“ It’s quite the least”—Strether filled it out—“that she should take his sister’s husband? Certainly—quite the least. So she has taken him.”
“ She has taken him.” It was all Miss Barrace had meant.
Still it remained enough. “It must be funny.”
“ Oh it is funny.” That of course essentially went with it.
But it brought them back. “How indeed then she must care!” In answer to which Strether’s entertainer dropped a comprehensive “Ah!” expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to get used to it. She herself had got used to it long before.
II
When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be really at last upon him Strether’s immediate feeling was all relief. He had known this morning that something was about to happen—known it, in a moment,
