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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portrait of a Lady
+       Volume 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Posting Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2834]
+Release Date: September, 2001
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+VOLUME II (of II)
+
+
+By Henry James
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his
+friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they
+had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying
+them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when
+he had obtained his admittance--it was one of the secondary
+theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act
+had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After
+scanning two or three tiers of boxes he perceived in one of the largest
+of these receptacles a lady whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was
+seated facing the stage and partly screened by the curtain of the box;
+and beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They
+appeared to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their
+companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the relative
+coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on the interesting
+pair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the harmony. At
+last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and this accident determined
+him. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper
+regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his
+hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.
+
+“I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely
+and want company,” was Ralph’s greeting.
+
+“You’ve some that’s very good which you’ve yet deserted.”
+
+“Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn’t want me. Then
+Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice--Miss
+Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn’t think they wanted me either.
+The opera’s very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like
+peacocks. I feel very low.”
+
+“You had better go home,” Lord Warburton said without affectation.
+
+“And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over
+her.”
+
+“She seems to have plenty of friends.”
+
+“Yes, that’s why I must watch,” said Ralph with the same large
+mock-melancholy.
+
+“If she doesn’t want you it’s probable she doesn’t want me.”
+
+“No, you’re different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.”
+
+Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel’s welcome was as to a
+friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer
+temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr.
+Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before and who, after he
+came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in
+the subjects of allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor
+that Miss Archer had, in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a
+slight exaltation; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing,
+quickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been
+mistaken on this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence
+of mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to
+indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties. Poor
+Lord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him,
+formally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with
+such arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of
+reparation--preparation? Her voice had tricks of sweetness, but why play
+them on _him_? The others came back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera
+began again. The box was large, and there was room for him to remain
+if he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an
+hour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows
+on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from
+his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young
+lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was
+another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord
+Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however;
+after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said
+nothing to detain him, but it didn’t prevent his being puzzled again.
+Why should she mark so one of his values--quite the wrong one--when she
+would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was
+angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+Verdi’s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and
+walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic
+streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under
+the stars.
+
+“What’s the character of that gentleman?” Osmond asked of Isabel after
+he had retired.
+
+“Irreproachable--don’t you see it?”
+
+“He owns about half England; that’s his character,” Henrietta remarked.
+“That’s what they call a free country!”
+
+“Ah, he’s a great proprietor? Happy man!” said Gilbert Osmond.
+
+“Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human beings?”
+ cried Miss Stackpole. “He owns his tenants and has thousands of them.
+It’s pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me.
+I don’t insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.”
+
+“It seems to me you own a human being or two,” Mr. Bantling suggested
+jocosely. “I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.”
+
+“Lord Warburton’s a great radical,” Isabel said. “He has very advanced
+opinions.”
+
+“He has very advanced stone walls. His park’s enclosed by a gigantic
+iron fence, some thirty miles round,” Henrietta announced for the
+information of Mr. Osmond. “I should like him to converse with a few of
+our Boston radicals.”
+
+“Don’t they approve of iron fences?” asked Mr. Bantling.
+
+“Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were
+talking to _you_ over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.”
+
+“Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?” Osmond went on,
+questioning Isabel.
+
+“Well enough for all the use I have for him.”
+
+“And how much of a use is that?”
+
+“Well, I like to like him.”
+
+“‘Liking to like’--why, it makes a passion!” said Osmond.
+
+“No”--she considered--“keep that for liking to _dis_like.”
+
+“Do you wish to provoke me then,” Osmond laughed, “to a passion for
+_him_?”
+
+She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a
+disproportionate gravity. “No, Mr. Osmond; I don’t think I should ever
+dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,” she more easily
+added, “is a very nice man.”
+
+“Of great ability?” her friend enquired.
+
+“Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.”
+
+“As good as he’s good-looking do you mean? He’s very good-looking. How
+detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be clever and
+handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your
+high favour! That’s a man I could envy.”
+
+Isabel considered him with interest. “You seem to me to be always
+envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it’s poor Lord
+Warburton.”
+
+“My envy’s not dangerous; it wouldn’t hurt a mouse. I don’t want to
+destroy the people--I only want to _be_ them. You see it would destroy
+only myself.”
+
+“You’d like to be the Pope?” said Isabel.
+
+“I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But
+why”--Osmond reverted--“do you speak of your friend as poor?”
+
+“Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they’ve
+hurt them; that’s their great way of showing kindness,” said Ralph,
+joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so
+transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
+
+“Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows
+as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+
+“It serves him right if you have,” said Henrietta while the curtain rose
+for the ballet.
+
+Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four
+hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she
+encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the
+lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come
+in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert
+Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase,
+entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her
+alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery.
+“And I’m leaving Rome,” he added. “I must bid you goodbye.” Isabel,
+inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps
+because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was
+thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret,
+but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which
+made him look at her rather unlightedly. “I’m afraid you’ll think me
+very ‘volatile.’ I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.”
+
+“Oh no; you could easily change your mind.”
+
+“That’s what I have done.”
+
+“_Bon voyage_ then.”
+
+“You’re in a great hurry to get rid of me,” said his lordship quite
+dismally.
+
+“Not in the least. But I hate partings.”
+
+“You don’t care what I do,” he went on pitifully.
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. “Ah,” she said, “you’re not keeping your
+promise!”
+
+He coloured like a boy of fifteen. “If I’m not, then it’s because I
+can’t; and that’s why I’m going.”
+
+“Good-bye then.”
+
+“Good-bye.” He lingered still, however. “When shall I see you again?”
+
+Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: “Some
+day after you’re married.”
+
+“That will never be. It will be after you are.”
+
+“That will do as well,” she smiled.
+
+“Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.”
+
+They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the
+shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of
+these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their
+beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence.
+It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of
+Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude;
+which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on
+the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially,
+because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The
+golden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so
+vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw
+a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows
+of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made
+them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm
+of their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their
+absent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would
+sound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the
+polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all
+before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater
+because she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,
+her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional
+tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and
+then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At
+the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance
+of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands
+behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. “I’m
+surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.
+
+“So I have--the best.” And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
+
+“Do you call them better company than an English peer?”
+
+“Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.” She got up, speaking with
+intention a little dryly.
+
+Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest
+of his question. “I’m afraid that what I heard the other evening is
+true: you’re rather cruel to that nobleman.”
+
+Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. “It’s not true. I’m
+scrupulously kind.”
+
+“That’s exactly what I mean!” Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such
+happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was
+fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and
+now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example
+of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of
+taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in
+his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert
+Osmond had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so
+much for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for
+its solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing
+him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of
+such conduct as Isabel’s. It would be proper that the woman he might
+marry should have done something of that sort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly
+qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond’s personal
+merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of
+that gentleman’s conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond
+spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended
+by affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn’t have
+seen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which
+perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel’s invidious kinsman was
+obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His
+good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his
+production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of
+a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man
+could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost
+applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would
+never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a
+knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what
+he called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too
+precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she
+had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as
+smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he
+was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing
+days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow
+irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the
+small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with
+everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at
+once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,
+going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to
+which he prefixed the title of “Rome Revisited.” A day or two later he
+showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining
+to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of
+life by a tribute to the muse.
+
+He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have
+admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the
+fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his
+spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever
+been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was
+simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human
+heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
+irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded
+himself. “Ah no, I’ve not been spoiled; certainly I’ve not been
+spoiled,” he used inwardly to repeat. “If I do succeed before I die
+I shall thoroughly have earned it.” He was too apt to reason as if
+“earning” this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and
+might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his
+career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here
+and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,
+some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had
+been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that
+is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional
+effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The
+desire to have something or other to show for his “parts”--to show
+somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went
+on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected
+him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs
+of beer to advertise what one could “stand.” If an anonymous drawing on
+a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this
+peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as
+from the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of
+style. His “style” was what the girl had discovered with a little help;
+and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world
+without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing _for_ him,
+and he would not have waited in vain.
+
+Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young
+lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: “Leave
+Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other
+views. But can’t wait if you dawdle in Rome.” The dawdling in Rome was
+very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know
+she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had
+done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as
+his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the
+cool shadow of Saint Peter’s. He would not return to Florence for ten
+days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.
+It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This
+exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our
+friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was
+to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the
+girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful
+American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable
+staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in
+travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages
+several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making
+arrangements for the morrow’s journey, and Isabel sat alone in a
+wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;
+the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the
+pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and
+painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly
+to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,
+bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,
+presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in
+her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient
+to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink
+tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale
+rosiness over the scene.
+
+“You say you’ll come back; but who knows?” Gilbert Osmond said.
+
+“I think you’re much more likely to start on your voyage round the
+world. You’re under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what
+you choose; you can roam through space.”
+
+“Well, Italy’s a part of space,” Isabel answered. “I can take it on the
+way.”
+
+“On the way round the world? No, don’t do that. Don’t put us in a
+parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don’t want to see you on
+your travels. I’d rather see you when they’re over. I should like to see
+you when you’re tired and satiated,” Osmond added in a moment. “I shall
+prefer you in that state.”
+
+Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. “You turn
+things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,
+without intending it. You’ve no respect for my travels--you think them
+ridiculous.”
+
+“Where do you find that?”
+
+She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the
+paper-knife. “You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about
+as if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put
+into my power to do so. You don’t think a woman ought to do that. You
+think it bold and ungraceful.”
+
+“I think it beautiful,” said Osmond. “You know my opinions--I’ve treated
+you to enough of them. Don’t you remember my telling you that one ought
+to make one’s life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;
+but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be
+trying to do with your own.”
+
+She looked up from her book. “What you despise most in the world is bad,
+is stupid art.”
+
+“Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.”
+
+“If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,” she went
+on.
+
+Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their
+conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had
+seen it before. “You have one!”
+
+“That’s exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.”
+
+“I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it’s one of the countries
+I want most to see. Can’t you believe that, with my taste for old
+lacquer?”
+
+“I haven’t a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,” said Isabel.
+
+“You’ve a better excuse--the means of going. You’re quite wrong in
+your theory that I laugh at you. I don’t know what has put it into your
+head.”
+
+“It wouldn’t be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should
+have the means to travel when you’ve not; for you know everything and I
+know nothing.”
+
+“The more reason why you should travel and learn,” smiled Osmond.
+“Besides,” he added as if it were a point to be made, “I don’t know
+everything.”
+
+Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she
+was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased
+her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have
+likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress
+overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages
+or historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That
+most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a
+reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done
+the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were
+a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be
+as well. Happy things don’t repeat themselves, and her adventure wore
+already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from
+which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the
+breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this
+strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better
+not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the
+greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a
+pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her
+silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. “Go
+everywhere,” he said at last, in a low, kind voice; “do everything; get
+everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant.”
+
+“What do you mean by being triumphant?”
+
+“Well, doing what you like.”
+
+“To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things
+one likes is often very tiresome.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Osmond with his quiet quickness. “As I intimated just
+now, you’ll be tired some day.” He paused a moment and then he went on:
+“I don’t know whether I had better not wait till then for something I
+want to say to you.”
+
+“Ah, I can’t advise you without knowing what it is. But I’m horrid when
+I’m tired,” Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+
+“I don’t believe that. You’re angry, sometimes--that I can believe,
+though I’ve never seen it. But I’m sure you’re never ‘cross.’”
+
+“Not even when I lose my temper?”
+
+“You don’t lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful.” Osmond
+spoke with a noble earnestness. “They must be great moments to see.”
+
+“If I could only find it now!” Isabel nervously cried.
+
+“I’m not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I’m speaking very
+seriously.” He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
+bent his eyes on the floor. “What I wish to say to you,” he went on at
+last, looking up, “is that I find I’m in love with you.”
+
+She instantly rose. “Ah, keep that till I am tired!”
+
+“Tired of hearing it from others?” He sat there raising his eyes to her.
+“No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must
+say it now.” She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped
+herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this
+situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the
+critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply
+respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. “I’m
+absolutely in love with you.”
+
+He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke
+for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time
+they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow
+the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn’t have said
+which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful
+and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,
+morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she
+had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. “Oh don’t say
+that, please,” she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread
+of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread
+great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have
+banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,
+that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there
+like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to
+begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
+
+“I haven’t the idea that it will matter much to you,” said Osmond. “I’ve
+too little to offer you. What I have--it’s enough for me; but it’s not
+enough for you. I’ve neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages
+of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it
+can’t offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It
+gives me pleasure, I assure you,” he went on, standing there before her,
+considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken
+up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,
+refined, slightly ravaged face. “It gives me no pain, because it’s
+perfectly simple. For me you’ll always be the most important woman in
+the world.”
+
+Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking
+she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an
+expression of any such complacency. “You don’t offend me; but you
+ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,
+troubled.” “Incommoded,” she heard herself saying that, and it struck
+her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
+
+“I remember perfectly. Of course you’re surprised and startled. But
+if it’s nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave
+something that I may not be ashamed of.”
+
+“I don’t know what it may leave. You see at all events that I’m not
+overwhelmed,” said Isabel with rather a pale smile. “I’m not too
+troubled to think. And I think that I’m glad I leave Rome to-morrow.”
+
+“Of course I don’t agree with you there.”
+
+“I don’t at all _know_ you,” she added abruptly; and then she coloured as
+she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord
+Warburton.
+
+“If you were not going away you’d know me better.”
+
+“I shall do that some other time.”
+
+“I hope so. I’m very easy to know.”
+
+“No, no,” she emphatically answered--“there you’re not sincere. You’re
+not easy to know; no one could be less so.”
+
+“Well,” he laughed, “I said that because I know myself. It may be a
+boast, but I do.”
+
+“Very likely; but you’re very wise.”
+
+“So are you, Miss Archer!” Osmond exclaimed.
+
+“I don’t feel so just now. Still, I’m wise enough to think you had
+better go. Good-night.”
+
+“God bless you!” said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed
+to surrender. After which he added: “If we meet again you’ll find me as
+you leave me. If we don’t I shall be so all the same.”
+
+“Thank you very much. Good-bye.”
+
+There was something quietly firm about Isabel’s visitor; he might go of
+his own movement, but wouldn’t be dismissed. “There’s one thing more.
+I haven’t asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you
+must do me that justice. But there’s a little service I should like to
+ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome’s delightful, and
+it’s a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you’re sorry
+to leave it; but you’re right to do what your aunt wishes.”
+
+“She doesn’t even wish it!” Isabel broke out strangely.
+
+Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match
+these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: “Ah well, it’s
+proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that’s proper;
+I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don’t
+know me, but when you do you’ll discover what a worship I have for
+propriety.”
+
+“You’re not conventional?” Isabel gravely asked.
+
+“I like the way you utter that word! No, I’m not conventional: I’m
+convention itself. You don’t understand that?” And he paused a moment,
+smiling. “I should like to explain it.” Then with a sudden, quick,
+bright naturalness, “Do come back again,” he pleaded. “There are so many
+things we might talk about.”
+
+She stood there with lowered eyes. “What service did you speak of just
+now?”
+
+“Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She’s alone at
+the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn’t at all my
+ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,” said Gilbert
+Osmond gently.
+
+“It will be a great pleasure to me to go,” Isabel answered. “I’ll tell
+her what you say. Once more good-bye.”
+
+On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood
+a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of
+deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with
+folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not
+diminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something
+that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but
+here, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke
+down. The working of this young lady’s spirit was strange, and I can
+only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether
+natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last
+vague space it couldn’t cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked
+ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the
+winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin’s escort, and
+Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought
+very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried
+his companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond’s
+preference--hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme
+of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little
+trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling’s aid. Isabel was
+to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs.
+Touchett’s departure, and she determined to devote the last of these
+to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for
+a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame
+Merle’s. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the
+point of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle
+in the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that
+country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, “forever”)
+seemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense
+crenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious
+privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had
+asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn’t mention that he had
+also made her a declaration of love.
+
+“_Ah, comme cela se trouve!_” Madame Merle exclaimed. “I myself have been
+thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I
+go off.”
+
+“We can go together then,” Isabel reasonably said: “reasonably” because
+the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had
+prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like
+it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic
+sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
+
+That personage finely meditated. “After all, why should we both go;
+having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?”
+
+“Very good; I can easily go alone.”
+
+“I don’t know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome
+bachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!”
+
+Isabel stared. “When Mr. Osmond’s away what does it matter?”
+
+“They don’t know he’s away, you see.”
+
+“They? Whom do you mean?”
+
+“Every one. But perhaps it doesn’t signify.”
+
+“If you were going why shouldn’t I?” Isabel asked.
+
+“Because I’m an old frump and you’re a beautiful young woman.”
+
+“Granting all that, you’ve not promised.”
+
+“How much you think of your promises!” said the elder woman in mild
+mockery.
+
+“I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?”
+
+“You’re right,” Madame Merle audibly reflected. “I really think you wish
+to be kind to the child.”
+
+“I wish very much to be kind to her.”
+
+“Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I’d have
+come if you hadn’t. Or rather,” Madame Merle added, “_don’t_ tell her. She
+won’t care.”
+
+As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
+way which led to Mr. Osmond’s hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
+meant by no one’s being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
+this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
+the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
+quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
+the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose
+that she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly
+done? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which
+in the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had
+time to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts
+of things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming
+at the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr.
+Osmond’s drawing-room; the little girl was “practising,” and Isabel was
+pleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately
+came in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father’s
+house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an
+hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the
+pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but
+conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel’s affairs
+that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her;
+she had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower
+of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our
+admiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned;
+and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
+was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding,
+as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her,
+up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not
+really all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection
+of self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father’s visitor,
+or was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that
+Isabel spent in Mr. Osmond’s beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows
+had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there,
+through an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a
+gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her interview
+with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this
+question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure white surface,
+successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor
+talent--only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a
+friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new
+frock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching withal, and she could
+be felt as an easy victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to
+resist, no sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,
+easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where to
+cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had asked leave
+to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy gave her judgement on
+several works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her occupations, her
+father’s intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the propriety
+of supplying the information so distinguished a guest would naturally
+expect.
+
+“Please tell me,” she said, “did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.
+Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education;
+it isn’t finished yet, you know. I don’t know what they can do with me
+more; but it appears it’s far from finished. Papa told me one day he
+thought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the
+convent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa’s
+not rich, and I should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for
+me, because I don’t think I’m worth it. I don’t learn quickly enough,
+and I have no memory. For what I’m told, yes--especially when it’s
+pleasant; but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who
+was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when she
+was fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to make a dot. You
+don’t say it in English? I hope it isn’t wrong; I only mean they wished
+to keep the money to marry her. I don’t know whether it is for that that
+papa wishes to keep the money--to marry me. It costs so much to marry!”
+ Pansy went on with a sigh; “I think papa might make that economy. At
+any rate I’m too young to think about it yet, and I don’t care for any
+gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like
+to marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of some
+strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might
+think, for I’ve been so much away from him. Papa has always been
+principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you
+must not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I’m very sorry,
+and he’ll be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best.
+That’s not a great compliment, for there are not many people. It was
+very kind of you to come to-day--so far from your house; for I’m really
+as yet only a child. Oh, yes, I’ve only the occupations of a child. When
+did _you_ give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know
+how old you are, but I don’t know whether it’s right to ask. At the
+convent they told us that we must never ask the age. I don’t like to do
+anything that’s not expected; it looks as if one had not been properly
+taught. I myself--I should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left
+directions for everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off
+that side I go into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not
+to get scorched. I always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful.
+In Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I
+practise three hours. I don’t play very well. You play yourself? I wish
+very much you’d play something for me; papa has the idea that I should
+hear good music. Madame Merle has played for me several times; that’s
+what I like best about Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall
+never have facility. And I’ve no voice--just a small sound like the
+squeak of a slate-pencil making flourishes.”
+
+Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down
+to the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white
+hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child
+good-bye, held her close, looked at her long. “Be very good,” she said;
+“give pleasure to your father.”
+
+“I think that’s what I live for,” Pansy answered. “He has not much
+pleasure; he’s rather a sad man.”
+
+Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it
+almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged
+her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in
+her head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say
+to Pansy about her father; there were things it would have given her
+pleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner
+became conscious of these things than her imagination was hushed with
+horror at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of
+this she would have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where
+he might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed
+state. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She
+rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a
+moment, still holding her small companion, drawing the child’s sweet
+slimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obliged
+to confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in
+talking of Gilbert Osmond to this innocent, diminutive creature who
+was so near him. But she said no other word; she only kissed Pansy once
+again. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that
+opened on the court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather
+wistfully beyond. “I may go no further. I’ve promised papa not to pass
+this door.”
+
+“You’re right to obey him; he’ll never ask you anything unreasonable.”
+
+“I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?”
+
+“Not for a long time, I’m afraid.”
+
+“As soon as you can, I hope. I’m only a little girl,” said Pansy, “but
+I shall always expect you.” And the small figure stood in the high, dark
+doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
+the brightness beyond the big _portone_, which gave a wider dazzle as it
+opened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval
+sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this
+interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is
+engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after
+her return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the
+incidents just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the
+smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses,
+and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have
+suggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open,
+and though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the
+garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
+warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her
+hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest.
+Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not
+be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should
+pass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through
+the garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She wished
+rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judge
+by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave
+she found herself, and positively more weighted, as by the experience of
+the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged,
+she would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and
+was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the
+frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the measure
+of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She
+flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal
+more of life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If
+her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead
+of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have
+evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have
+been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been
+projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for
+instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine’s sister and Edmund Ludlow’s
+wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her
+relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought
+her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and
+tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had
+been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing
+the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies
+in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet,
+even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so
+that while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to
+a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in
+the month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an
+Alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade
+of great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as
+might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had
+afterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with
+costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel,
+who in these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done,
+in a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her
+handkerchief.
+
+Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and
+wonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined
+her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these
+speculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as
+he had always done before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or
+mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law might have done
+or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow’s mental motions were sufficiently
+various. At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young
+woman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters’, for
+instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the
+corner from her own; at another she couldn’t conceal her surprise at the
+girl’s not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies. On
+the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the
+probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel’s accession of
+fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her
+to offer just the proper setting for her sister’s slightly meagre, but
+scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than
+Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily’s understanding, being
+somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.
+Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she
+appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.
+Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily’s conception of such
+achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had
+expected of Isabel--to give it form and body. Isabel could have done
+as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her
+husband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe
+which the society of that city might not offer her. We know ourselves
+that Isabel had made conquests--whether inferior or not to those she
+might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to
+decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that
+I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories
+public. She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor
+had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond’s state of mind; and she had had
+no better reason for her silence than that she didn’t wish to speak.
+It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of
+romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily’s advice as she
+would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing
+of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister’s career
+a strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel’s
+silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the
+frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very
+often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost her
+courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as
+inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it
+added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+
+Our young lady’s courage, however, might have been taken as reaching
+its height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver
+things than spending the winter in Paris--Paris had sides by which it
+so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her close
+correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She
+had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and
+wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform
+at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the
+departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her
+children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale;
+she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of
+what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something
+that was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest
+moment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers.
+She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow
+had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and
+she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away;
+she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative
+child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and
+made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked
+back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could
+do whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the
+present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back
+from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon
+had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked
+weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long
+way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive
+enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order
+to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging
+policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle
+of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the
+London streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops,
+the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That
+evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start
+in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching
+at Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by
+Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that
+of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.
+Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in
+the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from
+the _Interviewer_. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a
+fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and
+Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Bantling that
+he would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to
+apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt
+replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,
+were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt
+in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn’t, and what one
+“would” have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the
+idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank,
+but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She
+easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she
+took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than
+formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext
+for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had
+not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a
+fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should
+make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her
+friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been
+consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two
+ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months
+in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in
+these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among
+the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose
+and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled
+rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup
+after cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess
+circulating _incognita_, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel’s
+invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl’s
+uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have
+been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however,
+had no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking
+pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which
+was patroness and which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on
+acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend,
+who had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an
+intimacy of three months Isabel felt she knew her better; her character
+had revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed
+her promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a
+consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related
+from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so
+far as it concerned the late M. Merle, a positive adventurer, she might
+say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years
+before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who
+knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in
+startling and lamentable incidents that her companion wondered a person
+so _eprouvée_ could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in
+life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle’s she obtained a considerable
+insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical,
+carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed
+and bridled like the “favourite” of the jockey. She liked her as much
+as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted;
+it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer,
+condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once
+said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the “old, old”
+ world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of
+a different moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up
+under other stars.
+
+She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course
+the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our
+young woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at
+the shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth,
+that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this
+conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an
+occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had
+raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for
+the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might,
+in certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in
+decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had
+not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain;
+and there were evidently things in the world of which it was not
+advantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since
+it so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, “Heaven forgive
+her, she doesn’t understand me!” Absurd as it may seem this discovery
+operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was
+even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the
+light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle’s remarkable intelligence;
+but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence.
+Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases
+to grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point of
+equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection,
+in other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other.
+However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for
+her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been.
+I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids
+in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the
+broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point
+designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these
+emotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt
+and Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival
+Gilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during
+which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose
+house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he
+should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.
+Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long
+before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on
+this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin
+was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day
+to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was
+prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood
+at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any
+of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,
+but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,
+and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she
+should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What
+he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing
+in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction
+doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked
+in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,
+and as if she were “worth more” for it, like some curious piece in an
+antiquary’s collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
+apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
+tray. “Let the gentleman come in,” she said, and continued to gaze out
+of the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had
+heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she
+looked round.
+
+Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to
+foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered
+a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel’s
+we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to
+her critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight,
+strong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke
+positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor
+weakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same
+voluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in
+it of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled
+hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This
+gave Isabel time to make a reflexion: “Poor fellow, what great things
+he’s capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his
+splendid force! What a pity too that one can’t satisfy everybody!” It
+gave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: “I can’t tell
+you how I hoped you wouldn’t come!”
+
+“I’ve no doubt of that.” And he looked about him for a seat. Not only
+had he come, but he meant to settle.
+
+“You must be very tired,” said Isabel, seating herself, and generously,
+as she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+
+“No, I’m not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?”
+
+“Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?”
+
+“Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.
+These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.”
+
+“That’s in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury
+me!” And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their
+situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly
+clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all
+this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she
+was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked
+at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such
+a want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on
+her as a physical weight.
+
+“No, I didn’t feel that; I couldn’t think of you as dead. I wish I
+could!” he candidly declared.
+
+“I thank you immensely.”
+
+“I’d rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.”
+
+“That’s very selfish of you!” she returned with the ardour of a real
+conviction. “If you’re not happy yourself others have yet a right to
+be.”
+
+“Very likely it’s selfish; but I don’t in the least mind your saying so.
+I don’t mind anything you can say now--I don’t feel it. The cruellest
+things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you’ve
+done I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall
+feel all my life.”
+
+Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,
+in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over
+propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than
+touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave
+her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure
+of this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. “When did
+you leave New York?”
