"Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?"

"I'm thinking of his mother," said Strether after a moment. "He has
darkened her admirable life." He spoke with austerity. "He has
worried her half to death."

"Oh that's of course odious." She had a pause as if for renewed
emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note. "Is her life
very admirable?"

"Extraordinarily."

There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote
another pause to the appreciation of it. "And has he only HER? I
don't mean the bad woman in Paris," she quickly added--"for I
assure you I shouldn't even at the best be disposed to allow him
more than one. But has he only his mother?"

"He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they're
both remarkably fine women."

"Very handsome, you mean?"

This promptitude--almost, as he might have thought, this
precipitation, gave him a brief drop; but he came up again.
"Mrs. Newsome, I think, is handsome, though she's not of course,
with a son of twenty-eight and a daughter of thirty, in her very
first youth. She married, however, extremely young."