Explore "The Beldonald Holbein" by Henry James on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me--should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief--to paint her beautiful sister-in-law. I needn't go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself. She has a manner of her own of putting things, and some of those she has put to me--! Her implication was that Lady Beldonald hadn't only seen and admired certain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour of the painter's "personality." Had I been struck with this sketch I might easily have imagined her ladyship was throwing me the handkerchief. "She hasn't done," my visitor said, "what she ought."
"Do you mean she has done what she oughtn't?"