+
+He threw up his head as if calculating. “Seventeen days ago.”
+
+“You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.”
+
+“I came as fast as I could. I’d have come five days ago if I had been
+able.”
+
+“It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,” she coldly smiled.
+
+“Not to you--no. But to me.”
+
+“You gain nothing that I see.”
+
+“That’s for me to judge!”
+
+“Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.” And then, to
+change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.
+He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of
+Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young
+lady had been with him just before he left America. “She came to see
+you?” Isabel then demanded.
+
+“Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I
+had got your letter.”
+
+“Did you tell her?” Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+
+“Oh no,” said Caspar Goodwood simply; “I didn’t want to do that. She’ll
+hear it quick enough; she hears everything.”
+
+“I shall write to her, and then she’ll write to me and scold me,” Isabel
+declared, trying to smile again.
+
+Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. “I guess she’ll come right
+out,” he said.
+
+“On purpose to scold me?”
+
+“I don’t know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.”
+
+“I’m glad you tell me that,” Isabel said. “I must prepare for her.”
+
+Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,
+raising them, “Does she know Mr. Osmond?” he enquired.
+
+“A little. And she doesn’t like him. But of course I don’t marry to
+please Henrietta,” she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar
+if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn’t
+say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To
+which she made answer that she didn’t know yet. “I can only say it will
+be soon. I’ve told no one but yourself and one other person--an old
+friend of Mr. Osmond’s.”
+
+“Is it a marriage your friends won’t like?” he demanded.
+
+“I really haven’t an idea. As I say, I don’t marry for my friends.”
+
+He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,
+doing it quite without delicacy. “Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert
+Osmond?”
+
+“Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable
+man. He’s not in business,” said Isabel. “He’s not rich; he’s not known
+for anything in particular.”
+
+She disliked Mr. Goodwood’s questions, but she said to herself that she
+owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor
+Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at
+her. “Where does he come from? Where does he belong?”
+
+She had never been so little pleased with the way he said “belawng.” “He
+comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.”
+
+“You said in your letter he was American. Hasn’t he a native place?”
+
+“Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.”
+
+“Has he never gone back?”
+
+“Why should he go back?” Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. “He has
+no profession.”
+
+“He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn’t he like the United
+States?”
+
+“He doesn’t know them. Then he’s very quiet and very simple--he contents
+himself with Italy.”
+
+“With Italy and with you,” said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and
+no appearance of trying to make an epigram. “What has he ever done?” he
+added abruptly.
+
+“That I should marry him? Nothing at all,” Isabel replied while her
+patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. “If he had done
+great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;
+I’m marrying a perfect nonentity. Don’t try to take an interest in him.
+You can’t.”
+
+“I can’t appreciate him; that’s what you mean. And you don’t mean in
+the least that he’s a perfect nonentity. You think he’s grand, you think
+he’s great, though no one else thinks so.”
+
+Isabel’s colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion,
+and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render
+perceptions she had never taken for fine. “Why do you always come back
+to what others think? I can’t discuss Mr. Osmond with you.”
+
+“Of course not,” said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air
+of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were
+nothing else that they might discuss.
+
+“You see how little you gain,” she accordingly broke out--“how little
+comfort or satisfaction I can give you.”
+
+“I didn’t expect you to give me much.”
+
+“I don’t understand then why you came.”
+
+“I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are.”
+
+“I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later
+we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been
+pleasanter for each of us than this.”
+
+“Waited till after you’re married? That’s just what I didn’t want to do.
+You’ll be different then.”
+
+“Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You’ll see.”
+
+“That will make it all the worse,” said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+
+“Ah, you’re unaccommodating! I can’t promise to dislike you in order to
+help you to resign yourself.”
+
+“I shouldn’t care if you did!”
+
+Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the
+window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round
+her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again
+and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just
+quitted. “Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That’s better for
+you perhaps than for me.”
+
+“I wished to hear the sound of your voice,” he said.
+
+“You’ve heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.”
+
+“It gives me pleasure, all the same.” And with this he got up. She had
+felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in
+Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She
+had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his
+messenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better
+pleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy
+implications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights,
+reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change
+her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed;
+and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor’s
+remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that
+irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart
+beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself
+that she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the
+wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness
+to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a
+little. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no
+propriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden
+horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an
+opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him
+a month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her
+engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire
+to defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Isabel’s part to
+desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile
+held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which
+she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused
+her: “I’ve not deceived you! I was perfectly free!”
+
+“Yes, I know that,” said Caspar.
+
+“I gave you full warning that I’d do as I chose.”
+
+“You said you’d probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner
+that I pretty well believed it.”
+
+She considered this an instant. “No one can be more surprised than
+myself at my present intention.”
+
+“You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe
+it,” Caspar went on. “I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I
+remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and
+that’s partly why I came.”
+
+“If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that’s soon done. There’s
+no mistake whatever.”
+
+“I saw that as soon as I came into the room.”
+
+“What good would it do you that I shouldn’t marry?” she asked with a
+certain fierceness.
+
+“I should like it better than this.”
+
+“You’re very selfish, as I said before.”
+
+“I know that. I’m selfish as iron.”
+
+“Even iron sometimes melts! If you’ll be reasonable I’ll see you again.”
+
+“Don’t you call me reasonable now?”
+
+“I don’t know what to say to you,” she answered with sudden humility.
+
+“I shan’t trouble you for a long time,” the young man went on. He made
+a step towards the door, but he stopped. “Another reason why I came was
+that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having
+changed your mind.”
+
+Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. “In explanation? Do you think
+I’m bound to explain?”
+
+He gave her one of his long dumb looks. “You were very positive. I did
+believe it.”
+
+“So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?”
+
+“No, I suppose not. Well,” he added, “I’ve done what I wished. I’ve seen
+you.”
+
+“How little you make of these terrible journeys,” she felt the poverty
+of her presently replying.
+
+“If you’re afraid I’m knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be
+at your ease about it.” He turned away, this time in earnest, and no
+hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.
+
+At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. “I shall leave
+Florence to-morrow,” he said without a quaver.
+
+“I’m delighted to hear it!” she answered passionately. Five minutes
+after he had gone out she burst into tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had
+vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this
+expression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;
+Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She
+had an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact
+public before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about
+it. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a
+somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more;
+she waited till Mrs. Touchett came into the drawing-room before the
+mid-day breakfast, and then she began. “Aunt Lydia, I’ve something to
+tell you.”
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. “You
+needn’t tell me; I know what it is.”
+
+“I don’t know how you know.”
+
+“The same way that I know when the window’s open--by feeling a draught.
+You’re going to marry that man.”
+
+“What man do you mean?” Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+
+“Madame Merle’s friend--Mr. Osmond.”
+
+“I don’t know why you call him Madame Merle’s friend. Is that the
+principal thing he’s known by?”
+
+“If he’s not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done for
+him!” cried Mrs. Touchett. “I shouldn’t have expected it of her; I’m
+disappointed.”
+
+“If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement
+you’re greatly mistaken,” Isabel declared with a sort of ardent
+coldness.
+
+“You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman’s
+having had to be lashed up? You’re quite right. They’re immense, your
+attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she
+hadn’t put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he
+was not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him.”
+
+“He has taken a great deal for himself!” cried Isabel with a voluntary
+laugh.
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. “I think he must, after all, to have
+made you like him so much.”
+
+“I thought he even pleased _you_.”
+
+“He did, at one time; and that’s why I’m angry with him.”
+
+“Be angry with me, not with him,” said the girl.
+
+“Oh, I’m always angry with you; that’s no satisfaction! Was it for this
+that you refused Lord Warburton?”
+
+“Please don’t go back to that. Why shouldn’t I like Mr. Osmond, since
+others have done so?”
+
+“Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There’s
+nothing _of_ him,” Mrs. Touchett explained.
+
+“Then he can’t hurt me,” said Isabel.
+
+“Do you think you’re going to be happy? No one’s happy, in such doings,
+you should know.”
+
+“I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?”
+
+“What _you_ will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as
+they go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your partnership
+you’ll bring everything.”
+
+“Is it that Mr. Osmond isn’t rich? Is that what you’re talking about?”
+ Isabel asked.
+
+“He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such
+things and I have the courage to say it; I think they’re very precious.
+Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some
+other reason.”
+
+Isabel hesitated a little. “I think I value everything that’s valuable.
+I care very much for money, and that’s why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a
+little.”
+
+“Give it to him then; but marry some one else.”
+
+“His name’s good enough for me,” the girl went on. “It’s a very pretty
+name. Have I such a fine one myself?”
+
+“All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen
+American names. Do you marry him out of charity?”
+
+“It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don’t think it’s my duty
+to explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn’t be able. So please don’t
+remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can’t
+talk about it.”
+
+“I don’t remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of
+intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.”
+
+“You never do, and I’m greatly obliged to you. You’ve been very
+considerate.”
+
+“It was not considerate--it was convenient,” said Mrs. Touchett. “But I
+shall talk to Madame Merle.”
+
+“I don’t see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good
+friend to me.”
+
+“Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.”
+
+“What has she done to you?”
+
+“She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your
+engagement.”
+
+“She couldn’t have prevented it.”
+
+“She can do anything; that’s what I’ve always liked her for. I knew she
+could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I
+didn’t understand that she would play two at the same time.”
+
+“I don’t know what part she may have played to you,” Isabel said;
+“that’s between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and
+devoted.”
+
+“Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me
+she was watching you only in order to interpose.”
+
+“She said that to please you,” the girl answered; conscious, however, of
+the inadequacy of the explanation.
+
+“To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased
+to-day?”
+
+“I don’t think you’re ever much pleased,” Isabel was obliged to reply.
+“If Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by
+insincerity?”
+
+“She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you
+were marching away, and she was really beating the drum.”
+
+“That’s very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and
+even if she had given the alarm you wouldn’t have tried to stop me.”
+
+“No, but some one else would.”
+
+“Whom do you mean?” Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.
+Touchett’s little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained
+her gaze rather than returned it. “Would you have listened to Ralph?”
+
+“Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond.”
+
+“Ralph doesn’t abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much
+for you.”
+
+“I know he does,” said Isabel; “and I shall feel the value of it now,
+for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.”
+
+“He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,
+and he argued the other way.”
+
+“He did it for the sake of argument,” the girl smiled. “You don’t accuse
+him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?”
+
+“He never pretended he’d prevent it.”
+
+“I’m glad of that!” cried Isabel gaily. “I wish very much,” she
+presently added, “that when he comes you’d tell him first of my
+engagement.”
+
+“Of course I’ll mention it,” said Mrs. Touchett. “I shall say nothing
+more to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.”
+
+“That’s as you please. I only meant that it’s rather better the
+announcement should come from you than from me.”
+
+“I quite agree with you; it’s much more proper!” And on this the aunt
+and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her
+word, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence,
+however, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an
+hour before.
+
+“From an old friend--an American gentleman,” Isabel said with a colour
+in her cheek.
+
+“An American gentleman of course. It’s only an American gentleman who
+calls at ten o’clock in the morning.”
+
+“It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+evening.”
+
+“Couldn’t he have come yesterday, at the usual time?”
+
+“He only arrived last night.”
+
+“He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?” Mrs. Touchett cried.
+“He’s an American gentleman truly.”
+
+“He is indeed,” said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what
+Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+
+Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.
+Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed
+at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of
+his health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been
+shocked by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten
+how ill he looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she
+wondered if he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed
+to living with an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to
+conventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently
+complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural
+oddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and
+still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper
+and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the
+exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was
+altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of
+relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; his
+hands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he shambled and stumbled and
+shuffled in a manner that denoted great physical helplessness. It was
+perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than
+ever as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his own
+disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well indeed with
+Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness marking his
+view of a world in which the reason for his own continued presence was
+past finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness
+had become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; they
+struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be
+charming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had
+hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed
+not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him
+from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of
+being exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful;
+he had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to
+consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally
+sick. Such had been the girl’s impression of her cousin; and when she
+had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal
+she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always had
+a dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth more to the
+giver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no great sensibility
+to feel that poor Ralph’s tenure of life was less elastic than it should
+be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he had all the illumination
+of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.
+
+Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,
+and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now
+promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was
+not pleased with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of
+her affection for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not
+even prepared, or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for
+it would be his privilege--it would be indeed his natural line--to find
+fault with any step she might take toward marriage. One’s cousin always
+pretended to hate one’s husband; that was traditional, classical; it
+was a part of one’s cousin’s always pretending to adore one. Ralph was
+nothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things
+being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any
+one, it would be absurd to regard as important that her choice should
+square with his views. What were his views after all? He had pretended
+to believe she had better have married Lord Warburton; but this was
+only because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted
+him Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the
+opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a
+marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only
+give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had
+other employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the
+care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must
+have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing.
+After three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman
+wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through
+the form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily
+believe that during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo
+Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had
+literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even more
+sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett’s maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked
+and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the
+world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the
+house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden
+of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head
+thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the
+heart; he had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could
+he say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it?
+To attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the attempt should
+succeed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the
+man to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only
+in the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
+damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and to
+dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor protest with hope.
+Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that the affianced pair were
+daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself
+little at Palazzo Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere,
+as she was free to do after their engagement had been made public. She
+had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt
+for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved,
+and she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
+during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young lady,
+joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a while
+through the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
+luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
+instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed
+beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this
+moment could not have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over
+it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious
+caves. Ralph was sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a
+statue of Terpsichore--a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated
+draperies in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his
+attitude suggested at first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light
+footstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turning away she
+stood for a moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his
+eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his
+own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference she
+was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to brood
+over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the languor of
+his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the property
+inherited from his father--the fruit of eccentric arrangements of
+which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told Isabel, now
+encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to
+have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence;
+he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank
+than in the state of Patagonia.
+
+“I’m sorry I waked you,” Isabel said; “you look too tired.”
+
+“I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.”
+
+“Are you tired of that?”
+
+“Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road’s long and I never arrive.”
+
+“What do you wish to arrive at?” she put to him, closing her parasol.
+
+“At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your
+engagement.”
+
+“Don’t think too much of it,” she lightly returned.
+
+“Do you mean that it’s none of my business?”
+
+“Beyond a certain point, yes.”
+
+“That’s the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me
+wanting in good manners. I’ve never congratulated you.”
+
+“Of course I’ve noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.”
+
+“There have been a good many reasons. I’ll tell you now,” Ralph said.
+He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at
+her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against
+his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands
+laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable;
+he hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she
+was usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to
+utter a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. “I
+think I’ve hardly got over my surprise,” he went on at last. “You were
+the last person I expected to see caught.”
+
+“I don’t know why you call it caught.”
+
+“Because you’re going to be put into a cage.”
+
+“If I like my cage, that needn’t trouble you,” she answered.
+
+“That’s what I wonder at; that’s what I’ve been thinking of.”
+
+“If you’ve been thinking you may imagine how I’ve thought! I’m satisfied
+that I’m doing well.”
+
+“You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty
+beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.”
+
+“I’ve seen it,” said Isabel. “It doesn’t look to me now, I admit, such
+an inviting expanse.”
+
+“I don’t pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view
+of it and wanted to survey the whole field.”
+
+“I’ve seen that one can’t do anything so general. One must choose a
+corner and cultivate that.”
+
+“That’s what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible.
+I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that
+you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me
+off my guard.”
+
+“It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew
+nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your
+guard, however,” Isabel asked, “what would you have done?”
+
+“I should have said ‘Wait a little longer.’”
+
+“Wait for what?”
+
+“Well, for a little more light,” said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,
+while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+
+“Where should my light have come from? From you?”
+
+“I might have struck a spark or two.”
+
+Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay
+upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her
+expression was not conciliatory. “You’re beating about the bush, Ralph.
+You wish to say you don’t like Mr. Osmond, and yet you’re afraid.”
+
+“Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I’m willing to wound _him_,
+yes--but not to wound you. I’m afraid of you, not of him. If you marry
+him it won’t be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.”
+
+“_If_ I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?”
+
+“Of course that seems to you too fatuous.”
+
+“No,” said Isabel after a little; “it seems to me too touching.”
+
+“That’s the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.”
+
+She stroked out her long gloves again. “I know you’ve a great affection
+for me. I can’t get rid of that.”
+
+“For heaven’s sake don’t try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince
+you how intensely I want you to do well.”
+
+“And how little you trust me!”
+
+There was a moment’s silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. “I
+trust you, but I don’t trust him,” said Ralph.
+
+She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. “You’ve said it now,
+and I’m glad you’ve made it so clear. But you’ll suffer by it.”
+
+“Not if you’re just.”
+
+“I’m very just,” said Isabel. “What better proof of it can there be than
+that I’m not angry with you? I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but
+I’m not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought
+to be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn’t think so. He wants me to know
+everything; that’s what I like him for. You’ve nothing to gain, I know
+that. I’ve never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have
+much reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice;
+you’ve often done so. No, I’m very quiet; I’ve always believed in your
+wisdom,” she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a
+kind of contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be
+just; it touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a
+creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a
+moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had
+said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse,
+as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that
+direction. “I see you’ve some special idea; I should like very much to
+hear it. I’m sure it’s disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange
+thing to argue about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that
+if you expect to dissuade me you may give it up. You’ll not move me
+an inch; it’s too late. As you say, I’m caught. Certainly it won’t be
+pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will be in your own
+thoughts. I shall never reproach you.”
+
+“I don’t think you ever will,” said Ralph. “It’s not in the least the
+sort of marriage I thought you’d make.”
+
+“What sort of marriage was that, pray?”
+
+“Well, I can hardly say. I hadn’t exactly a positive view of it, but I
+had a negative. I didn’t think you’d decide for--well, for that type.”
+
+“What’s the matter with Mr. Osmond’s type, if it be one? His being
+so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,” the girl
+declared. “What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.”
+
+“Yes,” Ralph said, “I know him very little, and I confess I haven’t
+facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can’t help
+feeling that you’re running a grave risk.”
+
+“Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk’s as grave as mine.”
+
+“That’s his affair! If he’s afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he
+would.”
+
+Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her
+cousin. “I don’t think I understand you,” she said at last coldly. “I
+don’t know what you’re talking about.”
+
+“I believed you’d marry a man of more importance.”
+
+Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped
+into her face. “Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that
+one’s husband should be of importance to one’s self!”
+
+Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking
+he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,
+resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an
+air of the most respectful deliberation.
+
+“I’ll tell you in a moment what I mean,” he presently said. He felt
+agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he
+wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively
+gentle.
+
+Isabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. “In everything
+that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may
+be nobler natures, but I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.
+Osmond’s is the finest I know; he’s good enough for me, and interesting
+enough, and clever enough. I’m far more struck with what he has and what
+he represents than with what he may lack.”
+
+“I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,” Ralph
+observed without answering this; “I had amused myself with planning out
+a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You
+were not to come down so easily or so soon.”
+
+“Come down, you say?”
+
+“Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to
+me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light,
+over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud--a
+missile that should never have reached you--and straight you drop to
+the ground. It hurts me,” said Ralph audaciously, “hurts me as if I had
+fallen myself!”
+
+The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion’s face. “I
+don’t understand you in the least,” she repeated. “You say you amused
+yourself with a project for my career--I don’t understand that.
+Don’t amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you’re doing it at my
+expense.”
+
+Ralph shook his head. “I’m not afraid of your not believing that I’ve
+had great ideas for you.”
+
+“What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?” she pursued.
+
+“I’ve never moved on a higher plane than I’m moving on now. There’s
+nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she likes,” said
+poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+
+“It’s your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my
+dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a
+more active, larger, freer sort of nature.” Ralph hesitated, then added:
+“I can’t get over the sense that Osmond is somehow--well, small.” He had
+uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would
+flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of
+considering.
+
+“Small?” She made it sound immense.
+
+“I think he’s narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!”
+
+“He has a great respect for himself; I don’t blame him for that,” said
+Isabel. “It makes one more sure to respect others.”
+
+Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+
+“Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one’s relation to
+things--to others. I don’t think Mr. Osmond does that.”
+
+“I’ve chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he’s excellent.”
+
+“He’s the incarnation of taste,” Ralph went on, thinking hard how he
+could best express Gilbert Osmond’s sinister attributes without putting
+himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished
+to describe him impersonally, scientifically. “He judges and measures,
+approves and condemns, altogether by that.”
+
+“It’s a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.”
+
+“It’s exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as
+his bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite
+one--ruffled?”
+
+“I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband’s.”
+
+At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph’s lips. “Ah, that’s
+wilful, that’s unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in
+that way--you were meant for something better than to keep guard over
+the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!”
+
+Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment
+looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult.
+But “You go too far,” she simply breathed.
+
+“I’ve said what I had on my mind--and I’ve said it because I love you!”
+
+Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden
+wish to strike him off. “Ah then, you’re not disinterested!”
+
+“I love you, but I love without hope,” said Ralph quickly, forcing a
+smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more
+than he intended.
+
+Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the
+garden; but after a little she turned back to him. “I’m afraid your talk
+then is the wildness of despair! I don’t understand it--but it doesn’t
+matter. I’m not arguing with you; it’s impossible I should; I’ve only
+tried to listen to you. I’m much obliged to you for attempting to
+explain,” she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just
+sprung up had already subsided. “It’s very good of you to try to warn
+me, if you’re really alarmed; but I won’t promise to think of what
+you’ve said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it
+yourself; you’ve done your duty, and no man can do more. I can’t explain
+to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn’t if I could.” She
+paused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph
+observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of
+concession. “I can’t enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can’t do it
+justice, because I see him in quite another way. He’s not important--no,
+he’s not important; he’s a man to whom importance is supremely
+indifferent. If that’s what you mean when you call him ‘small,’ then
+he’s as small as you please. I call that large--it’s the largest thing
+I know. I won’t pretend to argue with you about a person I’m going to
+marry,” Isabel repeated. “I’m not in the least concerned to defend Mr.
+Osmond; he’s not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would
+seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and
+coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn’t talk of him at all to any
+one but you; and you, after what you’ve said--I may just answer you once
+for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage--what
+they call a marriage of ambition? I’ve only one ambition--to be free to
+follow out a good feeling. I had others once, but they’ve passed away.
+Do you complain of Mr. Osmond because he’s not rich? That’s just what I
+like him for. I’ve fortunately money enough; I’ve never felt so thankful
+for it as to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and
+kneel down by your father’s grave: he did perhaps a better thing than
+he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a man who has
+borne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond
+has never scrambled nor struggled--he has cared for no worldly prize. If
+that’s to be narrow, if that’s to be selfish, then it’s very well. I’m
+not frightened by such words, I’m not even displeased; I’m only sorry
+that you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I’m
+surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see
+one--you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows
+everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest,
+highest spirit. You’ve got hold of some false idea. It’s a pity, but
+I can’t help it; it regards you more than me.” Isabel paused a moment,
+looking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a sentiment which
+contradicted the careful calmness of her manner--a mingled sentiment,
+to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of
+having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness
+and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said
+nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly
+solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. “What
+sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?” she asked suddenly.
+“You talk about one’s soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one
+touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in
+one’s bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother
+has never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding
+with Lord Warburton, and she’s horrified at my contenting myself with a
+person who has none of his great advantages--no property, no title,
+no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor
+brilliant belongings of any sort. It’s the total absence of all these
+things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond’s simply a very lonely, a very
+cultivated and a very honest man--he’s not a prodigious proprietor.”
+
+Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said
+merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of
+the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself
+to the weight of his total impression--the impression of her ardent good
+faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was
+dismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that,
+having invented a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not
+for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as
+honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing
+to put it into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He
+had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor
+Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with
+a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion,
+and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the
+house. Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court together
+and reached the big staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused,
+turning on him a face of elation--absolutely and perversely of
+gratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct
+clearer to her. “Shall you not come up to breakfast?” she asked.
+
+“No; I want no breakfast; I’m not hungry.”
+
+“You ought to eat,” said the girl; “you live on air.”
+
+“I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another
+mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that
+if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That’s how
+I feel to-day.”
+
+“Do you think I’m in trouble?”
+
+“One’s in trouble when one’s in error.”
+
+“Very well,” said Isabel; “I shall never complain of my trouble to you!”
+ And she moved up the staircase.
+
+Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with
+his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and
+made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the
+Florentine sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse
+to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The
+discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin
+made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was
+simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming
+to Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to
+throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she
+married to please herself. One did other things to please other people;
+one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel’s satisfaction
+was confirmed by her lover’s admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was
+in love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright
+days, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his
+hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief
+impression produced on Isabel’s spirit by this criticism was that the
+passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the
+loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever
+known before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope
+that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her
+not having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of
+anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late,
+on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly
+console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from
+her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she
+was not sorry to display her contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk
+about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for
+a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her not to marry
+at all--that was what it really meant--because he was amused with the
+spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made
+him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
+flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the
+more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little
+free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident,
+in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert
+Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She
+tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious,
+almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed
+and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed
+virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one’s
+right was always made of the wrong of some one else.
+
+The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted
+meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on
+his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of
+men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however,
+made him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten
+and dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he
+never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance--which
+presented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions.
+He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him
+a present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live
+with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness
+be all for one’s self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired
+the air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than
+a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one’s
+thought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought
+reproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred
+it to be freshened in the reproduction even as “words” by music. His
+egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this
+lady’s intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a
+plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give
+a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served
+dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he
+could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew
+perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little
+favour with the girl’s relations; but he had always treated her so
+completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary
+to express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one
+morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. “It’s the difference in our
+fortune they don’t like,” he said. “They think I’m in love with your
+money.”
+
+“Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?” Isabel asked. “How do you
+know what they think?”
+
+“You’ve not told me they’re pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett
+the other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I
+should have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you
+rich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course
+when a poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations.
+I don’t mind them; I only care for one thing--for your not having
+the shadow of a doubt. I don’t care what people of whom I ask nothing
+think--I’m not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I’ve never so
+concerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I
+have taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won’t pretend
+I’m sorry you’re rich; I’m delighted. I delight in everything that’s
+yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money’s a horrid thing to follow,
+but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I’ve
+sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life
+tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than
+most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it’s their
+business to suspect--that of your family; it’s proper on the whole they
+should. They’ll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.
+Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to
+be thankful for life and love.” “It has made me better, loving you,” he
+said on another occasion; “it has made me wiser and easier and--I won’t
+pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want
+a great many things before and to be angry I didn’t have them.
+Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself
+I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to
+have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I’m really
+satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when
+one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the
+lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and
+finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it
+properly I see it’s a delightful story. My dear girl, I can’t tell you
+how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer afternoon
+awaits us. It’s the latter half of an Italian day--with a golden haze,
+and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light,
+the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and which you
+love to-day. Upon my honour, I don’t see why we shouldn’t get on. We’ve
+got what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We’ve the faculty
+of admiration and several capital convictions. We’re not stupid, we’re
+not mean, we’re not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness.
+You’re remarkably fresh, and I’m remarkably well-seasoned. We’ve my poor
+child to amuse us; we’ll try and make up some little life for her. It’s
+all soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring.”
