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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: She was very nice; she was tremendously polite.
She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each other's hands
and calling each other chere belle, and Madame de Cintre sent
me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give me
to understand that I too was a handsome dear. She quite made up
for past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable.
Only in an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must
present us to her mother--her mother wished to know your friends.
I didn't want to know her mother, and I was on the point of
telling Lizzie to go in alone and let me wait for her outside.
But Lizzie, with her usual infernal ingenuity,
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