What didn't she want ?--there was a pleasure lost for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a thrill in getting a glimpse.

Gently and sociably she kept that dark to him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for it.

She came out with her impression of Madame de Vionnet--of whom she had "heard so much"; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom she had been "dying to see": she brought it out with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes--clothes that unfortunately wouldn't be themselves eternal--to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.
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.