+
+They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal
+of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live
+for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had
+been a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy
+should be a party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old
+acquaintance and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her
+a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire
+for unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense
+that life was vacant without some private duty that might gather one’s
+energies to a point. She had told Ralph she had “seen life” in a year
+or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of
+that of observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations,
+her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient
+conviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed
+in a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away
+numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the
+situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the
+stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the
+fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be
+of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she
+could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was
+giving.
+
+He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--Pansy who
+was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she
+would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who
+held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to
+go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore
+a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her.
+She found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the
+end of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an
+appeal for approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance
+had the personal touch that the child’s affectionate nature craved.
+She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on
+them--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render,
+part of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the
+childish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new
+relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. “She doesn’t
+know,” he said to Isabel; “she doesn’t guess; she thinks it perfectly
+natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good
+friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it’s
+the way I like her to be. No, I’m not a failure, as I used to think;
+I’ve succeeded in two things. I’m to marry the woman I adore, and I’ve
+brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way.”
+
+He was very fond, in all things, of the “old way”; that had struck
+Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. “It occurs to me that
+you’ll not know whether you’ve succeeded until you’ve told her,” she
+said. “You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she
+may be jealous.”
+
+“I’m not afraid of that; she’s too fond of you on her own account. I
+should like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will
+come into her head that if we’re not engaged we ought to be.”
+
+Isabel was impressed by Osmond’s artistic, the plastic view, as it
+somehow appeared, of Pansy’s innocence--her own appreciation of it being
+more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told
+her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter,
+who had made such a pretty little speech--“Oh, then I shall have a
+beautiful sister!” She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not
+cried, as he expected.
+
+“Perhaps she had guessed it,” said Isabel.
+
+“Don’t say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
+would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her
+good manners are paramount. That’s also what I wished. You shall see for
+yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.”
+
+The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini’s, whither
+Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
+in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
+that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
+visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
+ushered into the Countess’s drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her
+aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,
+who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+company. It was Isabel’s view that the little girl might have given
+lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified
+this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself
+while they waited together for the Countess. Her father’s decision, the
+year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive
+the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her
+theory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+
+“Papa has told me that you’ve kindly consented to marry him,” said this
+excellent woman’s pupil. “It’s very delightful; I think you’ll suit very
+well.”
+
+“You think I shall suit _you_?”
+
+“You’ll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will
+suit each other. You’re both so quiet and so serious. You’re not so
+quiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you’re more quiet than many
+others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She’s
+always in motion, in agitation--to-day especially; you’ll see when she
+comes in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders,
+but I suppose there’s no harm if we judge them favourably. You’ll be a
+delightful companion for papa.”
+
+“For you too, I hope,” Isabel said.
+
+“I speak first of him on purpose. I’ve told you already what I myself
+think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I
+think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You’ll be
+my model; I shall try to imitate you though I’m afraid it will be
+very feeble. I’m very glad for papa--he needed something more than
+me. Without you I don’t see how he could have got it. You’ll be my
+stepmother, but we mustn’t use that word. They’re always said to be
+cruel; but I don’t think you’ll ever so much as pinch or even push me.
+I’m not afraid at all.”
+
+“My good little Pansy,” said Isabel gently, “I shall be ever so kind to
+you.” A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need
+it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+
+“Very well then, I’ve nothing to fear,” the child returned with her
+note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to
+suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
+
+Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini
+was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room
+with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead
+and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite.
+She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of
+turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand
+before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to
+a composition of figures already sketched in. “If you expect me to
+congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don’t suppose you care
+if I do or not; I believe you’re supposed not to care--through being so
+clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell
+fibs; I never tell them unless there’s something rather good to be
+gained. I don’t see what’s to be gained with you--especially as you
+wouldn’t believe me. I don’t make professions any more than I make paper
+flowers or flouncey lampshades--I don’t know how. My lampshades would be
+sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I’m very
+glad for my own sake that you’re to marry Osmond; but I won’t pretend
+I’m glad for yours. You’re very brilliant--you know that’s the way
+you’re always spoken of; you’re an heiress and very good-looking and
+original, not banal; so it’s a good thing to have you in the family.
+Our family’s very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and
+my mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne.
+But we’re dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you’ll pick us up.
+I’ve great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to
+talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think
+they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose
+Pansy oughtn’t to hear all this; but that’s what she has come to me
+for--to acquire the tone of society. There’s no harm in her knowing what
+horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had
+designs on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the
+strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be
+disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was
+enchanted for myself; and after all I’m very selfish. By the way, you
+won’t respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate.
+I should like it, but you won’t. Some day, all the same, we shall be
+better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and
+see you, though, as you probably know, he’s on no sort of terms with
+Osmond. He’s very fond of going to see pretty women, but I’m not afraid
+of you. In the first place I don’t care what he does. In the second, you
+won’t care a straw for him; he won’t be a bit, at any time, your affair,
+and, stupid as he is, he’ll see you’re not his. Some day, if you can
+stand it, I’ll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go
+out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir.”
+
+“Let her stay, please,” said Isabel. “I would rather hear nothing that
+Pansy may not!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of
+pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third
+floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame
+Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face
+and a lady’s maid’s manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room
+and requested the favour of his name. “Mr. Edward Rosier,” said the
+young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
+
+The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an
+ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered
+that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of
+several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits
+he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this
+charming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him
+which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary
+sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at
+Saint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to
+pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the
+household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,
+he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare
+his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go
+down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under
+bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if
+he were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in
+the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr.
+Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it
+on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the
+young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might
+expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in
+November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the
+brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had
+at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to
+a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain
+to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond’s composition. She was admirably
+finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece.
+He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have
+thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the
+bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose
+taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate.
+That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods
+would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame
+Merle’s drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every
+style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He
+had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then “By
+Jove, she has some jolly good things!” he had yearningly murmured. The
+room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression
+of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved.
+Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over
+the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with
+princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before
+the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce
+attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately,
+as if he were smelling it.
+
+“It’s old Venetian,” she said; “it’s rather good.”
+
+“It’s too good for this; you ought to wear it.”
+
+“They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.”
+
+“Ah, but I can’t wear mine,” smiled the visitor.
+
+“I don’t see why you shouldn’t! I’ve better lace than that to wear.”
+
+His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. “You’ve some very
+good things.”
+
+“Yes, but I hate them.”
+
+“Do you want to get rid of them?” the young man quickly asked.
+
+“No, it’s good to have something to hate: one works it off!”
+
+“I love my things,” said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his
+recognitions. “But it’s not about them, nor about yours, that I came
+to talk to you.” He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: “I
+care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!”
+
+Madame Merle opened wide eyes. “Did you come to tell me that?”
+
+“I came to ask your advice.”
+
+She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her
+large white hand. “A man in love, you know, doesn’t ask advice.”
+
+“Why not, if he’s in a difficult position? That’s often the case with a
+man in love. I’ve been in love before, and I know. But never so much as
+this time--really never so much. I should like particularly to know what
+you think of my prospects. I’m afraid that for Mr. Osmond I’m not--well,
+a real collector’s piece.”
+
+“Do you wish me to intercede?” Madame Merle asked with her fine arms
+folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+
+“If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There
+will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to
+believe her father will consent.”
+
+“You’re very considerate; that’s in your favour. But you assume in
+rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize.”
+
+“You’ve been very kind to me,” said the young man. “That’s why I came.”
+
+“I’m always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It’s very rare
+now, and there’s no telling what one may get by it.” With which the
+left-hand corner of Madame Merle’s mouth gave expression to the joke.
+
+But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently
+strenuous. “Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!”
+
+“I like you very much; but, if you please, we won’t analyse. Pardon me
+if I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I
+must tell you, however, that I’ve not the marrying of Pansy Osmond.”
+
+“I didn’t suppose that. But you’ve seemed to me intimate with her
+family, and I thought you might have influence.”
+
+Madame Merle considered. “Whom do you call her family?”
+
+“Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere.”
+
+“Mr. Osmond’s her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed
+a member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying
+her.”
+
+“I’m sorry for that,” said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. “I
+think Mrs. Osmond would favour me.”
+
+“Very likely--if her husband doesn’t.”
+
+He raised his eyebrows. “Does she take the opposite line from him?”
+
+“In everything. They think quite differently.”
+
+“Well,” said Rosier, “I’m sorry for that; but it’s none of my business.
+She’s very fond of Pansy.”
+
+“Yes, she’s very fond of Pansy.”
+
+“And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves
+her as if she were her own mother.”
+
+“You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor
+child,” said Madame Merle. “Have you declared your sentiments?”
+
+“Never!” cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. “Never till I’ve
+assured myself of those of the parents.”
+
+“You always wait for that? You’ve excellent principles; you observe the
+proprieties.”
+
+“I think you’re laughing at me,” the young man murmured, dropping back
+in his chair and feeling his small moustache. “I didn’t expect that of
+you, Madame Merle.”
+
+She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.
+“You don’t do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and
+the best you could adopt. Yes, that’s what I think.”
+
+“I wouldn’t agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for
+that,” said Ned Rosier.
+
+“I’m glad, after all, that you’ve told me,” Madame Merle went on. “Leave
+it to me a little; I think I can help you.”
+
+“I said you were the person to come to!” her visitor cried with prompt
+elation.
+
+“You were very clever,” Madame Merle returned more dryly. “When I say I
+can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a
+little if it is.”
+
+“I’m awfully decent, you know,” said Rosier earnestly. “I won’t say I’ve
+no faults, but I’ll say I’ve no vices.”
+
+“All that’s negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call
+vices. What’s the positive side? What’s the virtuous? What have you got
+besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?”
+
+“I’ve a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a year.
+With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an
+income.”
+
+“Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you
+live.”
+
+“Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.”
+
+Madame Merle’s mouth rose to the left. “It wouldn’t be famous; you’d
+have to make use of the teacups, and they’d get broken.”
+
+“We don’t want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything
+pretty it would be enough. When one’s as pretty as she one can
+afford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but
+muslin--without the sprig,” said Rosier reflectively.
+
+“Wouldn’t you even allow her the sprig? She’d be much obliged to you at
+any rate for that theory.”
+
+“It’s the correct one, I assure you; and I’m sure she’d enter into it.
+She understands all that; that’s why I love her.”
+
+“She’s a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely graceful.
+But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.”
+
+Rosier scarce demurred. “I don’t in the least desire that he should. But
+I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.”
+
+“The money’s his wife’s; she brought him a large fortune.”
+
+“Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do
+something.”
+
+“For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!” Madame Merle
+exclaimed with a laugh.
+
+“I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.”
+
+“Mrs. Osmond,” Madame Merle went on, “will probably prefer to keep her
+money for her own children.”
+
+“Her own children? Surely she has none.”
+
+“She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago,
+six months after his birth. Others therefore may come.”
+
+“I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She’s a splendid woman.”
+
+Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. “Ah, about her there’s much to
+be said. Splendid as you like! We’ve not exactly made out that you’re a
+_parti_. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.
+
+“Pardon me, I think it may be,” said Rosier quite lucidly.
+
+“You’ll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!”
+
+“I think you underrate me.”
+
+“You’re not so innocent as that? Seriously,” said Madame Merle,
+“of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a
+combination to be considered. I don’t say it’s to be jumped at, but
+there might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline
+to believe he can do better.”
+
+“_He_ can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can’t do better
+than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,” Rosier added
+eagerly.
+
+“She does--I know it.”
+
+“Ah,” cried the young man, “I said you were the person to come to.”
+
+“But I don’t know how you know it, if you haven’t asked her,” Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+“In such a case there’s no need of asking and telling; as you say, we’re
+an innocent couple. How did _you_ know it?”
+
+“I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I’ll find
+out for you.”
+
+Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. “You say that rather coldly.
+Don’t simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.”
+
+“I’ll do my best. I’ll try to make the most of your advantages.”
+
+“Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I’ll say a word to Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+“_Gardez-vous-en bien!_” And Madame Merle was on her feet. “Don’t set her
+going, or you’ll spoil everything.”
+
+Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess _had_ been
+after all the right person to come to. “I don’t think I understand
+you. I’m an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to
+succeed.”
+
+“Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the
+better, for she doesn’t get on very well with some of her new. But don’t
+for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband
+may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you
+not to multiply points of difference between them.”
+
+Poor Rosier’s face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand
+of Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste
+for proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which
+he concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner’s “best
+set” came to his assistance. “I don’t see that I’m bound to consider Mr.
+Osmond so very much!” he exclaimed. “No, but you should consider _her_.
+You say you’re an old friend. Would you make her suffer?”
+
+“Not for the world.”
+
+“Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I’ve taken a few
+soundings.”
+
+“Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I’m in love.”
+
+“Oh, you won’t burn up! Why did you come to me, if you’re not to heed
+what I say?”
+
+“You’re very kind; I’ll be very good,” the young man promised. “But I’m
+afraid Mr. Osmond’s pretty hard,” he added in his mild voice as he went
+to the door.
+
+Madame Merle gave a short laugh. “It has been said before. But his wife
+isn’t easy either.”
+
+“Ah, she’s a splendid woman!” Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.
+He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was
+already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he
+had given Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself
+in spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond’s home. He reflected
+constantly on what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his
+mind the impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her
+_de confiance_, as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been
+precipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had
+incurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had
+known Madame Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her
+a delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for
+assuming that she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms,
+gracefully arranged as these members might be to receive her. She had
+indeed shown him benevolence, and she was a person of consideration
+among the girl’s people, where she had a rather striking appearance
+(Rosier had more than once wondered how she managed it) of being
+intimate without being familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these
+advantages. There was no particular reason why she should take trouble
+for him; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Rosier felt
+rather a fool when he thought of his having appealed to her on the
+ground that she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had
+appeared to say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his
+bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or three
+of the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss
+Osmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say
+so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like
+her to believe it.
+
+It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond’s,
+Mrs. Osmond having an “evening”--she had taken the Thursday of each
+week--when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of
+civility. The object of Mr. Rosier’s well-regulated affection dwelt in
+a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure
+overlooking a sunny _piazzetta_ in the neighbourhood of the Farnese
+Palace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived--a palace by Roman measure,
+but a dungeon to poor Rosier’s apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of
+evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious
+father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in
+a kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name,
+which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which
+was mentioned in “Murray” and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague
+survey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio
+in the _piano nobile_ and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the
+wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain
+gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he
+could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered
+into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on
+settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this
+habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour enough,
+and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels
+he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details
+of the cornice had quite the grand air. But Rosier was haunted by the
+conviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up
+there to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of
+being thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There
+was one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he
+found himself in Mrs. Osmond’s warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which
+were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very
+strong in “good things.” It was a taste of Osmond’s own--not at all of
+hers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when,
+after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even
+better “French” than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit
+that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman
+should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of
+her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a
+large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed
+a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his
+greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.
+Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.
+For “advice” read “cash,” he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert
+Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season
+confirmed his most cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may
+freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented
+himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls
+of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really
+yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme
+seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about
+for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted
+a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took
+everything comfortable for granted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a
+concave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here
+Mrs. Osmond usually sat--though she was not in her most customary place
+to-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about
+the fire. The room was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it
+contained the larger things and--almost always--an odour of flowers.
+Pansy on this occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the
+resort of younger visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before
+the chimney, leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up
+and was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were
+talking together; but he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an
+expression, frequent with them, that seemed to represent them as engaged
+with objects more worth their while than the appearances actually
+thrust upon them. Rosier, coming in unannounced, failed to attract his
+attention; but the young man, who was very punctilious, though he was
+even exceptionally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he
+had come to see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put out his
+left hand, without changing his attitude.
+
+“How d’ye do? My wife’s somewhere about.”
+
+“Never fear; I shall find her,” said Rosier cheerfully.
+
+Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so
+efficiently looked at. “Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn’t like
+it,” he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there,
+but she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or
+would come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond,
+having a fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly
+resentful, and where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of
+being quite in the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without
+help, and then in a moment, “I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte
+to-day,” he said.
+
+Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his
+boot-sole, “I don’t care a fig for Capo di Monte!” he returned.
+
+“I hope you’re not losing your interest?”
+
+“In old pots and plates? Yes, I’m losing my interest.”
+
+Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. “You’re not
+thinking of parting with a--a piece or two?”
+
+“No, I’m not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier,” said
+Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
+
+“Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,” Rosier remarked brightly.
+
+“Exactly. I’ve nothing I wish to match.”
+
+Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of
+assurance. “Ah, well, I have!” was all he could murmur; and he knew
+his murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the
+adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She
+was dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had
+said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought
+of her and the terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his
+admiration. Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it
+was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for
+authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that
+secret of a “lustre” beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering,
+which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him
+to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such
+tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her
+youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost
+something of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately
+taken exception--she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all
+events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the
+picture of a gracious lady. “You see I’m very regular,” he said. “But
+who should be if I’m not?”
+
+“Yes, I’ve known you longer than any one here. But we mustn’t indulge in
+tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.”
+
+“Ah, please, what young lady?” Rosier was immensely obliging; but this
+was not what he had come for.
+
+“She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.” Rosier
+hesitated a moment. “Can’t Mr. Osmond speak to her? He’s within six feet
+of her.”
+
+Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. “She’s not very lively, and he doesn’t like
+dull people.”
+
+“But she’s good enough for me? Ah now, that’s hard!”
+
+“I only mean that you’ve ideas for two. And then you’re so obliging.”
+
+“No, he’s not--to me.” And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+
+“That’s a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+
+“So I tell him,” she said, still smiling.
+
+“You see I want some tea,” Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
+
+“That’s perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.”
+
+“Very good; but after that I’ll abandon her to her fate. The simple
+truth is I’m dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, turning away, “I can’t help you there!”
+
+Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink,
+whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in
+making to Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken
+the spirit of his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable
+of occupying this young man’s mind for a considerable time. At last,
+however, he became--comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little
+what promises he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to
+abandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy
+Osmond, who had given him the tea for his companion--Pansy was as fond
+as ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her. Into this mild
+colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his
+small sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at
+first not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at
+Florence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the
+Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked together of matters
+sacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at
+nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn’t really fill out the
+part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree
+the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style;
+and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart
+attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it--very much as if it
+were lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have
+been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was
+not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted.
+Only he called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed
+were happy enough. “No, she’s unique--she’s absolutely unique,” he used
+to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he
+have admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had
+the style of a little princess; if you couldn’t see it you had no eye.
+It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression
+in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only
+looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier,
+who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her
+charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish
+prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked
+him--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him
+feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he
+had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect _jeune fille_, and
+one couldn’t make of a _jeune fille_ the enquiry requisite for throwing
+light on such a point. A _jeune fille_ was what Rosier had always dreamed
+of--a _jeune fille_ who should yet not be French, for he had felt that
+this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had
+never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she
+had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An American jeune
+fille--what could be better than that? She would be frank and gay, and
+yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men,
+nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Rosier
+could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of
+hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but
+he was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were
+the most sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he
+entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of greater
+importance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of the house.
+There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been placed on his
+guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the warning to Pansy;
+it would not have been part of his policy to let her know that a
+prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he _was_ in love
+with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions of
+circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant
+by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely
+he himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl
+in so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her
+mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that
+she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter
+departed together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be
+virtually alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before;
+he had never been alone with a _jeune fille_. It was a great moment; poor
+Rosier began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond
+the one in which they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and
+lighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty
+all the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow;
+there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very
+temple of authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture;
+he was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of
+stretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other
+maiden had left them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on
+the far side of the room. For a little it occurred to him that she was
+frightened--too frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured
+him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed
+for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and
+look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He
+had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was
+of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he
+didn’t really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He
+therefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
+
+“Certainly, you may go,” said Pansy; “and if you like I’ll show you.”
+ She was not in the least frightened.
+
+“That’s just what I hoped you’d say; you’re so very kind,” Rosier
+murmured.
+
+They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it
+seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. “It’s not for
+winter evenings; it’s more for summer,” she said. “It’s papa’s taste; he
+has so much.”
+
+He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He
+looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation.
+“Doesn’t Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?” he
+asked.
+
+“Oh yes, a great deal; but it’s more for literature,” said Pansy--“and
+for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows
+everything.”
+
+Rosier was silent a little. “There’s one thing I’m sure he knows!” he
+broke out presently. “He knows that when I come here it’s, with all
+respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who’s so charming--it’s
+really,” said the young man, “to see you!”
+
+“To see me?” And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+
+“To see you; that’s what I come for,” Rosier repeated, feeling the
+intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+
+Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not
+needed to make her face more modest. “I thought it was for that.”
+
+“And it was not disagreeable to you?”
+
+“I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know. You never told me,” said Pansy.
+
+“I was afraid of offending you.”
+
+“You don’t offend me,” the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel
+had kissed her.
+
+“You like me then, Pansy?” Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
+
+“Yes--I like you.”
+
+They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock
+was perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from
+without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him
+the very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her
+hand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted,
+still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something
+ineffably passive. She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now
+anything might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting
+for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever;
+but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.
+Rosier felt that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his
+heart she would submit without a murmur, would rest there without a
+question. It was true that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow
+Empire _salottino_. She had known it was for her he came, and yet like
+what a perfect little lady she had carried it off!
+
+“You’re very dear to me,” he murmured, trying to believe that there was
+after all such a thing as hospitality.
+
+She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. “Did you say
+papa knows?”
+
+“You told me just now he knows everything.”
+
+“I think you must make sure,” said Pansy.
+
+“Ah, my dear, when once I’m sure of _you_!” Rosier murmured in her ear;
+whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of
+consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
+
+The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame
+Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.
+How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for
+she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor
+dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the
+audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very
+tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest
+thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more
+striking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master
+of the house. There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these
+two--they always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the
+commonplace--and then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked
+if little Mr. Rosier had come this evening.
+
+“He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared,” Osmond said.
+
+“And where’s Pansy?”
+
+“In the other room. There are several people there.”
+
+“He’s probably among them,” said Madame Merle.
+
+“Do you wish to see him?” Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
+
+Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the
+eighth of a note. “Yes, I should like to say to him that I’ve told you
+what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.”
+
+“Don’t tell him that. He’ll try to interest me more--which is exactly
+what I don’t want. Tell him I hate his proposal.”
+
+“But you don’t hate it.”
+
+“It doesn’t signify; I don’t love it. I let him see that, myself, this
+evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing’s a great
+bore. There’s no hurry.”
+
+“I’ll tell him that you’ll take time and think it over.”
+
+“No, don’t do that. He’ll hang on.”
+
+“If I discourage him he’ll do the same.”
+
+“Yes, but in the one case he’ll try to talk and explain--which would be
+exceedingly tiresome. In the other he’ll probably hold his tongue and go
+in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a
+donkey.”
+
+“Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?”
+
+“Oh, he’s a nuisance--with his eternal majolica.”
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. “He’s a gentleman,
+he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand
+francs!”
+
+“It’s misery--‘genteel’ misery,” Osmond broke in. “It’s not what I’ve
+dreamed of for Pansy.”
+
+“Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.”
+
+“Do you believe him?” Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+
+“Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don’t
+suppose you consider that that matters.”
+
+“I don’t consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has
+thought of him.”
+
+“That opinion’s more convenient,” said Madame Merle quietly.
+
+“Has she told you she’s in love with him?”
+
+“For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?” Madame Merle
+added in a moment.
+
+Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other
+knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his long, fine
+forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and gazed a while
+before him. “This kind of thing doesn’t find me unprepared. It’s what I
+educated her for. It was all for this--that when such a case should come
+up she should do what I prefer.”
+
+“I’m not afraid that she’ll not do it.”
+
+“Well then, where’s the hitch?”
+
+“I don’t see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of
+Mr. Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.”
+
+“I can’t keep him. Keep him yourself.”
+
+“Very good; I’ll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.”
+ Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing
+about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit
+to interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the
+last words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out
+of the adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a
+few steps and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her
+father.
+
+“He has spoken to her,” Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+
+Her companion never turned his head. “So much for your belief in his
+promises. He ought to be horsewhipped.”
+
+“He intends to confess, poor little man!”
+
+Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. “It
+doesn’t matter,” he murmured, turning away.
+
+Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner
+of unfamiliar politeness. This lady’s reception of her was not more
+intimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly
+smile.
+
+“You’re very late,” the young creature gently said.
+
+“My dear child, I’m never later than I intend to be.”
+
+Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward
+Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it
+off his mind, “I’ve spoken to her!” he whispered.
+
+“I know it, Mr. Rosier.”
+
+“Did she tell you?”
+
+“Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come
+and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.” She was severe, and in
+the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of
+contempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
+
+He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor
+the place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking
+with an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady
+was Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. “You
+said just now you wouldn’t help me,” he began to Mrs. Osmond. “Perhaps
+you’ll feel differently when you know--when you know--!”
+
+Isabel met his hesitation. “When I know what?”
+
+“That she’s all right.”
+
+“What do you mean by that?”
+
+“Well, that we’ve come to an understanding.”
+
+“She’s all wrong,” said Isabel. “It won’t do.”
+
+Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
+testified to his sense of injury. “I’ve never been treated so,” he said.
+“What is there against me, after all? That’s not the way I’m usually
+considered. I could have married twenty times.”
+
+“It’s a pity you didn’t. I don’t mean twenty times, but once,
+comfortably,” Isabel added, smiling kindly. “You’re not rich enough for
+Pansy.”
+
+“She doesn’t care a straw for one’s money.”
+
+“No, but her father does.”
+
+“Ah yes, he has proved that!” cried the young man.
+
+Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
+ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
+to look at Gilbert Osmond’s collection of miniatures, which were neatly
+arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
+seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
+certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used
+to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such
+a fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
+searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire
+was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to
+Isabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a
+rude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of
+him.
+
+“I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn’t have done, a while ago,” he
+began. “But you must remember my situation.”
+
+“I don’t remember what you said,” she answered coldly.
+
+“Ah, you’re offended, and now you’ll never help me.”
+
+She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: “It’s not
+that I won’t; I simply can’t!” Her manner was almost passionate.
+
+“If you _could_, just a little, I’d never again speak of your husband save
+as an angel.”
+
+“The inducement’s great,” said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he
+afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the
+eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow
+that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked,
+and he took himself off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let
+him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop
+there till something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher
+expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his
+daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if
+one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that
+tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn’t be
+a miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy
+her father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by
+precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a
+sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of
+itself--it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own
+situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world,
+and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly
+declared, one couldn’t have everything one wanted; she had learned that
+lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert
+Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter
+dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have
+anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+
+“He doesn’t like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn’t like it at
+all,” said Madame Merle.
+
+“I’m perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!”
+
+“If you do that he’ll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the
+house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to
+me.”
+
+“As little as possible? Who’s to measure the possibility?”
+
+“Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,
+but don’t go at all at odd times, and don’t fret about Pansy. I’ll see
+that she understands everything. She’s a calm little nature; she’ll take
+it quietly.”
+
+Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was
+advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to
+Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he
+went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual,
+was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so
+that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+
+“I’m glad that you can take a hint,” Pansy’s father said, slightly
+closing his keen, conscious eyes.
+
+“I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.”
+
+“You took it? Where did you take it?”
+
+It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
+asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. “Madame Merle
+gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you
+declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain
+my wishes to you.” And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.
