She had come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.
That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word that next dropped from him.

"They're children; they play at life!"-- and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.

It implied that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility, appeared to give Mrs.Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs.Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should become acquainted.

Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon, with Chad's lucidity.

"Why, isn't that exactly--to get a sight of the company I keep--what she has come out for ?" "Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.
Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation.