The Reverberator by Henry James Page B

She would not like the Dossons superficially any better than his father or than Margaret or Jane (he called these ladies by their English names, but for themselves,their husbands, their friends and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne); but there was a considerable chance that he might induce her to take his point of view. She was as fond of beauty and of the arts as he was; this was one of their bonds of union. She appreciated highly Charles Waterlow’s talent and there had been a good deal of talk about his painting her portrait. It is true her husband viewed the project with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out.
    According to Gaston’s plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have stimulated her curiosity by his rhapsodies, in advance, rhapsodies bearing wholly upon the work itself, the example of Waterlow’s powers, and not upon the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to tell her that he had met the girl (at the studio), and that she was as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing this, Mme. de Brécourt, as a disinterested lover of charming impressions, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a creature; upon which Waterlow was to say that that would be easy if she would come in some day when Miss Francie was sitting. He would give her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn’t let the opportunity pass. She would return alone (this time he wouldn’t go with her), and she would be as much struck as he hoped. Everything depended on that, but it couldn’t fail. The girl would have to captivate her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn’t know who the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so flaxen as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips andprotuberant, light-coloured eyes. Waterlow was to do no introducing and to reveal the visitor’s identity only after she had gone. This was a charge he grumbled at; he called the whole business an odious comedy, but his friend knew that if he undertook it he would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brécourt had been captivated (the question of whether Francie would be so received in advance no consideration), her brother would throw off the mask and convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be arranged for her with the girl (in which each would appear in her proper character), and in short the plot would thicken.
    Gaston Probert’s forecast of his difficulties revealed a considerable faculty for analysis, but that was not rare enough in the French composition of things to make his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brécourt, she was enchanted with the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to follow in its order. Mme. de Brécourt raved, to Waterlow’s face (she had no opinions behind people’s backs), about his mastery of his craft; she could say flattering things to a man with an assurance altogether her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; her success in life sprang from a much cleverer selection of her pronouns. Waterlow, who liked her and wanted to paint her ugliness (it was so charming, as he would make it), had two opinions about her—one of which was that she knew a hundred times less than she thought (and even than her brother thought), of what she talked about; and the other that she was after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of newspapers, but her hands and feet werecelebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had never been effectively exposed.
    “But she must be charming, your young lady,” she said to Gaston, while she turned her head this way and that