+
+“I don’t see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
+Madame Merle?”
+
+“I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had
+seemed to me to know you very well.”
+
+“She doesn’t know me so well as she thinks,” said Osmond.
+
+“I’m sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
+hope.”
+
+Osmond stared into the fire a moment. “I set a great price on my
+daughter.”
+
+“You can’t set a higher one than I do. Don’t I prove it by wishing to
+marry her?”
+
+“I wish to marry her very well,” Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
+which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
+
+“Of course I pretend she’d marry well in marrying me. She couldn’t
+marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
+more.”
+
+“I’m not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
+loves”--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+
+“I’m not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.”
+
+“Not to me,” Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
+his eyes to his boot-toes.
+
+“I have her promise, sir!” cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+exasperation.
+
+As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
+some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
+had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: “I think she has no
+recollection of having given it.”
+
+They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
+uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again
+to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a
+gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the
+Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter
+smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face
+and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.
+
+“You apparently don’t recognise me,” he said with a smile that expressed
+more than Osmond’s.
+
+“Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.”
+
+Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as
+usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond
+in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously
+indignant, but said to her crudely: “Your husband’s awfully
+cold-blooded.”
+
+She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. “You can’t
+expect every one to be as hot as yourself.”
+
+“I don’t pretend to be cold, but I’m cool. What has he been doing to his
+daughter?”
+
+“I’ve no idea.”
+
+“Don’t you take any interest?” Rosier demanded with his sense that she
+too was irritating.
+
+For a moment she answered nothing; then, “No!” she said abruptly and
+with a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
+
+“Pardon me if I don’t believe that. Where’s Miss Osmond?”
+
+“In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.”
+
+Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by
+intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely
+given to her occupation. “What on earth has he done to her?” he asked
+again imploringly. “He declares to me she has given me up.”
+
+“She has not given you up,” Isabel said in a low tone and without
+looking at him.
+
+“Ah, thank you for that! Now I’ll leave her alone as long as you think
+proper!”
+
+He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware
+that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had
+just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good
+looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. “Isabel,”
+ said her husband, “I bring you an old friend.”
+
+Mrs. Osmond’s face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend’s,
+not perfectly confident. “I’m very happy to see Lord Warburton,” she
+said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been
+interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He
+had a quick impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn’t notice what he did.
+
+Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe
+him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or
+a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her,
+was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey
+eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and
+attestation strictly sincere. He was “heavier” than of yore and looked
+older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.
+
+“I suppose you didn’t expect to see me,” he said; “I’ve but just
+arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I’ve lost
+no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on
+Thursdays.”
+
+“You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,” Osmond
+remarked to his wife.
+
+“It’s very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we’re greatly
+flattered,” Isabel said.
+
+“Ah well, it’s better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,”
+ Osmond went on.
+
+“The hotel seems very good; I think it’s the same at which I saw you
+four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it’s a
+long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?” his lordship
+asked of his hostess. “It was in the Capitol, in the first room.”
+
+“I remember that myself,” said Osmond. “I was there at the time.”
+
+“Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry
+that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I’ve never
+cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,” her
+old friend went on to Isabel, “and I assure you I’ve often thought of
+you. It must be a charming place to live in,” he added with a look,
+round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the
+dim ghost of his old ruefulness.
+
+“We should have been glad to see you at any time,” Osmond observed with
+propriety.
+
+“Thank you very much. I haven’t been out of England since then. Till a
+month ago I really supposed my travels over.”
+
+“I’ve heard of you from time to time,” said Isabel, who had already,
+with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what
+meeting him again meant for her.
+
+“I hope you’ve heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
+blank.”
+
+“Like the good reigns in history,” Osmond suggested. He appeared to
+think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so
+conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more
+nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife’s old friend. It
+was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a
+deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good
+deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. “I’ll leave you and
+Mrs. Osmond together,” he added. “You have reminiscences into which I
+don’t enter.”
+
+“I’m afraid you lose a good deal!” Lord Warburton called after him, as
+he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation
+of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the
+deepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious.
+“I’m really very glad to see you.”
+
+“It’s very pleasant. You’re very kind.”
+
+“Do you know that you’re changed--a little?”
+
+She just hesitated. “Yes--a good deal.”
+
+“I don’t mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the
+better?”
+
+“I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to _you_,” she bravely
+returned.
+
+“Ah well, for me--it’s a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn’t
+be something to show for it.” They sat down and she asked him about
+his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He
+answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments
+she saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his
+whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without
+chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel
+felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend’s manner was
+certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or
+like her at least, to know him for such. “There’s something I must tell
+you without more delay,” he resumed. “I’ve brought Ralph Touchett with
+me.”
+
+“Brought him with you?” Isabel’s surprise was great.
+
+“He’s at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.”
+
+“I’ll go to see him,” she immediately said.
+
+“That’s exactly what I hoped you’d do. I had an idea you hadn’t seen
+much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a
+little more formal. That’s why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton.”
+
+“I’m as fond of Ralph as ever,” Isabel answered. “But why has he come to
+Rome?” The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
+
+“Because he’s very far gone, Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+“Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined
+to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England,
+indoors, in what he called an artificial climate.”
+
+“Poor fellow, he doesn’t succeed with the artificial! I went to see him
+three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has
+been getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He
+smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed;
+the house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it
+into his head to start for Sicily. I didn’t believe in it--neither did
+the doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know,
+is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea
+that it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania.
+He said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself
+comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn’t brought anything. I wanted
+him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea
+and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish,
+I made up my mind to come with him. I’m acting as--what do you call it
+in America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph’s very moderate now. We
+left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He
+can’t keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the
+cold. He has got rather a good man, but I’m afraid he’s beyond human
+help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some
+sharp young doctor; but he wouldn’t hear of it. If you don’t mind my
+saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to
+decide on going to America.”
+
+Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. “My
+aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When
+the date comes round she starts; I think she’d have started if Ralph had
+been dying.”
+
+“I sometimes think he _is_ dying,” Lord Warburton said.
+
+Isabel sprang up. “I’ll go to him then now.”
+
+He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his
+words. “I don’t mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day,
+in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching
+Rome--he’s very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago,
+when I bade him good-night, he told me he was very tired, but very happy.
+Go to him in the morning; that’s all I mean. I didn’t tell him I was
+coming here; I didn’t decide to till after we had separated. Then I
+remembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very
+Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he’s here, and let
+you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he
+said he hadn’t written to you.” There was no need of Isabel’s declaring
+that she would act upon Lord Warburton’s information; she looked, as she
+sat there, like a winged creature held back. “Let alone that I wanted to
+see you for myself,” her visitor gallantly added.
+
+“I don’t understand Ralph’s plan; it seems to me very wild,” she said.
+“I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.”
+
+“He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.”
+
+“You went to see him; you’ve been extremely kind.”
+
+“Oh dear, I had nothing to do,” said Lord Warburton.
+
+“We hear, on the contrary, that you’re doing great things. Every one
+speaks of you as a great statesman, and I’m perpetually seeing your name
+in the Times, which, by the way, doesn’t appear to hold it in reverence.
+You’re apparently as wild a radical as ever.”
+
+“I don’t feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.
+Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way
+from London. I tell him he’s the last of the Tories, and he calls me
+the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal
+appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there’s life in him
+yet.”
+
+Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from
+asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived
+that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject--he had a
+conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say
+to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she
+was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old,
+such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted
+and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new
+trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live
+with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her
+and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was
+not a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to
+punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice
+to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a
+good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation
+of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never
+fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She
+gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free
+to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course
+spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even
+went so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly
+time. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her
+marriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond’s
+acquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other
+occasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her
+history, but he didn’t apologise to her for this. The only thing he
+implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very
+much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short
+pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a
+person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of
+guesses--
+
+“Well now, I suppose you’re very happy and all that sort of thing?”
+
+Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her
+almost as the accent of comedy. “Do you suppose if I were not I’d tell
+you?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. I don’t see why not.”
+
+“I do then. Fortunately, however, I’m very happy.”
+
+“You’ve got an awfully good house.”
+
+“Yes, it’s very pleasant. But that’s not my merit--it’s my husband’s.”
+
+“You mean he has arranged it?”
+
+“Yes, it was nothing when we came.”
+
+“He must be very clever.”
+
+“He has a genius for upholstery,” said Isabel.
+
+“There’s a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a
+taste of your own.”
+
+“I enjoy things when they’re done, but I’ve no ideas. I can never
+propose anything.”
+
+“Do you mean you accept what others propose?”
+
+“Very willingly, for the most part.”
+
+“That’s a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.”
+
+“It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I’ve in a few small
+ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you
+to some of these people.”
+
+“Oh, please don’t; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young
+lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face.”
+
+“The one talking to the rosy young man? That’s my husband’s daughter.”
+
+“Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!”
+
+“You must make her acquaintance.”
+
+“In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.” He ceased
+to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs.
+Osmond. “Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?” he
+presently went on. “You seem to me, after all, very much the same.”
+
+“And yet I find it a great change to be married,” said Isabel with mild
+gaiety.
+
+“It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven’t
+gone in for that.”
+
+“It rather surprises me.”
+
+“You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry,” he
+added more simply.
+
+“It ought to be very easy,” Isabel said, rising--after which she
+reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the
+person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the
+pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having
+contributed then to the facility.
+
+Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy’s
+tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she
+asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
+
+“He’s an English lord,” said Rosier. “I don’t know more.”
+
+“I wonder if he’ll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.”
+
+“Never mind that; I’ve something particular to say to you.”
+
+“Don’t speak so loud every one will hear,” said Pansy.
+
+“They won’t hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only
+thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil.”
+
+“It has just been filled; the servants never know!”--and she sighed with
+the weight of her responsibility.
+
+“Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn’t mean
+what you said a week ago.”
+
+“I don’t mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean
+what I say to you.”
+
+“He told me you had forgotten me.”
+
+“Ah no, I don’t forget,” said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed
+smile.
+
+“Then everything’s just the very same?”
+
+“Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.”
+
+“What has he done to you?”
+
+“He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he
+forbade me to marry you.”
+
+“You needn’t mind that.”
+
+“Oh yes, I must indeed. I can’t disobey papa.”
+
+“Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?”
+
+She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;
+then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. “I love you just as
+much.”
+
+“What good will that do me?”
+
+“Ah,” said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, “I don’t know that.”
+
+“You disappoint me,” groaned poor Rosier.
+
+She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. “Please
+don’t talk any more.”
+
+“Is this to be all my satisfaction?”
+
+“Papa said I was not to talk with you.”
+
+“Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it’s too much!”
+
+“I wish you’d wait a little,” said the girl in a voice just distinct
+enough to betray a quaver.
+
+“Of course I’ll wait if you’ll give me hope. But you take my life away.”
+
+“I’ll not give you up--oh no!” Pansy went on.
+
+“He’ll try and make you marry some one else.”
+
+“I’ll never do that.”
+
+“What then are we to wait for?”
+
+She hesitated again. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she’ll help us.” It
+was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
+
+“She won’t help us much. She’s afraid.”
+
+“Afraid of what?”
+
+“Of your father, I suppose.”
+
+Pansy shook her little head. “She’s not afraid of any one. We must have
+patience.”
+
+“Ah, that’s an awful word,” Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.
+Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his
+hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the
+carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about
+him and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her
+little curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had
+introduced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett
+should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done
+before that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardly
+prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we
+know, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him
+to resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That
+discussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather than
+the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl’s zeal in carrying out her
+engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.
+No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph’s opinion of
+Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they
+managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a
+difference, as Ralph often said to himself--there was a difference. She
+had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had
+gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn’t care;
+and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should
+justify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was
+of the sort that women remember best. As Osmond’s wife she could never
+again be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity
+she expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had
+attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the
+other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he
+should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed
+his cousin’s marriage, Ralph’s prevision of the future; and if his
+meditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom
+of health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed)
+beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united
+to Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the month of
+June. He learned from his mother that Isabel at first had thought of
+celebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity was
+what she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spite
+of Osmond’s professed willingness to make a journey of any length, that
+this characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by the
+nearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore at
+the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only of
+Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That
+severity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the result
+of the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on the
+occasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle
+had been invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had
+written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not been
+invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by Mr.
+Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but
+she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle’s, intimating
+that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been
+present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe had
+taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel
+in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too
+freely--her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject
+of it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. “It
+isn’t in the least that you’ve married--it is that you have married
+_him_,” she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen,
+much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few of
+his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta’s second visit to Europe,
+however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the
+moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he
+took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon
+the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.
+Henrietta’s letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she
+had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the
+Alhambra and entitled ‘Moors and Moonlight,’ which generally passed for
+her masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband’s
+not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even
+wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense
+of humour, wouldn’t it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herself
+looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing
+to grudge to Henrietta’s violated conscience. Osmond had thought their
+alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn’t imagine what they had in
+common. For him, Mr. Bantling’s fellow tourist was simply the most
+vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.
+Against this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an
+ardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his
+wife’s tastes. Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to
+know people who were as different as possible from herself. “Why
+then don’t you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?” Osmond
+had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her
+washerwoman wouldn’t care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.
+
+Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that
+had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her
+residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been
+joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him
+to England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she
+couldn’t induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at
+San Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but
+late in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.
+It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face
+with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She
+had written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing
+he wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of her
+life, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she was
+making the best of it. Mrs. Touchett had not the imagination that
+communes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy with
+her niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to
+be living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still
+remained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It
+had given her no pleasure to think of Isabel’s establishment, which she
+was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, she
+rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best always to minimise
+the contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond, who made her
+think of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these days; but Mrs.
+Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talked
+of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person
+of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle’s relations with Mrs. Touchett had
+undergone a perceptible change. Isabel’s aunt had told her, without
+circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame
+Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one
+worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,
+for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of
+irritation--Madame Merle now took a very high tone and declared that
+this was an accusation from which she couldn’t stoop to defend herself.
+She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only
+too simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel
+was not eager to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated
+visits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top
+and he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to
+herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown
+dust in her companion’s eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event--she was
+unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any part
+in it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly
+protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett’s attitude,
+and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming
+seasons, that Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many months
+in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had
+done her a wrong; there are some things that can’t be forgiven. But
+Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite
+in her dignity.
+
+Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in
+this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the
+girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the
+game. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would
+always wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in
+her union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should
+fall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he
+had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in
+order to know Isabel’s real situation. At present, however, she neither
+taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was
+justified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There was
+something fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was
+not an expression, Ralph said--it was a representation, it was even an
+advertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a
+sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she
+could say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred
+six months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning.
+She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken
+of as having a “charming position.” He observed that she produced the
+impression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among
+many people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not open
+to every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people
+were not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain
+magnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive
+it; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even
+to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in
+all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel had
+no faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as having
+a great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, of
+fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to be
+bored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, to
+explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain
+of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was
+much less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness of
+development on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There was
+a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her
+experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even
+spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage.
+Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care so
+much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight
+in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked
+so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a
+crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she
+appeared now to think there was nothing worth people’s either differing
+about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was
+greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had
+gained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a
+brilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence
+to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten
+her? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent
+head sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become
+quite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to
+represent something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself;
+and he could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond.
+“Good heavens, what a function!” he then woefully exclaimed. He was lost
+in wonder at the mystery of things.
+
+He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He
+saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated,
+animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had
+material to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects
+were deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the
+motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior
+with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense
+of exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every
+other, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold
+originality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom
+Isabel had attributed a superior morality. “He works with superior
+material,” Ralph said to himself; “it’s rich abundance compared with his
+former resources.” Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never--to his
+own sense--been so clever as when he observed, _in petto_, that under the
+guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for
+the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was
+its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only
+measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,
+and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything
+he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the
+lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived
+so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his
+accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on
+his hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His
+solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his
+bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present
+to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was
+not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world’s
+curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,
+ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most
+directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this
+case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,
+who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found
+a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had
+suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little
+sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.
+It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
+theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this
+period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in
+the least as an enemy.
+
+For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
+had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.
+He was Isabel’s cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on
+this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
+asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
+climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
+the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;
+but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in
+the presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward
+the end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond’s making it of small ease to
+his wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not
+jealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But
+he made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was
+still left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his
+suspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he
+had deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had been
+constantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She had
+decided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation had been
+better than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous
+stroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, and
+was so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk
+been highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The
+reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and
+the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept
+Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of
+the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet
+satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn’t make up his mind to lose
+that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what her
+husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and
+he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had held
+good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of
+his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an
+air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,
+unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been
+before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant
+land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal
+of the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she
+should find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord
+Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+
+She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert
+Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for
+him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,
+at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought
+after all he wouldn’t go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together
+after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had
+left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,
+which he instantly removed from his lips.
+
+“Won’t go to Sicily? Where then will you go?”
+
+“Well, I guess I won’t go anywhere,” said Ralph, from the sofa, all
+shamelessly.
+
+“Do you mean you’ll return to England?”
+
+“Oh dear no; I’ll stay in Rome.”
+
+“Rome won’t do for you. Rome’s not warm enough.”
+
+“It will have to do. I’ll make it do. See how well I’ve been.”
+
+Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying
+to see it. “You’ve been better than you were on the journey, certainly.
+I wonder how you lived through that. But I don’t understand your
+condition. I recommend you to try Sicily.”
+
+“I can’t try,” said poor Ralph. “I’ve done trying. I can’t move further.
+I can’t face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I
+don’t want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, like
+Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades.”
+
+“What the deuce then did you come for?” his lordship enquired.
+
+“Because the idea took me. I see it won’t do. It really doesn’t
+matter where I am now. I’ve exhausted all remedies, I’ve swallowed
+all climates. As I’m here I’ll stay. I haven’t a single cousin in
+Sicily--much less a married one.”
+
+“Your cousin’s certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?”
+
+“I haven’t asked him, and I don’t care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond
+will bury me. But I shall not die here.”
+
+“I hope not.” Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. “Well,
+I must say,” he resumed, “for myself I’m very glad you don’t insist on
+Sicily. I had a horror of that journey.”
+
+“Ah, but for you it needn’t have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you
+in my train.”
+
+“I certainly didn’t mean to let you go alone.”
+
+“My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,”
+ Ralph cried.
+
+“I should have gone with you and seen you settled,” said Lord Warburton.
+
+“You’re a very good Christian. You’re a very kind man.”
+
+“Then I should have come back here.”
+
+“And then you’d have gone to England.”
+
+“No, no; I should have stayed.”
+
+“Well,” said Ralph, “if that’s what we are both up to, I don’t see where
+Sicily comes in!”
+
+His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking
+up, “I say, tell me this,” he broke out; “did you really mean to go to
+Sicily when we started?”
+
+“_Ah, vous m’en demandez trop!_ Let me put a question first. Did you come
+with me quite--platonically?”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.”
+
+“I suspect we’ve each been playing our little game.”
+
+“Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here
+a while.”
+
+“Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
+Affairs.”
+
+“I’ve seen him three times. He’s very amusing.”
+
+“I think you’ve forgotten what you came for,” said Ralph.
+
+“Perhaps I have,” his companion answered rather gravely.
+
+These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
+absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
+without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
+There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
+recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival
+in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same
+half-diffident, half-confident silence.
+
+“I recommend you to get the doctor’s consent, all the same,” Lord
+Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+
+“The doctor’s consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help
+it.”
+
+“What then does Mrs. Osmond think?” Ralph’s friend demanded. “I’ve not
+told her. She’ll probably say that Rome’s too cold and even offer to go
+with me to Catania. She’s capable of that.”
+
+“In your place I should like it.”
+
+“Her husband won’t like it.”
+
+“Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you’re not bound to
+mind his likings. They’re his affair.”
+
+“I don’t want to make any more trouble between them,” said Ralph.
+
+“Is there so much already?”
+
+“There’s complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make
+the explosion. Osmond isn’t fond of his wife’s cousin.”
+
+“Then of course he’d make a row. But won’t he make a row if you stop
+here?”
+
+“That’s what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
+then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it’s my duty to stop
+and defend her.”
+
+“My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!” Lord Warburton began with
+a smile. But he saw something in his companion’s face that checked him.
+“Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,” he
+observed instead.
+
+Ralph for a short time answered nothing. “It’s true that my defensive
+powers are small,” he returned at last; “but as my aggressive ones are
+still smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At
+any rate,” he added, “there are things I’m curious to see.”
+
+“You’re sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?”
+
+“I’m not much interested in my health, and I’m deeply interested in Mrs.
+Osmond.”
+
+“So am I. But not as I once was,” Lord Warburton added quickly. This was
+one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.
+
+“Does she strike you as very happy?” Ralph enquired, emboldened by this
+confidence.
+
+“Well, I don’t know; I’ve hardly thought. She told me the other night
+she was happy.”
+
+“Ah, she told _you_, of course,” Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+
+“I don’t know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she
+might have complained to.”
+
+“Complained? She’ll never complain. She has done it--what she _has_
+done--and she knows it. She’ll complain to you least of all. She’s very
+careful.”
+
+“She needn’t be. I don’t mean to make love to her again.”
+
+“I’m delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of _your_ duty.”
+
+“Ah no,” said Lord Warburton gravely; “none!”
+
+“Permit me to ask,” Ralph went on, “whether it’s to bring out the fact
+that you don’t mean to make love to her that you’re so very civil to the
+little girl?”
+
+Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,
+looking at it hard. “Does that strike you as very ridiculous?”
+
+“Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.”
+
+“I think her a delightful little person. I don’t know when a girl of
+that age has pleased me more.”
+
+“She’s a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.”
+
+“Of course there’s the difference in our ages--more than twenty years.”
+
+“My dear Warburton,” said Ralph, “are you serious?”
+
+“Perfectly serious--as far as I’ve got.”
+
+“I’m very glad. And, heaven help us,” cried Ralph, “how cheered-up old
+Osmond will be!”
+
+His companion frowned. “I say, don’t spoil it. I shouldn’t propose for
+his daughter to please _him_.”
+
+“He’ll have the perversity to be pleased all the same.”
+
+“He’s not so fond of me as that,” said his lordship.
+
+“As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that
+people needn’t be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you.
+Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that
+they loved me.”
+
+Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general
+axioms--he was thinking of a special case. “Do you judge she’ll be
+pleased?”
+
+“The girl herself? Delighted, surely.”
+
+“No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+Ralph looked at him a moment. “My dear fellow, what has she to do with
+it?”
+
+“Whatever she chooses. She’s very fond of Pansy.”
+
+“Very true--very true.” And Ralph slowly got up. “It’s an interesting
+question--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her.” He stood there
+a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. “I
+hope, you know, that you’re very--very sure. The deuce!” he broke off.
+“I don’t know how to say it.”
+
+“Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.”
+
+“Well, it’s awkward. I hope you’re sure that among Miss Osmond’s merits
+her being--a--so near her stepmother isn’t a leading one?”
+
+“Good heavens, Touchett!” cried Lord Warburton angrily, “for what do you
+take me?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady
+having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had
+spent six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a
+winter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and
+gave countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less
+inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the
+past only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of
+the sunniest niches of the Pincian--an apartment which often stood
+empty--this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a
+danger which Isabel at one period had been much inclined to deplore.
+Familiarity had modified in some degree her first impression of Madame
+Merle, but it had not essentially altered it; there was still much
+wonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it
+was a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the social
+battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished
+steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more
+and more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with
+disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own
+ideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Isabel, who
+knew also that under an appearance of extreme self-control her
+highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was
+mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the way she kept
+going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of
+life were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew
+older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days
+when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness
+what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old habit had
+been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly-perceived
+possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As a younger person
+she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation to the other:
+there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Merle had
+suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she
+lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel
+would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant
+friend had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had
+become aware more than before of the advantage of being like that--of
+having made one’s self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
+
+But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed
+acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again
+a continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done
+since her marriage; but by this time Isabel’s needs and inclinations
+had considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she
+would have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this
+lady’s clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself,
+and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself
+beaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an
+ornament to any circle; but was she--would she be--of use to others
+in periods of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her
+friend--this indeed Isabel had always thought--was to imitate her, to be
+as firm and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,
+considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside
+her own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which
+had virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was
+almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear
+of being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion
+that she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the
+vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge--had
+never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle’s conduct, to her
+perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always “quiet.”
+ But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the
+Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a
+little. That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent.
+She remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other
+interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and
+his little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not
+after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of
+their affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was
+wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid
+as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+
+“I _must_ be on my guard,” she said; “I might so easily, without
+suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my
+intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew
+your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you
+were a silly woman you might be jealous. You’re not a silly woman; I
+know that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I’m determined not
+to get into trouble. A little harm’s very soon done; a mistake’s made
+before one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your
+husband I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn’t
+likely I shall begin to-day, when I’m so much less attractive than I
+was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn’t
+belong to me, you wouldn’t make that reflection; you’d simply say I
+was forgetting certain differences. I’m determined not to forget them.
+Certainly a good friend isn’t always thinking of that; one doesn’t
+suspect one’s friends of injustice. I don’t suspect you, my dear, in
+the least; but I suspect human nature. Don’t think I make myself
+uncomfortable; I’m not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently
+prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however,
+that if you were to be jealous--that’s the form it would take--I should
+be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn’t be your
+husband’s.”
+
+Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett’s theory that
+Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond’s marriage. We know how she had
+at first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond’s
+marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer’s. That was the
+work of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of
+the eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt’s complaint had
+been not so much of Madame Merle’s activity as of her duplicity: she had
+brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such
+guilt would not have been great, to Isabel’s mind; she couldn’t make
+a crime of Madame Merle’s having been the producing cause of the most
+important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just
+before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a
+time when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the
+tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If
+Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had
+been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly
+straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert
+Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less
+convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk,
+this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. “Don’t you like
+Madame Merle?” Isabel had once said to him. “She thinks a great deal of
+you.”
+
+“I’ll tell you once for all,” Osmond had answered. “I liked her once
+better than I do to-day. I’m tired of her, and I’m rather ashamed of it.
+She’s so almost unnaturally good! I’m glad she’s not in Italy; it makes
+for relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don’t talk of her too much;
+it seems to bring her back. She’ll come back in plenty of time.”
+
+Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late,
+I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime,
+if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel’s feelings were
+also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as
+acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind,
+whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as
+thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle’s having had a
+hand in Gilbert Osmond’s marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not
+so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and
+Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would
+not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an
+immediate horror at having made it. “Whatever happens to me let me not
+be unjust,” she said; “let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them
+upon others!” This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious
+apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make
+and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something
+irritating--there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat
+discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel’s mind to-day there
+was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of
+fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had
+just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little
+what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to
+explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert? The idea just then
+suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible;
+it would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn’t it in a manner
+one of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so
+wise that she might have been pretending to know Isabel better than
+Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in
+resolutions--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had
+they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day.
+It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been
+summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should
+not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had
+a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously
+discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to
+pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its
+disappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as the pleasure to
+be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed
+her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was
+impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever
+a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a
+free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself.
+There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and
+chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to
+repair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it.
