or her predecessors might even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether couldn't suspect them of having sold old pieces to get "better" ones.

They would have felt no difference as to better or worse.

He could but imagine their having felt--perhaps in emigration, in proscription, for his sketch was slight and confused--the pressure of want or the obligation of sacrifice.
The pressure of want--whatever might be the case with the other force--was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric.