Strether didn't at all mentally impute to Chad that he was with his "good friend"; he gave him the benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he had to describe them--for instance to Maria--he would have conveniently qualified as more subtle.

It came to him indeed the next thing that there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie in such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have extemporised, under the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift Paris of wonder arid fancy.

Our friend in any case now recognised--and it was as if at the recognition Mrs.Newsome's fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, grown thin and vague--that day after day he had been conscious in respect to his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he could at last read a meaning.

It had been at the most, this mystery, an obsession--oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into its place as at the touch of a spring.

It had represented the possibility between them of some communication baffled by accident and delay--the possibility even of some relation as yet unacknowledged.
There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years; but that--and it was what was strangest--had nothing whatever in common with what was now in the air.