+One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second
+one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a
+certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been
+right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
+
+One day about a month after Ralph Touchett’s arrival in Rome Isabel
+came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
+determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for
+Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure
+and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her
+life that had the rightness of the young creature’s attachment or
+the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft
+presence--like a small hand in her own; on Pansy’s part it was more than
+an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side
+her sense of the girl’s dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated
+as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said
+to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
+must look for it as much as possible. Pansy’s sympathy was a direct
+admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent
+perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could
+hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child
+was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to
+remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she
+now perceived that Pansy’s ambiguities were simply her own grossness of
+vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so
+extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this
+delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It
+was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to
+interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests
+she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs.
+Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her
+company; it had the effect of one’s carrying a nosegay composed all
+of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any
+provocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion.
+The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel’s society
+than in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an
+intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite
+pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel
+knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of
+pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was
+negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which
+certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She
+was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she
+was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to
+Isabel’s propositions and which might have implied that she could have
+thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions,
+and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale
+when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked
+toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes
+the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo
+Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a
+reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to
+propose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances,
+for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this
+exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy.
+Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome
+parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at
+the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this
+vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative
+posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken
+to drive for the first time.
+
+On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of
+the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await
+them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the
+Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate
+flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a
+walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her
+first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved
+best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with
+a shorter undulation beside her father’s wife, who afterwards, on their
+return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit
+of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of
+flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching
+Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into
+water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
+occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was
+entered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond’s rich
+devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just
+beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the
+reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The
+impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as
+something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take
+in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her
+bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were
+unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly;
+but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their
+colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar
+silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would
+startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from
+the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her.
+Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck
+Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was
+an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had
+arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing,
+face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange
+ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they
+were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a
+moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their
+absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all
+over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and
+had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had
+instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a
+walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.
+
+“I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn’t I
+waited for you,” Madame Merle said.
+
+“Didn’t he ask you to sit down?” Isabel asked with a smile.
+
+Madame Merle looked about her. “Ah, it’s very true; I was going away.”
+
+“You must stay now.”
+
+“Certainly. I came for a reason; I’ve something on my mind.”
+
+“I’ve told you that before,” Isabel said--“that it takes something
+extraordinary to bring you to this house.”
+
+“And you know what I’ve told _you_; that whether I come or whether I stay
+away, I’ve always the same motive--the affection I bear you.”
+
+“Yes, you’ve told me that.”
+
+“You look just now as if you didn’t believe it,” said Madame Merle.
+
+“Ah,” Isabel answered, “the profundity of your motives, that’s the last
+thing I doubt!”
+
+“You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.”
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. “I know you’ve always been kind to me.”
+
+“As often as you would let me. You don’t always take it; then one has
+to let you alone. It’s not to do you a kindness, however, that I’ve come
+to-day; it’s quite another affair. I’ve come to get rid of a trouble of
+my own--to make it over to you. I’ve been talking to your husband about
+it.”
+
+“I’m surprised at that; he doesn’t like troubles.”
+
+“Especially other people’s; I know very well. But neither do you, I
+suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It’s
+about poor Mr. Rosier.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel reflectively, “it’s his trouble then, not yours.”
+
+“He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a
+week, to talk about Pansy.”
+
+“Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.”
+
+Madame Merle hesitated. “I gathered from your husband that perhaps you
+didn’t.”
+
+“How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the
+matter.”
+
+“It’s probably because he doesn’t know how to speak of it.”
+
+“It’s nevertheless the sort of question in which he’s rarely at fault.”
+
+“Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
+To-day he doesn’t.”
+
+“Haven’t you been telling him?” Isabel asked.
+
+Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. “Do you know you’re a
+little dry?”
+
+“Yes; I can’t help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.”
+
+“In that there’s some reason. You’re so near the child.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, “for all the comfort I’ve given him! If you think me
+dry, I wonder what _he_ thinks.”
+
+“I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.”
+
+“I can do nothing.”
+
+“You can do more at least than I. I don’t know what mysterious
+connection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to
+me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps
+coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his
+feelings.”
+
+“He’s very much in love,” said Isabel.
+
+“Very much--for him.”
+
+“Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.”
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. “Don’t you think she’s
+attractive?”
+
+“The dearest little person possible--but very limited.”
+
+“She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier’s not
+unlimited.”
+
+“No,” said Isabel, “he has about the extent of one’s
+pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders.” Her humour had
+lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed
+of exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy’s suitor. “He’s very
+kind, very honest,” she presently added; “and he’s not such a fool as he
+seems.”
+
+“He assures me that she delights in him,” said Madame Merle.
+
+“I don’t know; I’ve not asked her.”
+
+“You’ve never sounded her a little?”
+
+“It’s not my place; it’s her father’s.”
+
+“Ah, you’re too literal!” said Madame Merle.
+
+“I must judge for myself.”
+
+Madame Merle gave her smile again. “It isn’t easy to help you.”
+
+“To help me?” said Isabel very seriously. “What do you mean?”
+
+“It’s easy to displease you. Don’t you see how wise I am to be careful?
+I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of
+the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. _Je n’y peux rien,
+moi!_ I can’t talk to Pansy about him. Especially,” added Madame Merle,
+“as I don’t think him a paragon of husbands.”
+
+Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, “You don’t wash
+your hands then!” she said. After which again she added in another tone:
+“You can’t--you’re too much interested.”
+
+Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the
+intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before.
+Only this time the latter saw nothing. “Ask him the next time, and
+you’ll see.”
+
+“I can’t ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let
+him know that he’s not welcome.”
+
+“Ah yes,” said Madame Merle, “I forgot that--though it’s the burden of
+his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,” she
+went on, “Osmond doesn’t dislike him so much as he thinks.” She had got
+up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her,
+and had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the
+point she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not
+opening the way.
+
+“That must have pleased him, if you’ve told him,” she answered, smiling.
+
+“Certainly I’ve told him; as far as that goes I’ve encouraged him. I’ve
+preached patience, have said that his case isn’t desperate if he’ll only
+hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his
+head to be jealous.”
+
+“Jealous?”
+
+“Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.”
+
+Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.
+“Ah!” she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame
+Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the
+mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
+
+“Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there’s nothing impossible in Lord
+Warburton’s falling in love with Pansy,” Madame Merle went on. Isabel
+was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. “It’s true--there’s
+nothing impossible,” she returned at last, gravely and more gently.
+
+“So I’ve had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.”
+
+“That I don’t know.”
+
+“Ask him and you’ll see.”
+
+“I shall not ask him,” said Isabel.
+
+“Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,” Madame Merle
+added, “you’ve had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton’s
+behaviour than I.”
+
+“I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that he likes my stepdaughter
+very much.”
+
+Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. “Likes her, you mean--as
+Mr. Rosier means?”
+
+“I don’t know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know
+that he’s charmed with Pansy.”
+
+“And you’ve never told Osmond?” This observation was immediate,
+precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle’s lips.
+
+Isabel’s eyes rested on her. “I suppose he’ll know in time; Lord
+Warburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself.”
+
+Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly
+than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave
+the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been
+thinking it over a little: “That would be better than marrying poor Mr.
+Rosier.”
+
+“Much better, I think.”
+
+“It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It’s really
+very kind of him.”
+
+“Very kind of him?”
+
+“To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.”
+
+“I don’t see that.”
+
+“It’s very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--”
+
+“After all, Pansy Osmond’s the most attractive person he has ever
+known!” Isabel exclaimed.
+
+Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. “Ah, a moment
+ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.”
+
+“I said she was limited. And so she is. And so’s Lord Warburton.”
+
+“So are we all, if you come to that. If it’s no more than Pansy
+deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier
+I won’t admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.”
+
+“Mr. Rosier’s a nuisance!” Isabel cried abruptly.
+
+“I quite agree with you, and I’m delighted to know that I’m not expected
+to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be
+closed to him.” And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared
+to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an
+inconsequent request from Isabel.
+
+“All the same, you know, be kind to him.”
+
+She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend.
+“I don’t understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan’t be kind to
+him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord
+Warburton.”
+
+“You had better wait till he asks her.”
+
+“If what you say’s true, he’ll ask her. Especially,” said Madame Merle
+in a moment, “if you make him.”
+
+“If I make him?”
+
+“It’s quite in your power. You’ve great influence with him.”
+
+Isabel frowned a little. “Where did you learn that?”
+
+“Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you--never!” said Madame Merle, smiling.
+
+“I certainly never told you anything of the sort.”
+
+“You _might_ have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were by
+way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very
+little; I’ve often thought so since.”
+
+Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction.
+But she didn’t admit it now--perhaps because she wished not to appear to
+exult in it. “You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,”
+ she simply returned.
+
+“She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject.
+Of course I think you’ve done better in doing as you did. But if you
+wouldn’t marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of
+helping him to marry some one else.”
+
+Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting
+the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle’s. But in a moment she said,
+reasonably and gently enough: “I should be very glad indeed if, as
+regards Pansy, it could be arranged.” Upon which her companion, who
+seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more
+tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming
+very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had
+spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had
+been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged
+his books and which he called his study. At ten o’clock Lord Warburton
+had come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to
+be at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour.
+Isabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on
+purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to
+read; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if
+she mightn’t leave the room. She had come little by little to think
+well of the idea of Pansy’s becoming the wife of the master of beautiful
+Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to
+excite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the
+match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Isabel was
+unhappy she always looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by
+theory--for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself
+of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering as
+opposed to doing. To “do”--it hardly mattered what--would therefore
+be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to
+convince herself that she had done everything possible to content her
+husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife’s
+limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married
+to an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was
+so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her
+duty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good
+wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely,
+and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking
+had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired
+occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse
+herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to
+Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming
+girl. It was a little “weird” he should--being what he was; but there
+was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any
+one--any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her
+too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was
+always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been
+looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They
+looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when
+they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more
+unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for
+_her_ it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different;
+but he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had,
+he had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair
+had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might
+succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but
+it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what
+happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for
+her husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had crossed
+their path!
+
+At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path
+lost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that
+Pansy thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men--as sure as if
+she had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome
+she should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing
+herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it
+into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It
+was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;
+the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of
+the type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It
+was true that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a
+statesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and
+she would make a perfect little pearl of a peeress.
+
+It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden
+strangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this
+difficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied
+in poor Rosier could not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there
+were always means of levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly
+aware that she had not taken the measure of Pansy’s tenacity, which
+might prove to be inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her
+as rather letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under
+deprecation--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in
+a very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling, yes,
+she would cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she
+clung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier--especially as
+she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed this sentiment to Isabel
+without a single reservation; she had said she thought his conversation
+most interesting--he had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy
+had been of the rightest and easiest--Isabel noticed that for herself,
+as she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a
+patronising way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but
+quite as if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which
+she followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far enough
+for attention to the music and the barytone. He was careful only to be
+kind--he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young chit at
+Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how
+she herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been
+as simple as Pansy the impression would have been deeper still. She
+had not been simple when she refused him; that operation had been
+as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy,
+however, in spite of _her_ simplicity, really did understand, and was
+glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her partners and
+bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry,
+the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of Roman society.
+She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with
+sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet
+oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if
+she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might have reminded
+her, was better than Mr. Rosier’s. But Isabel contented herself at such
+moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all
+to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken
+of her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+
+It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch
+upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had
+been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and
+leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in
+this light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was
+trying as much as possible to take her husband’s view. She succeeded
+after a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all
+she couldn’t rise to it; something held her and made this impossible.
+It was not exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a
+general thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience,
+and Isabel was instinctively much more true than false to the common
+genius of her sex. There was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that
+she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a
+while Lord Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give
+Pansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered
+if she had prevented something which would have happened if she
+had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she
+pronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished visitor
+should wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know
+it. Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel
+studiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after
+he should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to
+this than might seem to accord with the description he had given Isabel
+of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that
+she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her
+transparent little companion was for the moment not to be seen through.
+
+She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an
+hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and
+then sat down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had
+transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to
+Osmond’s face, and she watched him while he kept his silence. Covert
+observation had become a habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not
+an exaggeration to say that it was allied to that of self-defence, had
+made it habitual. She wished as much as possible to know his thoughts,
+to know what he would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her
+answer. Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she had
+rarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever
+things she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned it in
+a measure from her husband’s very countenance. It was the same face she
+had looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating,
+on the terrace of a Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown
+slightly stouter since his marriage. He still, however, might strike one
+as very distinguished.
+
+“Has Lord Warburton been here?” he presently asked.
+
+“Yes, he stayed half an hour.”
+
+“Did he see Pansy?”
+
+“Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.”
+
+“Did he talk with her much?”
+
+“He talked almost only to her.”
+
+“It seems to me he’s attentive. Isn’t that what you call it?”
+
+“I don’t call it anything,” said Isabel; “I’ve waited for you to give it
+a name.”
+
+“That’s a consideration you don’t always show,” Osmond answered after a
+moment.
+
+“I’ve determined, this time, to try and act as you’d like. I’ve so often
+failed of that.”
+
+Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. “Are you trying to
+quarrel with me?”
+
+“No, I’m trying to live at peace.”
+
+“Nothing’s more easy; you know I don’t quarrel myself.”
+
+“What do you call it when you try to make me angry?” Isabel asked.
+
+“I don’t try; if I’ve done so it has been the most natural thing in the
+world. Moreover I’m not in the least trying now.”
+
+Isabel smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve determined never to be angry
+again.”
+
+“That’s an excellent resolve. Your temper isn’t good.”
+
+“No--it’s not good.” She pushed away the book she had been reading and
+took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
+
+“That’s partly why I’ve not spoken to you about this business of my
+daughter’s,” Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most
+frequent with him. “I was afraid I should encounter opposition--that you
+too would have views on the subject. I’ve sent little Rosier about his
+business.”
+
+“You were afraid I’d plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven’t you noticed that I’ve
+never spoken to you of him?”
+
+“I’ve never given you a chance. We’ve so little conversation in these
+days. I know he was an old friend of yours.”
+
+“Yes; he’s an old friend of mine.” Isabel cared little more for him than
+for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he
+was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to
+extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which
+fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they
+were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion
+of tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they
+belonged to her unmarried life. “But as regards Pansy,” she added in a
+moment, “I’ve given him no encouragement.”
+
+“That’s fortunate,” Osmond observed.
+
+“Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.”
+
+“There’s no use talking of him,” Osmond said. “As I tell you, I’ve
+turned him out.”
+
+“Yes; but a lover outside’s always a lover. He’s sometimes even more of
+one. Mr. Rosier still has hope.”
+
+“He’s welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit
+perfectly quiet to become Lady Warburton.”
+
+“Should you like that?” Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not
+so affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for
+Osmond had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her.
+The intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady
+Warburton had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But
+that was for herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should
+have put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that
+he thought Lord Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was
+unusual among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert’s constant intimation that for
+him nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal
+with the most distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter
+had only to look about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore
+a lapse from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord
+Warburton and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might
+not be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary
+implications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his
+wife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she
+was face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost
+invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating,
+would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of
+her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was
+terribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was also
+capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an
+almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a
+small opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a great
+one.
+
+Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. “I should like it
+extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has
+another advantage: he’s an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for
+him to come into the family. It’s very odd Pansy’s admirers should all
+be your old friends.”
+
+“It’s natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they
+see Pansy. Seeing her it’s natural they should fall in love with her.”
+
+“So I think. But you’re not bound to do so.”
+
+“If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,” Isabel went
+on frankly. “He’s an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only
+to sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won’t sit perfectly still. If she
+loses Mr. Rosier she may jump up!”
+
+Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire.
+“Pansy would like to be a great lady,” he remarked in a moment with a
+certain tenderness of tone. “She wishes above all to please,” he added.
+
+“To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps.”
+
+“No, to please me.”
+
+“Me too a little, I think,” said Isabel.
+
+“Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she’ll do what I like.”
+
+“If you’re sure of that, it’s very well,” she went on.
+
+“Meantime,” said Osmond, “I should like our distinguished visitor to
+speak.”
+
+“He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to
+him to believe she could care for him.”
+
+Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, “Why
+didn’t you tell me that?” he asked sharply.
+
+“There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I’ve taken the first
+chance that has offered.”
+
+“Did you speak to him of Rosier?”
+
+“Oh yes, a little.”
+
+“That was hardly necessary.”
+
+“I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--” And Isabel
+paused.
+
+“So that what?”
+
+“So that he might act accordingly.”
+
+“So that he might back out, do you mean?”
+
+“No, so that he might advance while there’s yet time.”
+
+“That’s not the effect it seems to have had.”
+
+“You should have patience,” said Isabel. “You know Englishmen are shy.”
+
+“This one’s not. He was not when he made love to _you_.”
+
+She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to
+her. “I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,” she returned.
+
+He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the
+pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy’s tapestry.
+“You must have a great deal of influence with him,” Osmond went on at
+last. “The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.”
+
+This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of
+his saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said
+to herself. “Why should I have influence?” she asked. “What have I ever
+done to put him under an obligation to me?”
+
+“You refused to marry him,” said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
+
+“I must not presume too much on that,” she replied.
+
+He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire
+with his hands behind him. “Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I
+shall leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think
+that over and remember how much I count on you.” He waited a little,
+to give her time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently
+strolled out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before
+her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them
+that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust
+herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and
+closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still
+further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation.
+A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh
+candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had
+said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion
+from another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this
+had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it
+true that there was something still between them that might be a handle
+to make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility, on his part, to
+approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not
+asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now
+that it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer
+frightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Lord Warburton’s
+part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united
+them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been
+reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,
+but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself
+nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought;
+it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a
+better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might
+be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory
+of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?
+Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But
+what were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they
+mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was
+he in love with Gilbert Osmond’s wife, and if so what comfort did he
+expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in
+love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother
+he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she
+possessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would
+do so for her sake and not for the small creature’s own--was this the
+service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty
+with which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to
+herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for
+her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive
+one. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were
+pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another
+satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement
+of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him
+in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion
+this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered
+among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way;
+some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then
+she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her
+imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband’s did him
+even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she
+was no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till
+the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical
+intimation of Osmond’s.
+
+Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace,
+for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of
+thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set
+them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange
+impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband’s being in
+more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That
+impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it
+had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond
+half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making
+everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he
+looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty;
+the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a
+presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his
+presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in
+himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This
+mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf
+had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes
+that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It
+was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an
+opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of
+contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no
+deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the
+first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found
+the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley
+with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of
+happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one
+could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and
+choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of
+restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier
+and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the
+feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was
+what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not
+so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time
+and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual
+perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was
+not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of
+speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself
+that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one
+suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she
+thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first
+year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed
+that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it
+was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could
+still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again
+it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect
+that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from
+her own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be
+just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were
+a kind of creation and consequence, of her husband’s very presence. They
+were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that
+is but of one thing, which was _not_ a crime. She knew of no wrong he had
+done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated
+her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was
+precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have
+found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was
+not what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first
+he could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.
+But she was, after all, herself--she couldn’t help that; and now there
+was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and
+had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension
+he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort.
+He would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the
+wrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he
+would have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts,
+she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she
+almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she
+understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced
+herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending
+there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been
+under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to
+put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the
+year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his
+nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked
+by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the
+whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free
+field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.
+
+Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it
+was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond
+delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love
+to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he
+had succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never
+occurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her
+why: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might
+very well have been true; for during those months she had imagined
+a world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous
+vision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred
+fancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features
+had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures.
+That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was
+what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There
+had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind,
+in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and
+ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness
+which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager
+strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet
+not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She
+would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be
+a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously
+and yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in
+him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich
+the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she
+perceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who
+felt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But
+for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then
+her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf,
+the beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact.
+At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which
+was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other
+conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her
+own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the
+best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital
+there would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was
+no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as
+in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her
+think better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good
+luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate
+in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.
+Touchett’s leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring
+him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.
+There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and
+if he loved her he wouldn’t object to her being rich. Had he not had the
+courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+
+Isabel’s cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married
+on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with
+her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was
+only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of
+her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in
+his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme
+conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still
+remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The
+finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever
+known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but
+to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of
+devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she
+knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived _in_
+it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been
+captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps
+had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,
+more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was
+this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself
+in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of _his_ deception.
+It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn’t hate her more.
+She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been
+like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of
+their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that
+she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their
+marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only
+afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had
+really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in
+the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then
+appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to
+have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had
+too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than
+she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she
+_had_ been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas
+for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with
+some one else. One couldn’t pluck them up by the roots, though of course
+one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been
+this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She
+had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in
+the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant
+had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she
+judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not
+known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it
+were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at
+life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least
+it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that
+she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so
+different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly
+that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn’t he assured her that he had
+no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their
+freshness? Hadn’t he all the appearance of a man living in the open air
+of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth
+and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look
+for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least
+some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;
+but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that
+sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the
+stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had
+contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she
+had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own
+habitation, then, _then_ she had seen where she really was.
+
+She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she
+had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had
+lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.
+It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of
+suffocation. Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air;
+Osmond’s beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high
+window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering;
+for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come
+and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took
+himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture,
+his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his
+knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank
+of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so
+seriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him
+better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first
+gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and
+that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to
+see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she
+had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every
+one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for
+everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very
+well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for
+he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life,
+opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance
+of mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite
+vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one’s self unspotted by
+it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one
+was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one’s eye, in order
+not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some
+recognition of one’s own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable,
+but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel
+about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to
+her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite
+independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities;
+she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,
+avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her
+fellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing,
+however, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of
+a personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her
+believe it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and
+the thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as
+Osmond cared for it.
+
+He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really
+done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared
+to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to
+have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in
+such different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity
+and propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he
+deemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never
+lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame
+of doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed;
+but they attached such different ideas, such different associations and
+desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was
+simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge
+would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But
+for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated
+attitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted;
+so was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an
+immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing
+in the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not
+to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he
+meant by this that she hadn’t it, but that he was better off; though
+from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He
+had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,
+and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in
+accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her.
+Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than
+their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but
+she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march
+to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her
+husband’s past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory,
+so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain
+things they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people
+they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about
+her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness
+and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she
+seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of
+course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the
+situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had
+pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for
+the aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts
+and longings, of quite another ideal.
+
+Then it was that her husband’s personality, touched as it never had
+been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were
+answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed
+of her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble?
+He at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his
+prevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments
+were worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real
+offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her
+own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small
+garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the
+flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay.
+It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already
+far-reaching. He didn’t wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was
+because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her
+intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from
+desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would
+be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for
+him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and
+Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the
+part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so
+tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To
+begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the
+Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and
+even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything
+of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did
+all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their
+price? Were there only three or four that didn’t deceive their husbands?
+When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for
+the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in
+a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
+husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,
+and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was
+enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond’s traditions--it was
+enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn
+of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He
+had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well
+furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon
+his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.
+He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to
+it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his
+discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one
+that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.
+
+She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
+had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and
+comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he
+had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If
+to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a
+kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might
+it not be expected to have had upon _him_? It was very simple; he
+despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a
+Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand
+Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for
+a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before
+them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought _she_
+to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn’t hate
+him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate
+wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt
+afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she
+had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all
+events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely
+spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out
+fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph
+Touchett’s staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her
+cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to
+him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph’s invalid
+state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had
+to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this
+as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly
+aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband’s
+rage as if Osmond had locked her into her room--which she was sure was
+what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she
+was not defiant, but she certainly couldn’t pretend to be indifferent to
+Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see
+him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never
+known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be
+a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There
+was an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on
+everything. But Ralph’s little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the
+hour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache
+for _him_. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never
+had a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying,
+he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of
+her there was perhaps some reason; it didn’t make Gilbert look better to
+sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that they talked of him--it
+was not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It
+was simply that Ralph was generous and that her husband was not. There
+was something in Ralph’s talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his
+being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more
+spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what
+might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond--quite apart
+from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion
+to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she
+was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her
+again--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that
+morning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond.
+She had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to
+feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,
+what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more
+intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert had never
+been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he
+should never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking
+care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation,
+religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange
+exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin,
+had an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a
+kindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was,
+the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had
+once wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but
+that, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge
+and even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face.
+Ralph smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary
+form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She
+didn’t wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was
+the great thing, and it didn’t matter that such knowledge would rather
+have righted him.
+
+For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire
+had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in
+a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but
+her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a
+state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to
+her there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a
+mockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and
+what could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there
+half the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why
+Pansy shouldn’t be married as you would put a letter in the post-office?
+When the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for
+the lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their
+sockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room
+and stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and
+Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which
+Osmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as
+ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had
+not extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on
+those of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her
+father she must have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought this
+unlikely; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply determined to
+be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper
+esteem for chances. She carried herself no less attentively than usual
+and kept no less anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her
+bouquet very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time.
+She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in a
+flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never in want
+of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave Isabel, who was
+not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had rendered her this service
+for some minutes when she became aware of the near presence of Edward
+Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his affable smile and wore a
+look of almost military resolution. The change in his appearance would
+have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom
+a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of
+gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify
+her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After
+he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: “It’s all
+pansies; it must be hers!”
+
+Isabel smiled kindly. “Yes, it’s hers; she gave it to me to hold.”
+
+“May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?” the poor young man asked.
+
+“No, I can’t trust you; I’m afraid you wouldn’t give it back.”
+
+“I’m not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
+But may I not at least have a single flower?”
+
+Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the
+bouquet. “Choose one yourself. It’s frightful what I’m doing for you.”
+
+“Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!” Rosier exclaimed with
+his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+
+“Don’t put it into your button-hole,” she said. “Don’t for the world!”
+
+“I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I
+wish to show her that I believe in her still.”
+
+“It’s very well to show it to her, but it’s out of place to show it to
+others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.”
+
+“And is that all _you_ can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.
+Osmond,” said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. “You
+know our acquaintance goes back very far--quite into the days of our
+innocent childhood.”
+
+“Don’t make me out too old,” Isabel patiently answered. “You come back
+to that very often, and I’ve never denied it. But I must tell you that,
+old friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry
+you I should have refused you on the spot.”
+
+“Ah, you don’t esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere
+Parisian trifler!”
+
+“I esteem you very much, but I’m not in love with you. What I mean by
+that, of course, is that I’m not in love with you for Pansy.”
+
+“Very good; I see. You pity me--that’s all.” And Edward Rosier looked
+all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to
+him that people shouldn’t be more pleased; but he was at least too proud
+to show that the deficiency struck him as general.
+
+Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the
+dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things,
+was against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness,
+after all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more
+than before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form,
+was the most affecting thing in the world--young love struggling with
+adversity. “Would you really be very kind to her?” she finally asked in
+a low tone.
+
+He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held
+in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. “You pity me; but
+don’t you pity _her_ a little?”
+
+“I don’t know; I’m not sure. She’ll always enjoy life.”
+
+“It will depend on what you call life!” Mr. Rosier effectively said.
+“She won’t enjoy being tortured.”
+
+“There’ll be nothing of that.”
+
+“I’m glad to hear it. She knows what she’s about. You’ll see.”
+
+“I think she does, and she’ll never disobey her father. But she’s coming
+back to me,” Isabel added, “and I must beg you to go away.”
+
+Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her
+cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he
+walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved
+this sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
+
+Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh
+and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her
+bouquet. Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers;
+whereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at
+play than she had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she
+said nothing to Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after
+he had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare
+misfortune of having already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however,
+she had discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this
+knowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with which she
+responded to the appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under
+acute constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth
+by a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and she had
+not been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord Warburton advancing
+through the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her good-evening;
+she had not seen him since the day before. He looked about him, and then
+“Where’s the little maid?” he asked. It was in this manner that he had
+formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.
+
+“She’s dancing,” said Isabel. “You’ll see her somewhere.”
+
+He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy’s eye. “She sees
+me, but she won’t notice me,” he then remarked. “Are you not dancing?”
+
+“As you see, I’m a wall-flower.”
+
+“Won’t you dance with me?”
+
+“Thank you; I’d rather you should dance with the little maid.”
+
+“One needn’t prevent the other--especially as she’s engaged.”
+
+“She’s not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She
+dances very hard, and you’ll be the fresher.”
+
+“She dances beautifully,” said Lord Warburton, following her with his
+eyes. “Ah, at last,” he added, “she has given me a smile.” He stood
+there with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel
+observed him it came over her, as it had done before, that it was
+strange a man of his mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It
+struck her as a great incongruity; neither Pansy’s small fascinations,
+nor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement,
+which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it. “I
+should like to dance with you,” he went on in a moment, turning back to
+Isabel; “but I think I like even better to talk with you.”
+
+“Yes, it’s better, and it’s more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen
+oughtn’t to waltz.”
+
+“Don’t be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss
+Osmond?”
+
+“Ah, that’s different. If you danced with her it would look simply like
+a piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you
+dance with me you’ll look as if you were doing it for your own.”
+
+“And pray haven’t I a right to amuse myself?”
+
+“No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.”
+
+“The British Empire be hanged! You’re always laughing at it.”
+
+“Amuse yourself with talking to me,” said Isabel.
+
+“I’m not sure it’s really a recreation. You’re too pointed; I’ve always
+to be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous
+to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?”
+
+“I can’t leave my place. Pansy must find me here.”
+
+He was silent a little. “You’re wonderfully good to her,” he said
+suddenly.
+
+Isabel stared a little and smiled. “Can you imagine one’s not being?”
+
+“No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a
+great deal for her.”
+
+“I’ve taken her out with me,” said Isabel, smiling still. “And I’ve seen
+that she has proper clothes.”
+
+“Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You’ve talked to
+her, advised her, helped her to develop.”
+
+“Ah yes, if she isn’t the rose she has lived near it.”
+
+She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain
+visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete
+hilarity. “We all try to live as near it as we can,” he said after a
+moment’s hesitation.
+
+Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she
+welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she
+thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there
+was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case
+of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She
+felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in
+his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of
+nature. Yet for all that it didn’t suit her that he should be too near
+her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was
+afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn’t. She
+felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to
+flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with
+another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the
+first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were
+too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which
+were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent
+that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself
+to Pansy’s desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the
+injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her
+attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were
+in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way
+connected--a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be
+trying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it
+was others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was
+what she thought about while she pinned up Pansy’s dress. If it were
+so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken
+account of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious,
+made the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back
+into right relations with things the better. He immediately began
+to talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he
+dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a
+little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good
+deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his
+robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always
+seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful
+character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she
+knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a little and
+wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till
+the music of the following dance began, for which she knew Pansy to be
+also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered
+flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond’s view of his daughter’s
+complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan,
+to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own
+imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy’s extreme
+adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond
+had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter’s
+duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and
+contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think
+she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was
+because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+
+After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her
+again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound
+his thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. “She has promised
+to dance with me later,” he said.
+
+“I’m glad of that. I suppose you’ve engaged her for the cotillion.”
+
+At this he looked a little awkward. “No, I didn’t ask her for that. It’s
+a quadrille.”
+
+“Ah, you’re not clever!” said Isabel almost angrily. “I told her to keep
+the cotillion in case you should ask for it.”
+
+“Poor little maid, fancy that!” And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. “Of
+course I will if you like.”
+
+“If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!”
+
+“I’m afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her
+book.”
+
+Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there
+looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined
+to ask him to remove them. She didn’t do so, however; she only said to
+him, after a minute, with her own raised: “Please let me understand.”
+
+“Understand what?”
+
+“You told me ten days ago that you’d like to marry my stepdaughter.
+You’ve not forgotten it!”
+
+“Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, “he didn’t mention to me that he had heard from you.”
+
+Lord Warburton stammered a little. “I--I didn’t send my letter.”
+
+“Perhaps you forgot _that_.”
+
+“No, I wasn’t satisfied with it. It’s an awkward sort of letter to
+write, you know. But I shall send it to-night.”
+
+“At three o’clock in the morning?”
+
+“I mean later, in the course of the day.”
+
+“Very good. You still wish then to marry her?”
+
+“Very much indeed.”
+
+“Aren’t you afraid that you’ll bore her?” And as her companion stared at
+this enquiry Isabel added: “If she can’t dance with you for half an hour
+how will she be able to dance with you for life?”
+
+“Ah,” said Lord Warburton readily, “I’ll let her dance with other
+people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--that you--”
+
+“That I would do it with you? I told you I’d do nothing.”
+
+“Exactly; so that while it’s going on I might find some quiet corner
+where we may sit down and talk.”
+
+“Oh,” said Isabel gravely, “you’re much too considerate of me.”
+
+When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself,
+thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions.
+Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that
+he would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite
+of the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the
+ground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to
+make an exception in Lord Warburton’s favour.
+
+“After all I don’t care to dance,” he said; “it’s a barbarous amusement:
+I’d much rather talk.” And he intimated that he had discovered exactly
+the corner he had been looking for--a quiet nook in one of the smaller
+rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere
+with conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she
+wished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him,
+though she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his
+daughter. It was with his daughter’s _pretendant_, however; that would
+make it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon
+Edward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking
+at the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She
+stopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.
+
+“Certainly not, if I can’t dance with _her_!” he answered.
+
+“You had better go away then,” said Isabel with the manner of good
+counsel.
+
+“I shall not go till she does!” And he let Lord Warburton pass without
+giving him a look.
+
+This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he
+asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him
+somewhere before.
+
+“It’s the young man I’ve told you about, who’s in love with Pansy.”
+
+“Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.”
+
+“He has reason. My husband won’t listen to him.”
+
+“What’s the matter with him?” Lord Warburton enquired. “He seems very
+harmless.”
+
+“He hasn’t money enough, and he isn’t very clever.”
+
+Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this
+account of Edward Rosier. “Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young
+fellow.”
+
+“So he is, but my husband’s very particular.”
+
+“Oh, I see.” And Lord Warburton paused a moment. “How much money has he
+got?” he then ventured to ask.
+
+“Some forty thousand francs a year.”
+
+“Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that’s very good, you know.”
+
+“So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.”
+
+“Yes; I’ve noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really
+an idiot, the young man?”
+
+“An idiot? Not in the least; he’s charming. When he was twelve years old
+I myself was in love with him.”
+
+“He doesn’t look much more than twelve to-day,” Lord Warburton rejoined
+vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, “Don’t you think we
+might sit here?” he asked.
+
+“Wherever you please.” The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a
+subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as
+our friends came in. “It’s very kind of you to take such an interest in
+Mr. Rosier,” Isabel said.
+
+“He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I
+wondered what ailed him.”
+
+“You’re a just man,” said Isabel. “You’ve a kind thought even for a
+rival.”
+
+Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. “A rival! Do you call him
+my rival?”
+
+“Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person.”
+
+“Yes--but since he has no chance!”
+
+“I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It
+shows imagination.”
+
+“You like me for it?” And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain
+eye. “I think you mean you’re laughing at me for it.”
+
+“Yes, I’m laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh
+at.”
+
+“Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do
+you suppose one could do for him?”
+
+“Since I have been praising your imagination I’ll leave you to imagine
+that yourself,” Isabel said. “Pansy too would like you for that.”
+
+“Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.”
+
+“Very much, I think.”
+
+He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. “Well then, I
+don’t understand you. You don’t mean that she cares for him?”
+
+A quick blush sprang to his brow. “You told me she would have no wish
+apart from her father’s, and as I’ve gathered that he would favour
+me--!” He paused a little and then suggested “Don’t you see?” through
+his blush.
+
+“Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that
+it would probably take her very far.”
+
+“That seems to me a very proper feeling,” said Lord Warburton.
+
+“Certainly; it’s a very proper feeling.” Isabel remained silent for some
+moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them
+with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last
+she said: “But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a
+man would wish to be indebted for a wife.”
+
+“I don’t know; if the wife’s a good one and he thinks she does well!”
+
+“Yes, of course you must think that.”
+
+“I do; I can’t help it. You call that very British, of course.”
+
+“No, I don’t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you,
+and I don’t know who should know it better than you. But you’re not in
+love.”
+
+“Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!”
+
+Isabel shook her head. “You like to think you are while you sit here
+with me. But that’s not how you strike me.”
+
+“I’m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
+it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
+Osmond?”
+
+“No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.”
+
+“I don’t agree with you. I’m delighted to have good reasons.”
+
+“Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn’t care a straw
+for them.”
+
+“Ah, really in love--really in love!” Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding
+his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. “You
+must remember that I’m forty-two years old. I won’t pretend I’m as I
+once was.”
+
+“Well, if you’re sure,” said Isabel, “it’s all right.”
+
+He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before
+him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to
+his friend. “Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?” She met his eyes,
+and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to
+be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his
+expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own
+account--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a
+hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an
+instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying
+her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or
+of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely
+personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they
+were conscious of at the moment.
+
+“My dear Lord Warburton,” she said, smiling, “you may do, so far as I’m
+concerned, whatever comes into your head.”
+
+And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
+within her companion’s view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
+gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they
+had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
+regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the
+more as Lord Warburton didn’t follow her. She was glad of this, however,
+and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
+when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
+planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. “You did
+right not to go away. I’ve some comfort for you.”
+
+“I need it,” the young man softly wailed, “when I see you so awfully
+thick with him!”
+
+“Don’t speak of him; I’ll do what I can for you. I’m afraid it won’t be
+much, but what I can I’ll do.”
+
+He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. “What has suddenly brought you
+round?”
+
+“The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!” she answered,
+smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with
+Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many
+other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it
+approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to
+reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if
+she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a
+little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by
+a movement of her finger, murmured gently: “Don’t forget to send your
+letter to her father!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase,
+to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
+struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
+unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
+where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
+talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
+obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who
+won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in
+Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without
+currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very
+dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared
+to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness
+needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her
+eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she
+had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had
+been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that
+there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been
+there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.
+Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much
+more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated
+Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter’s. They
+are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually
+summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City
+and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The
+Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with
+her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more
+interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening
+parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one
+had heard of. Since her brother’s marriage her impatience had greatly
+increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than
+herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual
+enough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and the catacombs, not
+even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the
+scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about
+her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful
+time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which
+she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a
+week there during the first winter of her brother’s marriage, but she
+had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn’t want
+her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the
+same, for after all she didn’t care two straws about Osmond. It was
+her husband who wouldn’t let her, and the money question was always
+a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her
+sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel’s
+personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with
+clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could
+never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really
+clever ones--always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that,
+different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she
+had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet
+upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should
+both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,
+with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was
+constantly expecting that Isabel would “look down” on her, and she as
+constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would
+begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she
+cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law
+regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor
+Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as
+soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a
+grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband’s sister, however;
+she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought
+her very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she
+was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably
+pink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle
+was apparently the Countess’s spiritual principle, a little loose nut
+that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too
+anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there
+was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage,
+had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst
+species--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said
+at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she
+had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake.
+The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to
+the Countess’s going again to Rome; but at the period with which this
+history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend
+several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond
+himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very
+quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had
+put into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any
+terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her
+former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the
+marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious
+thoughts--if any of the Countess’s thoughts were serious--of putting
+her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was
+reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an
+easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements, but it
+seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the
+taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether
+Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see
+Osmond overtopped.
+
+Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the
+card of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription “Henrietta C.
+Stackpole.” The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she
+didn’t remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant
+then remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the
+Countess should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on
+seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact
+reminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett’s;
+the only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the only
+modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She
+recognised Miss Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole
+seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly
+good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that
+sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account
+of her mother--whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother
+was not at all like Isabel’s friend; the Countess could see at a
+glance that this lady was much more contemporary; and she received
+an impression of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in
+distant countries--in the character (the professional character) of
+literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown
+over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet
+(oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of
+glossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of
+her “Creole” ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal
+and was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see,
+was always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something
+brisk and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost
+conscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever
+vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its address. The
+Countess could not but feel that the correspondent of the _Interviewer_
+was much more in the movement than the American Corinne. She explained
+that she had called on the Countess because she was the only person she
+knew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to
+see something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett,
+but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and even if she had been in Florence
+Henrietta would not have put herself out for her, since Mrs. Touchett
+was not one of her admirations.
+
+“Do you mean by that that I am?” the Countess graciously asked.
+
+“Well, I like you better than I do her,” said Miss Stackpole. “I seem to
+remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don’t
+know whether it was an accident or whether it’s your usual style. At
+any rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it
+afterwards in print.”
+
+“Dear me!” cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; “I had no idea
+I ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.”
+
+“It was about the position of woman in this city,” Miss Stackpole
+remarked. “You threw a good deal of light upon it.”
+
+“The position of woman’s very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And
+you wrote it down and published it?” the Countess went on. “Ah, do let
+me see it!”
+
+“I’ll write to them to send you the paper if you like,” Henrietta said.
+“I didn’t mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I
+quoted your views.”
+
+The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped
+hands. “Do you know I’m rather sorry you didn’t mention my name? I
+should have rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my
+views were; I have so many! But I’m not ashamed of them. I’m not at all
+like my brother--I suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of
+scandal to be put in the papers; if you were to quote him he’d never
+forgive you.”
+
+“He needn’t be afraid; I shall never refer to him,” said Miss Stackpole
+with bland dryness. “That’s another reason,” she added, “why I wanted to
+come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend.”
+
+“Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel’s. I was trying to think what I
+knew about you.”
+
+“I’m quite willing to be known by that,” Henrietta declared. “But that
+isn’t what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my
+relations with Isabel.”
+
+“Don’t permit it,” said the Countess.
+
+“That’s what I want to talk about. I’m going to Rome.”
+
+“So am I!” the Countess cried. “We’ll go together.”
+
+“With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I’ll mention you
+by name as my companion.”
+
+The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside
+her visitor. “Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won’t like it,
+but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn’t know how to read.”
+
+Henrietta’s large eyes became immense. “Doesn’t know how to read? May I
+put that into my letter?”
+
+“Into your letter?”
+
+“In the _Interviewer_. That’s my paper.”
+
+“Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?”
+
+Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
+“She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered
+that she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.”
+
+The Countess listened with extreme interest. “The reason’s Osmond,” she
+pregnantly remarked.
+
+“Isabel ought to make a stand,” said Miss Stackpole. “I’m afraid she has
+changed a great deal. I told her she would.”
+
+“I’m sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn’t
+my brother like you?” the Countess ingenuously added.
+
+“I don’t know and I don’t care. He’s perfectly welcome not to like me;
+I don’t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
+people did. A journalist can’t hope to do much good unless he gets a
+good deal hated; that’s the way he knows how his work goes on. And it’s
+just the same for a lady. But I didn’t expect it of Isabel.”
+
+“Do you mean that she hates you?” the Countess enquired.
+
+“I don’t know; I want to see. That’s what I’m going to Rome for.”
+
+“Dear me, what a tiresome errand!” the Countess exclaimed.
+
+“She doesn’t write to me in the same way; it’s easy to see there’s a
+difference. If you know anything,” Miss Stackpole went on, “I should
+like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.”
+
+The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. “I know
+very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn’t like me
+any better than he appears to like you.”
+
+“Yet you’re not a lady correspondent,” said Henrietta pensively.
+
+“Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they’ve invited me--I’m
+to stay in the house!” And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
+exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole’s
+disappointment.
+
+This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. “I shouldn’t have gone if
+she _had_ asked me. That is I think I shouldn’t; and I’m glad I hadn’t
+to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
+shouldn’t have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn’t have
+been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that’s
+not all.”
+
+“Rome’s very good just now,” said the Countess; “there are all sorts of
+brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?”
+
+“Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?”
+ Henrietta enquired.
+
+“I don’t know him, but I’m told he’s extremely grand seigneur. He’s
+making love to Isabel.”
+
+“Making love to her?”
+
+“So I’m told; I don’t know the details,” said the Countess lightly. “But
+Isabel’s pretty safe.”
+
+Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said
+nothing. “When do you go to Rome?” she enquired abruptly.
+
+“Not for a week, I’m afraid.”
+
+“I shall go to-morrow,” Henrietta said. “I think I had better not wait.”
+
+“Dear me, I’m sorry; I’m having some dresses made. I’m told Isabel
+receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you
+at your pension.” Henrietta sat still--she was lost in thought; and
+suddenly the Countess cried: “Ah, but if you don’t go with me you can’t
+describe our journey!”
+
+Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking
+of something else and presently expressed it. “I’m not sure that I
+understand you about Lord Warburton.”
+
+“Understand me? I mean he’s very nice, that’s all.”
+
+“Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?” Henrietta
+enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+
+The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: “It’s certain
+all the nice men do it. Get married and you’ll see!” she added.
+
+“That idea would be enough to prevent me,” said Miss Stackpole. “I
+should want my own husband; I shouldn’t want any one else’s. Do you mean
+that Isabel’s guilty--guilty--?” And she paused a little, choosing her
+expression.
+
+“Do I mean she’s guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that
+Osmond’s very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great
+deal at the house. I’m afraid you’re scandalised.”
+
+“No, I’m just anxious,” Henrietta said.
+
+“Ah, you’re not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more
+confidence. I’ll tell you,” the Countess added quickly: “if it will be a
+comfort to you I engage to draw him off.”
+
+Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her
+gaze. “You don’t understand me,” she said after a while. “I haven’t the
+idea you seem to suppose. I’m not afraid for Isabel--in that way. I’m
+only afraid she’s unhappy--that’s what I want to get at.”
+
+The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and
+sarcastic. “That may very well be; for my part I should like to know
+whether Osmond is.” Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
+
+“If she’s really changed that must be at the bottom of it,” Henrietta
+went on.
+
+“You’ll see; she’ll tell you,” said the Countess.
+
+“Ah, she may _not_ tell me--that’s what I’m afraid of!”
+
+“Well, if Osmond isn’t amusing himself--in his own old way--I flatter
+myself I shall discover it,” the Countess rejoined.
+
+“I don’t care for that,” said Henrietta.
+
+“I do immensely! If Isabel’s unhappy I’m very sorry for her, but I can’t
+help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I
+can’t tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and
+marry him for? If she had listened to me she’d have got rid of him. I’ll
+forgive her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she
+has simply allowed him to trample upon her I don’t know that I shall
+even pity her. But I don’t think that’s very likely. I count upon
+finding that if she’s miserable she has at least made _him_ so.”
+
+Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond
+unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of
+fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose
+mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a
+capacity for coarseness even there. “It will be better if they love each
+other,” she said for edification.
+
+“They can’t. He can’t love any one.”
+
+“I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for
+Isabel. I shall positively start to-morrow.”
+
+“Isabel certainly has devotees,” said the Countess, smiling very
+vividly. “I declare I don’t pity her.”
+
+“It may be I can’t assist her,” Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were
+well not to have illusions.
+
+“You can have wanted to, at any rate; that’s something. I believe that’s
+what you came from America for,” the Countess suddenly added.
+
+“Yes, I wanted to look after her,” Henrietta said serenely.
+
+Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an
+eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come.
+“Ah, that’s very pretty _c’est bien gentil_! Isn’t it what they call
+friendship?”
+
+“I don’t know what they call it. I thought I had better come.”
+
+“She’s very happy--she’s very fortunate,” the Countess went on. “She
+has others besides.” And then she broke out passionately. “She’s more
+fortunate than I! I’m as unhappy as she--I’ve a very bad husband; he’s a
+great deal worse than Osmond. And I’ve no friends. I thought I had, but
+they’re gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you’ve done for
+her.”
+
+Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She
+gazed at her companion a moment, and then: “Look here, Countess, I’ll do
+anything for you that you like. I’ll wait over and travel with you.”
+
+“Never mind,” the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: “only
+describe me in the newspaper!”
+
+Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her
+understand that she could give no fictitious representation of her
+journey to Rome. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On
+quitting her she took the way to the Lung’ Arno, the sunny quay beside
+the yellow river where the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand
+all in a row. She had learned her way before this through the streets of
+Florence (she was very quick in such matters), and was therefore able
+to turn with great decision of step out of the little square which forms
+the approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the
+left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of the
+hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew forth
+a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after
+meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over
+her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: “Could
+I see you this evening for a few moments on a very important matter?”
+ Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with
+this little document she approached the porter, who now had taken up
+his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home.
+The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about
+twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and begged
+it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her
+course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which
+she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings.
+Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the
+upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with
+antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an
+empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble
+floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but
+scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of
+artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had
+after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the
+little Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the
+sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands
+to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special
+devotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the most beautiful
+picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she
+was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that
+they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite
+work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it
+involved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn
+into the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a
+little exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+
+“I’ve just been at your hotel,” she said. “I left a card for you.”
+
+“I’m very much honoured,” Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant
+it.
+
+“It was not to honour you I did it; I’ve called on you before and I know
+you don’t like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.”
+
+He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. “I shall be very glad
+to hear what you wish to say.”
+
+“You don’t like to talk with me,” said Henrietta. “But I don’t care for
+that; I don’t talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come
+and see me; but since I’ve met you here this will do as well.”
+
+“I was just going away,” Goodwood stated; “but of course I’ll stop.” He
+was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+
+Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was
+so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on
+any terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the
+pictures.
+
+“All I want to. I’ve been here an hour.”
+
+“I wonder if you’ve seen my Correggio,” said Henrietta. “I came up on
+purpose to have a look at it.” She went into the Tribune and he slowly
+accompanied her.
+
+“I suppose I’ve seen it, but I didn’t know it was yours. I don’t
+remember pictures--especially that sort.” She had pointed out her
+favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to
+talk with him.
+
+“No,” said Henrietta, “it’s about something less harmonious!” They
+had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to
+themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus.
+“I want you to do me a favour,” Miss Stackpole went on.
+
+Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at
+the sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man
+than our earlier friend. “I’m sure it’s something I shan’t like,” he
+said rather loudly.
+
+“No, I don’t think you’ll like it. If you did it would be no favour.”
+
+“Well, let’s hear it,” he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious
+of his patience.
+
+“You may say there’s no particular reason why you should do me a favour.
+Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you’d let me I’d gladly do
+you one.” Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect,
+had an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather
+a hard surface, couldn’t help being touched by it. When he was touched
+he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed,
+nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more
+directly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued
+therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. “I may say
+now, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I’ve ever annoyed you (and
+I think sometimes I have) it’s because I knew I was willing to suffer
+annoyance for you. I’ve troubled you--doubtless. But I’d _take_ trouble
+for you.”
+
+Goodwood hesitated. “You’re taking trouble now.”
+
+“Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it’s better on the
+whole that you should go to Rome.”
+
+“I thought you were going to say that!” he answered rather artlessly.
+
+“You _have_ considered it then?”
+
+“Of course I have, very carefully. I’ve looked all round it. Otherwise
+I shouldn’t have come so far as this. That’s what I stayed in Paris two
+months for. I was thinking it over.”
+
+“I’m afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because
+you were so much attracted.”
+
+“Best for whom, do you mean?” Goodwood demanded.
+
+“Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.”
+
+“Oh, it won’t do _her_ any good! I don’t flatter myself that.”
+
+“Won’t it do her some harm?--that’s the question.”
+
+“I don’t see what it will matter to her. I’m nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But
+if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.”
+
+“Yes, and that’s why you go.”
+
+“Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?”
+
+“How will it help you?--that’s what I want to know,” said Miss
+Stackpole.
+
+“That’s just what I can’t tell you. It’s just what I was thinking about
+in Paris.”
+
+“It will make you more discontented.”
+
+“Why do you say ‘more’ so?” Goodwood asked rather sternly. “How do you
+know I’m discontented?”
+
+“Well,” said Henrietta, hesitating a little, “you seem never to have
+cared for another.”
+
+“How do you know what I care for?” he cried with a big blush. “Just now
+I care to go to Rome.”
+
+Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.
+“Well,” she observed at last, “I only wanted to tell you what I think;
+I had it on my mind. Of course you think it’s none of my business. But
+nothing is any one’s business, on that principle.”
+
+“It’s very kind of you; I’m greatly obliged to you for your interest,”
+ said Caspar Goodwood. “I shall go to Rome and I shan’t hurt Mrs.
+Osmond.”
+
+“You won’t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that’s the real
+issue.”
+
+“Is she in need of help?” he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
+
+“Most women always are,” said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness
+and generalising less hopefully than usual. “If you go to Rome,” she
+added, “I hope you’ll be a true friend--not a selfish one!” And she
+turned off and began to look at the pictures.
+
+Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered
+round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. “You’ve heard
+something about her here,” he then resumed. “I should like to know what
+you’ve heard.”
+
+Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this
+occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after
+thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. “Yes, I’ve
+heard,” she answered; “but as I don’t want you to go to Rome I won’t
+tell you.”
+
+“Just as you please. I shall see for myself,” he said. Then
+inconsistently, for him, “You’ve heard she’s unhappy!” he added.
+
+“Oh, you won’t see that!” Henrietta exclaimed.
+
+“I hope not. When do you start?”
+
+“To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?”
+
+Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss
+Stackpole’s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the
+same character as Gilbert Osmond’s, but it had at this moment an equal
+distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole’s virtues than a
+reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,
+and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.
+Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of
+things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters
+he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But
+it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss
+Stackpole didn’t take so much for granted. She took for granted that he
+was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when
+they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had
+repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no
+wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was _not_ always thinking of
+her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least
+colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing
+her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn’t
+care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him,
+that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now
+made other reflections--which show how widely different, in effect, his
+ill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond’s. He desired to go immediately to
+Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the
+European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee
+to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found
+one’s self objecting with all the added vehemence of one’s wish to have
+the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at
+least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But
+he couldn’t take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the
+morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected
+woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait
+longer than he had patience for. It wouldn’t do to start the next day.
+She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in
+a European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of
+irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to
+put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that;
+it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some
+moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a
+tone of extreme distinctness, “Of course if you’re going to-morrow I’ll
+go too, as I may be of assistance to you.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!” Henrietta returned
+imperturbably.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be
+displeased by the continuance of Ralph’s visit to Rome. That knowledge
+was very present to her as she went to her cousin’s hotel the day
+after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his
+sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient
+perception of the sources of Osmond’s opposition. He wished her to have
+no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle
+of freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself,
+that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that
+she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband’s aversion to
+it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had
+not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was
+her appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort
+of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination,
+however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary
+decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled
+her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had
+lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband’s
+intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the
+less, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back
+something she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and
+monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do
+nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her
+to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph;
+but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this
+prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet
+made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband’s wish
+for the event; she didn’t, to be just, see how he _could_ like her to be
+with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond’s
+sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively
+interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to
+decide, and that wouldn’t be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and
+her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her
+wish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Ralph would
+start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself
+in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward.
+It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed
+preferable to repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred
+act--of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous.
+To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open
+acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that
+their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be
+no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal
+readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was
+to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there
+was no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel
+went to the Hôtel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure
+of propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn’t have been
+a better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest
+appreciation. Isabel’s application of that measure had been particularly
+free to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn’t
+leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This
+indeed was Gilbert’s business as well as her own.
+
+She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. “I want you to answer
+me a question. It’s about Lord Warburton.”
+
+“I think I guess your question,” Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out
+of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
+
+“Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t say I can do that.”
+
+“You’re intimate with him,” she said; “you’ve a great deal of
+observation of him.”
+
+“Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!”
+
+“Why should he dissimulate? That’s not his nature.”
+
+“Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,” said Ralph
+with an air of private amusement.
+
+“To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?”
+
+“Very much, I think. I can make that out.”
+
+“Ah!” said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+
+Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+mystification. “You say that as if you were disappointed.”
+
+Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.
+“It’s after all no business of mine.”
+
+“You’re very philosophic,” said her cousin. And then in a moment: “May I
+enquire what you’re talking about?”
+
+Isabel stared. “I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants,
+of all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I’ve told you that before,
+without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I
+think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?”
+
+“Ah, for Pansy, no!” cried Ralph very positively.
+
+“But you said just now he did.”
+
+Ralph waited a moment. “That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. “That’s nonsense, you know.”
+
+“Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton’s, not mine.”
+
+“That would be very tiresome.” She spoke, as she flattered herself, with
+much subtlety.
+
+“I ought to tell you indeed,” Ralph went on, “that to me he has denied
+it.”
+
+“It’s very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you
+that he’s in love with Pansy?”
+
+“He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me know, of
+course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.”
+
+“Does he really think it?”
+
+“Ah, what Warburton really thinks--!” said Ralph.
+
+Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves
+on which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked
+up, and then, “Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!” she cried abruptly and
+passionately.
+
+It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the
+words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of
+relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf
+between them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a
+moment: “How unhappy you must be!”
+
+He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the
+first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. “When I
+talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense,” she said with a quick
+smile. “The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments!
+The matter’s very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can’t
+undertake to see him through.”
+
+“He ought to succeed easily,” said Ralph.
+
+Isabel debated. “Yes--but he has not always succeeded.”
+
+“Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss
+Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?”
+
+“It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he’ll let
+the matter drop.”
+
+“He’ll do nothing dishonourable,” said Ralph.
+
+“I’m very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to
+leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it’s cruel
+to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.”
+
+“Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But Warburton
+isn’t obliged to mind that.”
+
+“No, cruel to her,” said Isabel. “She would be very unhappy if she were
+to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea
+seems to amuse you; of course you’re not in love with him. He has the
+merit--for Pansy--of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance
+that Lord Warburton isn’t.”
+
+“He’d be very good to her,” said Ralph.
+
+“He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said
+a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with
+perfect propriety.”
+
+“How would your husband like that?”
+
+“Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain
+satisfaction himself.”
+
+“Has he commissioned you to obtain it?” Ralph ventured to ask.
+
+“It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton’s--an older
+friend, that is, than Gilbert--I should take an interest in his
+intentions.”
+
+“Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?”
+
+Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. “Let me understand. Are you
+pleading his cause?”
+
+“Not in the least. I’m very glad he shouldn’t become your stepdaughter’s
+husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!” said Ralph,
+smiling. “But I’m rather nervous lest your husband should think you
+haven’t pushed him enough.”
+
+Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. “He knows me well
+enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention
+of pushing, I presume. I’m not afraid I shall not be able to justify
+myself!” she said lightly.
+
+Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to
+Ralph’s infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural
+face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage
+desire to hear her complain of her husband--hear her say that she should
+be held accountable for Lord Warburton’s defection. Ralph was certain
+that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form
+that in such an event Osmond’s displeasure would take. It could only
+take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of
+it--to let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It
+little mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not
+deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt
+cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely
+mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did
+she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention?
+Why did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her?
+How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her
+humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
+mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
+bound to consider. “You’ll be decidedly at variance, all the same,” he
+said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
+understood, “You’ll find yourselves thinking very differently,” he
+continued.
+
+“That may easily happen, among the most united couples!” She took up her
+parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. “It’s a
+matter we can hardly quarrel about, however,” she added; “for almost all
+the interest is on his side. That’s very natural. Pansy’s after all his
+daughter--not mine.” And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+
+Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn’t leave him without
+his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
+opportunity to lose. “Do you know what his interest will make him say?”
+ he asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not
+discouragingly--and he went on. “It will make him say that your want
+of zeal is owing to jealousy.” He stopped a moment; her face made him
+afraid.
+
+“To jealousy?”
+
+“To jealousy of his daughter.”
+
+She blushed red and threw back her head. “You’re not kind,” she said in
+a voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+
+“Be frank with me and you’ll see,” he answered.
+
+But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
+tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
+mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going
+to the girl’s room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was
+always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty
+patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.
+At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room
+fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in
+accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up
+and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that
+the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo
+Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy’s virginal
+bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.
+Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of
+humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel,
+the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel
+had a difficult task--the only thing was to perform it as simply as
+possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against
+betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at
+least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But Pansy seemed to
+have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she
+had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the
+fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a
+cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her
+stepmother’s knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own
+lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she
+desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke
+it. The girl’s father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and
+indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of
+a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her
+tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+Pansy’s supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel
+had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the
+effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with
+her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half
+in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness
+of the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked
+out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When
+Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might
+have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her
+silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire
+to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer
+and nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep
+longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she
+begged her to advise her now.
+
+“It’s difficult for me to advise you,” Isabel returned. “I don’t know
+how I can undertake that. That’s for your father; you must get his
+advice and, above all, you must act on it.”
+
+At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. “I think
+I should like your advice better than papa’s,” she presently remarked.
+
+“That’s not as it should be,” said Isabel coldly. “I love you very much,
+but your father loves you better.”
+
+“It isn’t because you love me--it’s because you’re a lady,” Pansy
+answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. “A lady can
+advise a young girl better than a man.”
+
+“I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father’s wishes.”
+
+“Ah yes,” said the child eagerly, “I must do that.”
+
+“But if I speak to you now about your getting married it’s not for your
+own sake, it’s for mine,” Isabel went on. “If I try to learn from you
+what you expect, what you desire, it’s only that I may act accordingly.”
+
+Pansy stared, and then very quickly, “Will you do everything I want?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Before I say yes I must know what such things are.”
+
+Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to
+marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so
+if her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn’t allow it.
+
+“Very well then, it’s impossible,” Isabel pronounced.
+
+“Yes, it’s impossible,” said Pansy without a sigh and with the same
+extreme attention in her clear little face.
+
+“You must think of something else then,” Isabel went on; but Pansy,
+sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the
+least success.
+
+“You think of those who think of you,” she said with a faint smile. “I
+know Mr. Rosier thinks of me.”
+
+“He ought not to,” said Isabel loftily. “Your father has expressly
+requested he shouldn’t.”
+
+“He can’t help it, because he knows I think of _him_.”
+
+“You shouldn’t think of him. There’s some excuse for him, perhaps; but
+there’s none for you.”
+
+“I wish you would try to find one,” the girl exclaimed as if she were
+praying to the Madonna.
+
+“I should be very sorry to attempt it,” said the Madonna with unusual
+frigidity. “If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you
+think of him?”
+
+“No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right.”
+
+“Ah, but I don’t admit Mr. Rosier’s right!” Isabel hypocritically cried.
+
+Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking
+advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of
+disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that
+she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And
+she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might
+never marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She
+appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of
+course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning.
+She was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This
+might seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy,
+evidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness
+toward her father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only
+the sweetness of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite
+intimation that she could prove it better by remaining single than even
+by marrying him.
+
+“Your father would like you to make a better marriage,” said Isabel.
+“Mr. Rosier’s fortune is not at all large.”
+
+“How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have myself
+so little money; why should I look for a fortune?”
+
+“Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.” With which
+Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face
+were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was
+what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy’s solemn eyes, fixed on her own,
+almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light
+of the girl’s preference.
+
+“What should you like me to do?” her companion softly demanded.
+
+The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous
+vagueness. “To remember all the pleasure it’s in your power to give your
+father.”
+
+“To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?”
+
+For a moment Isabel’s answer caused itself to be waited for; then she
+heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy’s attention seemed to
+make. “Yes--to marry some one else.”
+
+The child’s eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting
+her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting
+up from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands
+unclasped and then quavered out: “Well, I hope no one will ask me!”
+
+“There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready
+to ask you.”
+
+“I don’t think he can have been ready,” said Pansy.
+
+“It would appear so if he had been sure he’d succeed.”
+
+“If he had been sure? Then he wasn’t ready!”
+
+Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment
+looking into the fire. “Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,”
+ she resumed; “of course you know it’s of him I speak.” She found
+herself, against her expectation, almost placed in the position of
+justifying herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more
+crudely than she had intended.
+
+“He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean
+that he’ll propose for me I think you’re mistaken.”
+
+“Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.”
+
+Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. “Lord Warburton won’t
+propose simply to please papa.”
+
+“Your father would like you to encourage him,” Isabel went on
+mechanically.
+
+“How can I encourage him?”
+
+“I don’t know. Your father must tell you that.”
+
+Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if
+she were in possession of a bright assurance. “There’s no danger--no
+danger!” she declared at last.
+
+There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her
+believing it, which conduced to Isabel’s awkwardness. She felt accused
+of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect
+she was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that
+there was a danger. But she didn’t; she only said--in her embarrassment
+rather wide of the mark--that he surely had been most kind, most
+friendly.
+
+“Yes, he has been very kind,” Pansy answered. “That’s what I like him
+for.”
+
+“Why then is the difficulty so great?”
+
+“I’ve always felt sure of his knowing that I don’t want--what did you
+say I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don’t want to marry,
+and he wants me to know that he therefore won’t trouble me. That’s the
+meaning of his kindness. It’s as if he said to me: ‘I like you very
+much, but if it doesn’t please you I’ll never say it again.’ I
+think that’s very kind, very noble,” Pansy went on with deepening
+positiveness. “That is all we’ve said to each other. And he doesn’t care
+for me either. Ah no, there’s no danger.”
+
+Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which
+this submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy’s
+wisdom--began almost to retreat before it. “You must tell your father
+that,” she remarked reservedly.
+
+“I think I’d rather not,” Pansy unreservedly answered.
+
+“You oughtn’t to let him have false hopes.”
+
+“Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he
+believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa
+won’t propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,” said
+the child very lucidly.
+
+There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion
+draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.
+Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that
+she herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock.
+Nevertheless it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond,
+that she was on her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the
+influence of this sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she
+retired--a suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have
+done her utmost.
+
+“Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a
+nobleman.”
+
+Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for
+Isabel to pass. “I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!” she remarked very
+gravely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond’s drawing-room for several
+days, and Isabel couldn’t fail to observe that her husband said nothing
+to her about having received a letter from him. She couldn’t fail to
+observe, either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that,
+though it was not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their
+distinguished friend kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four
+days he alluded to his absence.
+
+“What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a
+tradesman with a bill?”
+
+“I know nothing about him,” Isabel said. “I saw him last Friday at the
+German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.”
+
+“He has never written to me.”
+
+“So I supposed, from your not having told me.”
+
+“He’s an odd fish,” said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel’s making
+no rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five
+days to indite a letter. “Does he form his words with such difficulty?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Isabel was reduced to replying. “I’ve never had a letter
+from him.”
+
+“Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate
+correspondence.”
+
+She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation
+drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the
+afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+
+“When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you
+say to him?” he asked.
+
+She just faltered. “I think I told him not to forget it.
+
+“Did you believe there was a danger of that?”
+
+“As you say, he’s an odd fish.”
+
+“Apparently he has forgotten it,” said Osmond. “Be so good as to remind
+him.”
+
+“Should you like me to write to him?” she demanded.
+
+“I’ve no objection whatever.”
+
+“You expect too much of me.”
+
+“Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.”
+
+“I’m afraid I shall disappoint you,” said Isabel.
+
+“My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.”
+
+“Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself!
+If you really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them
+yourself.”
+
+For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: “That
+won’t be easy, with you working against me.”
+
+Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of
+looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of
+her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully
+cruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable
+necessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence.
+That effect had never been so marked as now. “I think you accuse me of
+something very base,” she returned.
+
+“I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn’t after all come
+forward it will be because you’ve kept him off. I don’t know that it’s
+base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I’ve no
+doubt you’ve the finest ideas about it.”
+
+“I told you I would do what I could,” she went on.
+
+“Yes, that gained you time.”
+
+It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him
+beautiful. “How much you must want to make sure of him!” she exclaimed
+in a moment.
+
+She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her
+words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made
+a comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had
+once held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich
+enough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her--a
+horrible delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her
+that none of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing
+otherwise, however; he only said quickly: “Yes, I want it immensely.”
+
+At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed
+the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing
+Osmond. He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress;
+a movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a
+perception of ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English
+address, in which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element
+of good-breeding; in which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving
+transitions. Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel
+remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking
+about their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn’t known
+what was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away. “No,”
+ he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; “I’m only on the point of
+going.” And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled
+to England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. “I’m awfully
+sorry to leave poor Touchett!” he ended by exclaiming.
+
+For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back
+in his chair, listening. Isabel didn’t look at him; she could only fancy
+how he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor’s face, where they were
+the more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them.
+Yet Isabel was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it
+expressive. “You had better take poor Touchett with you,” she heard her
+husband say, lightly enough, in a moment.
+
+“He had better wait for warmer weather,” Lord Warburton answered. “I
+shouldn’t advise him to travel just now.”
+
+He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon
+see them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a course
+he strongly recommended. Why shouldn’t they come to England in the
+autumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such
+pleasure to do what he could for them--to have them come and spend a
+month with him. Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but
+once; which was an absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and
+intelligence. It was just the country for him--he would be sure to get
+on well there. Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what
+a good time she had had there and if she didn’t want to try it again.
+Didn’t she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really
+very good. Touchett didn’t take proper care of it, but it was the sort
+of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. Why didn’t they
+come and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must have asked them. Hadn’t
+asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!--and Lord Warburton promised to
+give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a
+mere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with
+Touchett and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the
+people they must know there, they really wouldn’t find it half bad. Lord
+Warburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told
+him that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a
+country she deserved to see. Of course she didn’t need to go to England
+to be admired--that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense
+success there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked
+if she were not at home: couldn’t he say good-bye? Not that he liked
+good-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other day he
+hadn’t said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind
+to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What
+could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things
+one wanted--one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other
+hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn’t, simply from a sense
+that one had to say something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled
+one’s wits. He had it at present, and that was the effect it produced
+on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn’t think he spoke as he ought she must set
+it down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond.
+He was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her
+instead of calling--but he would write to her at any rate, to tell her a
+lot of things that would be sure to occur to him as soon as he had left
+the house. They must think seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+
+If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the
+announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord
+Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other
+manner, and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was
+capable of executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked
+him quite well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He
+would do that on any occasion--not from impudence but simply from the
+habit of success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband’s power to
+frustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on
+in her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor; said what was
+proper to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said
+himself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had found her
+alone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness of Osmond’s emotion.
+She felt almost sorry for him; he was condemned to the sharp pain of
+loss without the relief of cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as
+he saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl
+his thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he
+treated their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so
+clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond’s
+cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present
+appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was
+simply a part of Osmond’s habitual system, which was to be inexpressive
+exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on
+this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to
+irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he
+treated every one--with an air of being interested in him only for his
+own advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so
+perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign now of an
+inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain--not
+the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any
+satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction;
+she wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the same
+time she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton.
+Osmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the
+advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it
+was something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned back
+in his place, listening but vaguely to the other’s friendly offers and
+suppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to assume that they
+were addressed essentially to his wife--he had at least (since so little
+else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he personally had
+kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he was now able
+to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was something to be
+able to look as if the leave-taker’s movements had no relation to his
+own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond’s performance was
+in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton’s position was after
+all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn’t leave
+Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had stopped short
+of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour was safe.
+Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal that
+they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success
+Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but
+left Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration.
+Isabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista
+which had suddenly opened out in her husband’s mind, with Pansy’s little
+figure marching up the middle of it.
+
+Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither
+Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of
+giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if
+it were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed
+and stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it
+was not to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would
+rather not see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone--he had
+something to say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she
+was afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense
+with explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good
+taste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish
+to say just the last word of all to the ladies. “I’ve a letter to write
+before dinner,” he said; “you must excuse me. I’ll see if my daughter’s
+disengaged, and if she is she shall know you’re here. Of course when
+you come to Rome you’ll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you
+about the English expedition: she decides all those things.”
+
+The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little
+speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole
+it was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he
+left the room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, “Your
+husband’s very angry”; which would have been extremely disagreeable to
+her. Nevertheless, if he had done so, she would have said: “Oh, don’t be
+anxious. He doesn’t hate you: it’s me that he hates!”
+
+It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend
+showed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in another chair,
+handling two or three of the objects that were near him. “I hope he’ll
+make Miss Osmond come,” he presently remarked. “I want very much to see
+her.”
+
+“I’m glad it’s the last time,” said Isabel.
+
+“So am I. She doesn’t care for me.”
+
+“No, she doesn’t care for you.”
+
+“I don’t wonder at it,” he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
+“You’ll come to England, won’t you?”
+
+“I think we had better not.”
+
+“Ah, you owe me a visit. Don’t you remember that you were to have come
+to Lockleigh once, and you never did?”
+
+“Everything’s changed since then,” said Isabel.
+
+“Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we’re concerned. To see
+you under my roof”--and he hung fire but an instant--“would be a great
+satisfaction.”
+
+She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.
+They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,
+already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek.
+She shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his
+face with a fixed smile--a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship
+probably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
+
+“I’m going away,” he said. “I want to bid you good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye, Lord Warburton.” Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+
+“And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.”
+
+“Thank you, Lord Warburton,” Pansy answered.
+
+He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. “You ought to be very
+happy--you’ve got a guardian angel.”
+
+“I’m sure I shall be happy,” said Pansy in the tone of a person whose
+certainties were always cheerful.
+
+“Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should
+ever fail you, remember--remember--” And her interlocutor stammered a
+little. “Think of me sometimes, you know!” he said with a vague laugh.
+Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.
+
+When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her
+stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
+
+“I think you _are_ my guardian angel!” she exclaimed very sweetly.
+
+Isabel shook her head. “I’m not an angel of any kind. I’m at the most
+your good friend.”
+
+“You’re a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle with
+me.”
+
+“I’ve asked your father nothing,” said Isabel, wondering.
+
+“He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a
+very kind kiss.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, “that was quite his own idea!”
+
+She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she
+was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn’t put
+himself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after
+their dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till
+late in the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him
+before going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his
+usual munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his
+daughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was
+a partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his
+wife. She was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she
+would remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the
+drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+
+“I don’t understand what you wish to do,” he said in a moment. “I should
+like to know--so that I may know how to act.”
+
+“Just now I wish to go to bed. I’m very tired.”
+
+“Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a
+comfortable place.” And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were
+scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,
+however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair.
+The fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew
+her cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. “I think you’re trying to
+humiliate me,” Osmond went on. “It’s a most absurd undertaking.”
+
+“I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” she returned.
+
+“You’ve played a very deep game; you’ve managed it beautifully.”
+
+“What is it that I’ve managed?”
+
+“You’ve not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.” And he
+stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
+her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know
+that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of
+thought.
+
+“If you mean that Lord Warburton’s under an obligation to come back
+you’re wrong,” Isabel said. “He’s under none whatever.”
+
+“That’s just what I complain of. But when I say he’ll come back I don’t
+mean he’ll come from a sense of duty.”
+
+“There’s nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.”
+
+“Ah no, that’s a shallow judgement. Rome’s inexhaustible.” And Osmond
+began to walk about again. “However, about that perhaps there’s no
+hurry,” he added. “It’s rather a good idea of his that we should go
+to England. If it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I
+think I should try to persuade you.”
+
+“It may be that you’ll not find my cousin,” said Isabel.
+
+“I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as
+possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told
+me so much about at one time: what do you call it?--Gardencourt. It must
+be a charming thing. And then, you know, I’ve a devotion to the memory
+of your uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to
+see where he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was
+right. Pansy ought to see England.”
+
+“I’ve no doubt she would enjoy it,” said Isabel.
+
+“But that’s a long time hence; next autumn’s far off,” Osmond continued;
+“and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you
+think me so very proud?” he suddenly asked.
+
+“I think you very strange.”
+
+“You don’t understand me.”
+
+“No, not even when you insult me.”
+
+“I don’t insult you; I’m incapable of it. I merely speak of certain
+facts, and if the allusion’s an injury to you the fault’s not mine.
+It’s surely a fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own
+hands.”
+
+“Are you going back to Lord Warburton?” Isabel asked. “I’m very tired of
+his name.”
+
+“You shall hear it again before we’ve done with it.”
+
+She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that
+this ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the vision of such a
+fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,
+too different; he didn’t touch her. Still, the working of his morbid
+passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in
+what light he saw himself justified. “I might say to you that I judge
+you’ve nothing to say to me that’s worth hearing,” she returned in a
+moment. “But I should perhaps be wrong. There’s a thing that would be
+worth my hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse
+me.”
+
+“Of having prevented Pansy’s marriage to Warburton. Are those words
+plain enough?”
+
+“On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when
+you told me that you counted on me--that I think was what you said--I
+accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.”
+
+“You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me
+more willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get
+him out of the way.”
+
+“I think I see what you mean,” said Isabel.
+
+“Where’s the letter you told me he had written me?” her husband
+demanded.
+
+“I haven’t the least idea; I haven’t asked him.”
+
+“You stopped it on the way,” said Osmond.
+
+Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered
+her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first
+cousin to that of pity. “Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine--!” she
+exclaimed in a long murmur.
+
+“I was never so fine as you. You’ve done everything you wanted. You’ve
+got him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you’ve placed
+me in the position in which you wished to see me--that of a man who has
+tried to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.”
+
+“Pansy doesn’t care for him. She’s very glad he’s gone,” Isabel said.
+
+“That has nothing to do with the matter.”
+
+“And he doesn’t care for Pansy.”
+
+“That won’t do; you told me he did. I don’t know why you wanted this
+particular satisfaction,” Osmond continued; “you might have taken some
+other. It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve been presumptuous--that I have
+taken too much for granted. I’ve been very modest about it, very quiet.
+The idea didn’t originate with me. He began to show that he liked her
+before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.”
+
+“Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend
+to such things yourself.”
+
+He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. “I thought you were very
+fond of my daughter.”
+
+“I’ve never been more so than to-day.”
+
+“Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that
+perhaps is natural.”
+
+“Is this all you wished to say to me?” Isabel asked, taking a candle
+that stood on one of the tables.
+
+“Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?”
+
+“I don’t think that on the whole you’re disappointed. You’ve had another
+opportunity to try to stupefy me.”
+
+“It’s not that. It’s proved that Pansy can aim high.”
+
+“Poor little Pansy!” said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had
+come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton’s
+departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some
+importance to Isabel--the temporary absence, once again, of Madame
+Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor
+of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel’s
+happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of
+women might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at
+night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her
+friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to
+her that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.
+Isabel’s imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but
+every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when
+the charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness
+of respite. She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar
+Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to
+her immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to
+Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he
+might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage,
+had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered
+rightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since then
+he had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the only
+one in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left her
+that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like
+a collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist,
+no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer
+wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the
+tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel a
+strain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It
+had been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm
+that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only
+person with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she
+couldn’t help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried
+with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried to
+think it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her with
+his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best
+to darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent,
+and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a
+violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her
+own fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted
+three or four days.
+
+The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the
+first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a
+thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think
+of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do
+nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to
+doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord
+Warburton’s; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,
+uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could
+never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as
+she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith
+in Mr. Goodwood’s compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory
+was not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failed
+to marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what
+he had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic
+enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If
+he extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the
+only form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an
+enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because
+he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of
+bareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory
+or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social
+drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of
+human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never
+heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this
+impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from
+time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was
+all bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had
+thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more
+than once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband
+about him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a
+reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence
+in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man’s
+disappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her,
+she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Goodwood’s affairs
+could have, after all, little interest for Gilbert. When it had come
+to the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that,
+considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.
+Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.
+It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him;
+even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her
+that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had
+the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble he
+had become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to
+set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel
+that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.
+She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace
+with the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to
+her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled
+with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day
+on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was
+coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for
+him than for any one else to make out--since he _would_ make it out, as
+over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimate
+disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had
+invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only
+a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her
+stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he
+spent several days without coming to see her.
+
+Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and
+Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw
+herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping
+her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been
+superficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather
+enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously
+criticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still
+marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as
+keen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her
+remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had
+put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her
+opinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quite
+unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old she had
+never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had
+managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason for
+everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, when
+she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having
+already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn’t for a moment pretend
+that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to do
+with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her
+independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to
+it. “It’s nothing to come to Europe,” she said to Isabel; “it doesn’t
+seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay
+at home; this is much more important.” It was not therefore with a sense
+of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
+pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully
+inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her
+knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to
+be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a
+perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after
+all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so
+little. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the
+other’s fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because
+she had guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but
+she had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel’s satisfactions just
+now were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still
+have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified
+in having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large
+concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all
+abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however,
+that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this
+confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not
+in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached this point
+with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of
+being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph,
+nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
+
+“Yes, I’m wretched,” she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say
+it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+
+“What does he do to you?” Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were
+enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+
+“He does nothing. But he doesn’t like me.”
+
+“He’s very hard to please!” cried Miss Stackpole. “Why don’t you leave
+him?”
+
+“I can’t change that way,” Isabel said.
+
+“Why not, I should like to know? You won’t confess that you’ve made a
+mistake. You’re too proud.”
+
+“I don’t know whether I’m too proud. But I can’t publish my mistake. I
+don’t think that’s decent. I’d much rather die.”
+
+“You won’t think so always,” said Henrietta.
+
+“I don’t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to
+me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one’s deeds. I married
+him before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do
+anything more deliberate. One can’t change that way,” Isabel repeated.
+
+“You _have_ changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don’t mean
+to say you like him.”
+
+Isabel debated. “No, I don’t like him. I can tell you, because I’m weary
+of my secret. But that’s enough; I can’t announce it on the housetops.”
+
+Henrietta gave a laugh. “Don’t you think you’re rather too considerate?”
+
+“It’s not of him that I’m considerate--it’s of myself!” Isabel answered.
+
+It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in
+Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a
+young lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal
+roof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she
+would leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered
+that he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta
+that as Osmond didn’t like her she couldn’t invite her to dine, but
+they could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss
+Stackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to
+drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward, on the
+opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with a
+respectful attention which Henrietta occasionally found irritating. She
+complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond had a little look as if she should
+remember everything one said. “I don’t want to be remembered that way,”
+ Miss Stackpole declared; “I consider that my conversation refers only
+to the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits
+there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring
+them out some day against me.” She could not teach herself to think
+favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of
+personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even
+uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a
+little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her,
+so that he might appear to suffer for good manners’ sake. Her immediate
+acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in
+effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot
+enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held
+to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were
+elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that
+Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,
+so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
+might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the
+moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was
+nothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself
+off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife’s
+friends; he took occasion to call Isabel’s attention to it.
+
+“You’re certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make
+a new collection,” he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
+visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived
+the remark of all brutal abruptness. “It’s as if you had taken the
+trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common
+with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his
+being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it’s insufferably
+tiresome that one can’t tell him so; one must spare him on account of
+his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him
+privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he’s so desperately ill there’s
+only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can’t
+say much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,
+the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and
+looks at one’s daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries
+the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and
+almost thinks he’ll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a
+lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he
+doesn’t think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a
+_piano nobile_. And he goes away after having got a month’s lodging in the
+poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your most
+wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn’t
+a nerve in one’s body that she doesn’t set quivering. You know I never
+have admitted that she’s a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of
+a new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel
+pen writes; aren’t her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks
+and moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that
+she doesn’t hurt me, inasmuch as I don’t see her. I don’t see her, but I
+hear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can’t get
+rid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone
+in which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they give
+you great comfort. I don’t like at all to think she talks about me--I
+feel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat.”
+
+Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather
+less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of
+which the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let
+her friend know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that
+she was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what
+comfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling
+on her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance of
+seeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straight
+in front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.
+Isabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must
+have been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.
+Touchett’s door at the close of their last interview. He was dressed
+just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered the colour
+of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a
+strangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh
+to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and
+more overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached
+high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back
+after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like
+a February sky.
+
+Miss Stackpole’s other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the
+latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States
+the year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him
+considerable attention. She didn’t know how much he had enjoyed it, but
+she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn’t the same man
+when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and
+shown him that England wasn’t everything. He had been very much liked in
+most places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the English
+were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+affected; she didn’t know whether they meant that his simplicity was an
+affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all
+the chambermaids were farmers’ daughters--or all the farmers’ daughters
+were chambermaids--she couldn’t exactly remember which. He hadn’t seemed
+able to grasp the great school system; it had been really too much
+for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of
+everything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had
+chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed
+really fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one
+he had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest;
+he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled
+together from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting
+cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wanted
+to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of
+geography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was
+perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never
+to have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was
+unprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to
+confess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent
+some pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream
+from the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that you
+could get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn’t, nor fans,
+nor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quite
+overwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it was
+the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England,
+hunting--“hunting round” Henrietta called it. These amusements were
+those of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the
+pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England
+that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in
+keeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join
+her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come
+over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of
+the ancient regime. They didn’t agree about that, but that was what she
+liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been
+swept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered
+on the contrary one day when there were five American families, walking
+all round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the
+subject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it
+now; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was
+determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight.
+The mystery about that other one had never been explained.
+
+Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel
+a note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be
+at home at six o’clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what
+he was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presented
+himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who
+would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel’s hospitality,
+however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in
+appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at
+least that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had
+been misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not
+disappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he had
+not come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he
+had come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be none but the
+very simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had come
+for his amusement. Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal of
+eagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the
+ghost of this gentleman’s ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome
+for his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared
+for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over his
+heartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities were
+at an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, but
+he had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believe
+he was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence,
+though he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-light
+upon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on general
+topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,
+“Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn’t talk.” He spoke a good
+deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is,
+how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculated
+to simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn’t
+like her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save as
+having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say
+of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis
+exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert;
+it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday
+evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband
+still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not
+inviting them.
+
+To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early;
+he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every
+now and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about
+him; she thought he might know that she didn’t know what to do with him.
+But she couldn’t call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was
+only extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very
+different from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with
+_him_. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering
+herself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of
+women. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any
+personal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed
+probable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case
+he had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of
+this principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy
+to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat
+with coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry
+her, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would
+have been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which
+would strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.
+He declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn’t easy at
+first, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the
+top of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt a
+little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and
+he gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that
+Mr. Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had ever wished
+to; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of being
+inaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to
+dinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even
+desired to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was
+very original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English
+portmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear
+out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the
+Campagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly
+in the evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying to
+him one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. And
+then she added smiling:
+
+“I don’t know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.”
+
+“You’re the person in the world who has most right,” he answered. “I’ve
+given you assurances that I’ve never given any one else.”
+
+The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill
+at the Hôtel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr.
+Goodwood had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow
+was; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt.
+Caspar remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not
+supposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the
+place of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the
+Hôtel de Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of
+Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular
+change had in fact occurred in this lady’s relations with Ralph
+Touchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and see him, but on
+hearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of her
+own motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always under
+the conviction that they were great enemies. “Oh yes, we’re intimate
+enemies,” Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as the
+humour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In reality
+they became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she should
+never have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had
+always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellent
+fellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about
+everything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to which Ralph always had
+a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Bantling on the other hand proved
+a great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling with
+Henrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their
+inevitable difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with taking
+the ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.
+Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but after
+he had been left alone with his host he found there were various other
+matters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had
+just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole’s
+merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither,
+after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--a
+theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very
+sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn’t bear to see a pleasant
+man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done.
+There was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he did it in
+this case by repeating several times his visit to the Hôtel de Paris.
+It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had artfully
+disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an occupation; she
+had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making
+him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather
+should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.
+Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,
+and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a
+constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the
+occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely
+entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in
+one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would
+cluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel
+in these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past
+was more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had
+spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I
+say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster;
+for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The
+Countess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, her
+dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the
+unholy legend of the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been
+away somewhere,--no one, not even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Rome
+and began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame
+Merle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: “What
+on earth did you do with Lord Warburton?” As if it were any business of
+hers!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to
+return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which
+he was not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he
+mentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She
+forbore to express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she
+sat by his sofa: “I suppose you know you can’t go alone?”
+
+“I’ve no idea of doing that,” Ralph answered. “I shall have people with
+me.”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘people’? Servants whom you pay?”
+
+“Ah,” said Ralph jocosely, “after all, they’re human beings.”
+
+“Are there any women among them?” Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+
+“You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven’t a _soubrette_ in
+my employment.”
+
+“Well,” said Henrietta calmly, “you can’t go to England that way. You
+must have a woman’s care.”
+
+“I’ve had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a
+good while.”
+
+“You’ve not had enough of it yet. I guess I’ll go with you,” said
+Henrietta.
+
+“Go with me?” Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+
+“Yes, I know you don’t like me, but I’ll go with you all the same. It
+would be better for your health to lie down again.”
+
+Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. “I like you very
+much,” he said in a moment.
+
+Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. “You needn’t think
+that by saying that you can buy me off. I’ll go with you, and what is
+more I’ll take care of you.”
+
+“You’re a very good woman,” said Ralph.
+
+“Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won’t be easy.
+But you had better go, all the same.”
+
+Before she left him, Ralph said to her: “Do you really mean to take care
+of me?”
+
+“Well, I mean to try.”
+
+“I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!” And it was perhaps a
+sign of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he
+burst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent,
+such a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and
+renounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe
+under the supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that
+the prospect pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He
+felt even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to
+see his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed
+to him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to
+die at home; it was the only wish he had left--to extend himself in the
+large quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his
+eyes upon the summer dawn.
+
+That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his
+visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back
+to England. “Ah then,” said Caspar, “I’m afraid I shall be a fifth wheel
+to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you.”
+
+“Good heavens--it’s the golden age! You’re all too kind.”
+
+“The kindness on my part is to her; it’s hardly to you.”
+
+“Granting that, _she’s_ kind,” smiled Ralph.
+
+“To get people to go with you? Yes, that’s a sort of kindness,” Goodwood
+answered without lending himself to the joke. “For myself, however,” he
+added, “I’ll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with
+you and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone.”
+
+“And you’d rather stay here than do either,” said Ralph. “There’s really
+no need of your coming. Henrietta’s extraordinarily efficient.”
+
+“I’m sure of that. But I’ve promised Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+“You can easily get her to let you off.”
+
+“She wouldn’t let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,
+but that isn’t the principal thing. The principal thing is that she
+wants me to leave Rome.”
+
+“Ah, you see too much in it,” Ralph suggested.
+
+“I bore her,” Goodwood went on; “she has nothing to say to me, so she
+invented that.”
+
+“Oh then, if it’s a convenience to her I certainly will take you with
+me. Though I don’t see why it should be a convenience,” Ralph added in a
+moment.
+
+“Well,” said Caspar Goodwood simply, “she thinks I’m watching her.”
+
+“Watching her?”
+
+“Trying to make out if she’s happy.”
+
+“That’s easy to make out,” said Ralph. “She’s the most visibly happy
+woman I know.”
+
+“Exactly so; I’m satisfied,” Goodwood answered dryly. For all his
+dryness, however, he had more to say. “I’ve been watching her; I was
+an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be
+happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to
+see for myself what it amounts to. I’ve seen,” he continued with a harsh
+ring in his voice, “and I don’t want to see any more. I’m now quite
+ready to go.”
+
+“Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?” Ralph rejoined.
+And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel
+Osmond.
+
+Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found
+it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at
+Miss Stackpole’s pension the visit which this lady had paid her in
+Florence.
+
+“You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,” she remarked to the
+Countess. “I think it right you should know that.”
+
+“About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house
+three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!” the Countess
+cried.
+
+“He wished to marry your niece; that’s why he came to the house.”
+
+The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: “Is that the
+story that Isabel tells? It isn’t bad, as such things go. If he wishes
+to marry my niece, pray why doesn’t he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy
+the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I’m gone.”
+
+“No, he’ll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn’t wish to marry him.”
+
+“She’s very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn’t
+know she carried it so far.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that
+the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. “I really must stick to my
+point--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton.”
+
+“My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
+brother’s capable of everything.”
+
+“I don’t know what your brother’s capable of,” said Henrietta with
+dignity.
+
+“It’s not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it’s her sending
+him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought
+I would make him faithless?” the Countess continued with audacious
+insistence. “However, she’s only keeping him, one can feel that. The
+house is full of him there; he’s quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left
+traces; I’m sure I shall see him yet.”
+
+“Well,” said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
+which had made the fortune of her letters to the _Interviewer_, “perhaps
+he’ll be more successful with you than with Isabel!”
+
+When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
+that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It
+had always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were
+made to understand each other. “I don’t care whether he understands me
+or not,” Henrietta declared. “The great thing is that he shouldn’t die
+in the cars.”
+
+“He won’t do that,” Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of
+faith.
+
+“He won’t if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don’t know
+what you want to do.”
+
+“I want to be alone,” said Isabel.
+
+“You won’t be that so long as you’ve so much company at home.”
+
+“Ah, they’re part of the comedy. You others are spectators.”
+
+“Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?” Henrietta rather grimly asked.
+
+“The tragedy then if you like. You’re all looking at me; it makes me
+uncomfortable.”
+
+Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. “You’re like the stricken
+deer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of
+helplessness!” she broke out.
+
+“I’m not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.”
+
+“It’s not you I’m speaking of; it’s myself. It’s too much, having come
+on purpose, to leave you just as I find you.”
+
+“You don’t do that; you leave me much refreshed,” Isabel said.
+
+“Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+something.”
+
+“I can’t do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a
+solemn one four years ago, and I’ve succeeded so ill in keeping it.”
+
+“You’ve had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the
+greatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that’s what I want
+you to promise.”
+
+“The worst? What do you call the worst?”
+
+“Before your character gets spoiled.”
+
+“Do you mean my disposition? It won’t get spoiled,” Isabel answered,
+smiling. “I’m taking very good care of it. I’m extremely struck,” she
+added, turning away, “with the off-hand way in which you speak of a
+woman’s leaving her husband. It’s easy to see you’ve never had one!”
+
+“Well,” said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, “nothing is
+more common in our Western cities, and it’s to them, after all, that we
+must look in the future.” Her argument, however, does not concern this
+history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to
+Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might
+designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.
+Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that
+Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+rid of them all.
+
+For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a
+low tone, with a quick smile: “My dear Ralph--!”
+
+It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the
+same way, jocosely, ingenuously: “I’ve seen less of you than I might,
+but it’s better than nothing. And then I’ve heard a great deal about
+you.”
+
+“I don’t know from whom, leading the life you’ve done.”
+
+“From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other
+people speak of you. They always say you’re ‘charming,’ and that’s so
+flat.”
+
+“I might have seen more of you certainly,” Isabel said. “But when one’s
+married one has so much occupation.”
+
+“Fortunately I’m not married. When you come to see me in England I
+shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.” He
+continued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded
+in making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to
+his term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the
+summer. If he preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality
+was sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in
+conversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though
+about this, as about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic.
+Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should
+divide it, of the precautions he should take. “Henrietta’s my greatest
+precaution,” he went on. “The conscience of that woman’s sublime.”
+
+“Certainly she’ll be very conscientious.”
+
+“Will be? She has been! It’s only because she thinks it’s her duty that
+she goes with me. There’s a conception of duty for you.”
+
+“Yes, it’s a generous one,” said Isabel, “and it makes me deeply
+ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know.”
+
+“Your husband wouldn’t like that.”
+
+“No, he wouldn’t like it. But I might go, all the same.”
+
+“I’m startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a
+cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!”
+
+“That’s why I don’t go,” said Isabel simply--yet not very lucidly.
+
+Ralph understood well enough, however. “I should think so, with all
+those occupations you speak of.”
+
+“It isn’t that. I’m afraid,” said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as
+if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: “I’m afraid.”
+
+Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+deliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public
+penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her
+words simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this
+might be, Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. “Afraid of your
+husband?”
+
+“Afraid of myself!” she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and
+then added: “If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my
+duty. That’s what women are expected to be.”
+
+“Ah yes,” laughed Ralph; “but to make up for it there’s always some man
+awfully afraid of some woman!”
+
+She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different
+turn. “With Henrietta at the head of your little band,” she exclaimed
+abruptly, “there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!”
+
+“Ah, my dear Isabel,” Ralph answered, “he’s used to that. There is
+nothing left for Mr. Goodwood.”
+
+She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They
+stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. “You’ve
+been my best friend,” she said.
+
+“It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I’m of no use
+to you.”
+
+Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.
+She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. “If you
+should send for me I’d come,” she said at last.
+
+“Your husband won’t consent to that.”
+
+“Oh yes, I can arrange it.”
+
+“I shall keep that for my last pleasure!” said Ralph.
+
+In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that
+evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the
+first to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert
+Osmond, who almost always was present when his wife received. They sat
+down together, and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed
+possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his
+legs crossed, lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but
+not at all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the
+little sofa creak beneath him. Osmond’s face wore a sharp, aggressive
+smile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good
+news. He remarked to Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him;
+he himself should particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent
+men--they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come
+back; there was something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like
+himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.
+
+“I’m very fond of Rome, you know,” Osmond said; “but there’s nothing
+I like better than to meet people who haven’t that superstition. The
+modern world’s after all very fine. Now you’re thoroughly modern and yet
+are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor
+stuff. If they’re the children of the future we’re willing to die young.
+Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like
+everything that’s really new--not the mere pretence of it. There’s
+nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty
+of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of
+light. A revelation of vulgarity! There’s a certain kind of vulgarity
+which I believe is really new; I don’t think there ever was anything
+like it before. Indeed I don’t find vulgarity, at all, before the
+present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the
+last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things
+are literally not recognised. Now, we’ve liked you--!” With which
+he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood’s knee and
+smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. “I’m going to say
+something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me
+have the satisfaction of it. We’ve liked you because--because you’ve
+reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
+number of people like you--_à la bonne heure_! I’m talking for my wife as
+well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn’t
+I speak for her? We’re as united, you know, as the candlestick and the
+snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I’ve understood
+from you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There’s a
+danger in that, you know; but it’s the way you have escaped that
+strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
+fortunately my wife doesn’t hear me. What I mean is that you might have
+been--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was
+in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you’ve something about
+you that saved you. And yet you’re so modern, so modern; the most modern
+man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again.”
+
+I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
+ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
+usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
+closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
+odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what
+he was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a
+grossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade.
+Goodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he
+scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew
+what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and
+that idea spoke louder to him than her husband’s perfectly-pitched
+voice. He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she
+would be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the
+other rooms. His humour was not, like Osmond’s, of the best; there was
+an element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this time
+he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very
+well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person
+whom Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open
+field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense
+of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account. He
+had not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of
+sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came
+nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was
+quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the
+amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused
+him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half
+trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish
+refinements of any sort upon _him_. It made him suspect that he found some
+private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression
+that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity.
+He knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him evil; he
+had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and
+could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true
+that Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have
+liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for practice
+had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible
+to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order to
+deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated
+it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no
+better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his
+soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife’s feelings as if he were
+commissioned to answer for them.
+
+That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this
+evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even
+than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo
+Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his
+wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each
+of them to say “we” as to say “I”. In all this there was an air of
+intention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could
+only reflect for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond’s relations with her
+husband were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her
+husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of
+things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had never given
+him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that
+she had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss
+Stackpole sensational. She was too fond of early news. Moreover, since
+her arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well
+ceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, it may be said for
+her, would have been quite against her conscience. She had now seen
+the reality of Isabel’s situation, and it had inspired her with a just
+reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of
+assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her
+wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the state
+of Mr. Goodwood’s feelings, but she showed it at present only by sending
+him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American journals, of
+which she received several by every post and which she always perused
+with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed
+in an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own
+hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn’t
+he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the
+least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of
+authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness
+with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now
+recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing
+more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth;
+apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she _were_
+unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character
+she had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him
+leave Rome. He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for
+her cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to think that of all the
+services she might have asked of him this was the one she had been eager
+to select. There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have
+kept him in Rome.
+
+To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her
+to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge
+that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no
+knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the
+old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his
+throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
+Osmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching
+again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible
+that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what
+did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether
+she loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without
+one’s gaining a straw one’s self. “You travel, by the by, with Ralph
+Touchett,” Osmond said. “I suppose that means you’ll move slowly?”
+
+“I don’t know. I shall do just as he likes.”
+
+“You’re very accommodating. We’re immensely obliged to you; you must
+really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we
+feel. Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than
+once as if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it’s
+worse than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it’s a kind
+of indelicacy. I wouldn’t for the world be under such an obligation to
+Touchett as he has been to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably
+have to look after him, and every one isn’t so generous as you.”
+
+“I’ve nothing else to do,” Caspar said dryly.
+
+Osmond looked at him a moment askance. “You ought to marry, and then
+you’d have plenty to do! It’s true that in that case you wouldn’t be
+quite so available for deeds of mercy.”
+
+“Do you find that as a married man you’re so much occupied?” the young
+man mechanically asked.
+
+“Ah, you see, being married’s in itself an occupation. It isn’t always
+active; it’s often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my
+wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,
+we walk, we drive--we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I
+delight, to this hour, in my wife’s conversation. If you’re ever bored
+take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that
+case; but you’ll never bore yourself. You’ll always have something to
+say to yourself--always have a subject of reflection.”
+
+“I’m not bored,” said Goodwood. “I’ve plenty to think about and to say
+to myself.”
+
+“More than to say to others!” Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh.
+“Where shall you go next? I mean after you’ve consigned Touchett to his
+natural caretakers--I believe his mother’s at last coming back to look
+after him. That little lady’s superb; she neglects her duties with a
+finish--! Perhaps you’ll spend the summer in England?”
+
+“I don’t know. I’ve no plans.”
+
+“Happy man! That’s a little bleak, but it’s very free.”
+
+“Oh yes, I’m very free.”
+
+“Free to come back to Rome I hope,” said Osmond as he saw a group of
+new visitors enter the room. “Remember that when you do come we count on
+you!”
+
+Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without
+his having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several
+associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy
+with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
+intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was
+absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear
+hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help
+her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he
+opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked
+to the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather
+self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he
+often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera,
+and it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to
+contain himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to
+go, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might
+not speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured
+himself was empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found
+her self absolutely prevented. “I’m afraid it’s impossible. People are
+saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me.”
+
+“I shall wait till they are all gone then.”
+
+She hesitated a moment. “Ah, that will be delightful!” she exclaimed.
+
+And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several
+people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess
+Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no
+consciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little
+circle of gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke
+into a united laugh. Osmond had disappeared--he never bade good-bye to
+people; and as the Countess was extending her range, according to her
+custom at this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed.
+Isabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law
+would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+
+“May I not say a word to you now?” Goodwood presently asked her. She
+got up immediately, smiling. “Certainly, we’ll go somewhere else if you
+like.” They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle,
+and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them
+spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room
+slowly fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She
+seemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the
+passion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his
+eyes and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and
+blurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with
+gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would
+have perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was
+frightened at what she saw in his own face. “I suppose you wish to bid
+me goodbye?” she said.
+
+“Yes--but I don’t like it. I don’t want to leave Rome,” he answered with
+almost plaintive honesty.
+
+“I can well imagine. It’s wonderfully good of you. I can’t tell you how
+kind I think you.”
+
+For a moment more he said nothing. “With a few words like that you make
+me go.”
+
+“You must come back some day,” she brightly returned.
+
+“Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible.”
+
+“Oh no; I don’t mean all that.”
+
+“What do you mean? I don’t understand! But I said I’d go, and I’ll go,”
+ Goodwood added.
+
+“Come back whenever you like,” said Isabel with attempted lightness.
+
+“I don’t care a straw for your cousin!” Caspar broke out.
+
+“Is that what you wished to tell me?”
+
+“No, no; I didn’t want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--” he
+paused a moment, and then--“what have you really made of your life?” he
+said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but
+she said nothing, and he went on: “I can’t understand, I can’t penetrate
+you! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?” Still she said
+nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to
+ease. “I’m told you’re unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
+That would be something for me. But you yourself say you’re happy, and
+you’re somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You’re completely changed.
+You conceal everything; I haven’t really come near you.”
+
+“You come very near,” Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
+
+“And yet I don’t touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done
+well?”
+
+“You ask a great deal.”
+
+“Yes--I’ve always asked a great deal. Of course you won’t tell me. I
+shall never know if you can help it. And then it’s none of my business.”
+ He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
+considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that
+it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she
+would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a
+lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. “You’re perfectly
+inscrutable, and that’s what makes me think you’ve something to hide. I
+tell you I don’t care a straw for your cousin, but I don’t mean that I
+don’t like him. I mean that it isn’t because I like him that I go away
+with him. I’d go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If
+you should ask me I’d go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to
+leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as
+contented as you pretend you are you wouldn’t care. I’d rather know the
+truth about you, even if it’s damnable, than have come here for nothing.
+That isn’t what I came for. I thought I shouldn’t care. I came because I
+wanted to assure myself that I needn’t think of you any more. I haven’t
+thought of anything else, and you’re quite right to wish me to go away.
+But if I must go, there’s no harm in my letting myself out for a single
+moment, is there? If you’re really hurt--if _he_ hurts you--nothing I say
+will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it’s simply what I came for. I
+thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn’t
+say it if I didn’t believe I should never see you again. It’s the last
+time--let me pluck a single flower! I’ve no right to say that, I know;
+and you’ve no right to listen. But you don’t listen; you never listen,
+you’re always thinking of something else. After this I must go, of
+course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason,
+not a real one. I can’t judge by your husband,” he went on irrelevantly,
+almost incoherently; “I don’t understand him; he tells me you adore each
+other. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine? When I say
+that to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you’ve
+something to hide. It’s none of my business--very true. But I love you,”
+ said Caspar Goodwood.
+
+As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which
+they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+
+“You’ve behaved so well; don’t spoil it,” she uttered softly.
+
+“No one hears me. It’s wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I
+love you as I’ve never loved you.”
+
+“I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.”
+
+“You can’t help it--of course not. You would if you could, but
+you can’t, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask
+nothing--nothing, that is, I shouldn’t. But I do ask one sole
+satisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!”
+
+“That I tell you what?”
+
+“Whether I may pity you.”
+
+“Should you like that?” Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+
+“To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something.
+I’d give my life to it.”
+
+She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes.
+They rested a moment on his. “Don’t give your life to it; but give a
+thought to it every now and then.” And with that she went back to the
+Countess Gemini.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the
+evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,
+and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.
+Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability,
+and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been
+mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord
+Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel
+(whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first
+utterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman,
+for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.
+
+“Please don’t talk of him,” said Isabel for answer; “we’ve heard so much
+of him of late.”
+
+Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and
+smiled at the left corner of her mouth. “You’ve heard, yes. But you must
+remember that I’ve not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be
+able to congratulate Pansy.”
+
+“You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.”
+
+“How you say that! Don’t you know I had set my heart on it?” Madame
+Merle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation
+of good-humour.
+
+Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.
+“You shouldn’t have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to
+watch the affair.”
+
+“I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it’s too late?”
+
+“You had better ask Pansy,” said Isabel.
+
+“I shall ask her what you’ve said to her.”
+
+These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused
+on Isabel’s part by her perceiving that her visitor’s attitude was a
+critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto;
+she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling.
+But apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since
+she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation
+which even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had
+suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel’s surprise--our heroine
+having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy’s marriage; and
+she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond’s alarm. More
+clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from
+she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare
+that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of
+the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her
+destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her
+nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The
+sense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened
+to be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own
+husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet
+taken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a
+different eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention
+in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes,
+there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to
+herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was
+it that brought home to her that Madame Merle’s intention had not been
+good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which
+married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor’s
+challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge
+which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless
+vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend’s
+professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to
+interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere
+with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in
+casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several
+years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle’s interest was
+identical with Osmond’s: that was enough. “I think Pansy will tell
+you nothing that will make you more angry,” she said in answer to her
+companion’s last remark.
+
+“I’m not in the least angry. I’ve only a great desire to retrieve the
+situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?”
+
+“I can’t tell you; I don’t understand you. It’s all over; please let it
+rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I’ve nothing
+more to say or to hear. I’ve no doubt,” Isabel added, “that he’ll be
+very happy to discuss the subject with you.”
+
+“I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.”
+
+“As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn’t
+apply to me for information.”
+
+“It isn’t information I want. At bottom it’s sympathy. I had set my
+heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied
+the imagination.”
+
+“Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.”
+
+“You mean by that of course that I’m not concerned. Of course not
+directly. But when one’s such an old friend one can’t help having
+something at stake. You forget how long I’ve known Pansy. You mean,
+of course,” Madame Merle added, “that _you_ are one of the persons
+concerned.”
+
+“No; that’s the last thing I mean. I’m very weary of it all.”
+
+Madame Merle hesitated a little. “Ah yes, your work’s done.”
+
+“Take care what you say,” said Isabel very gravely.
+
+“Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your
+husband judges you severely.”
+
+Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle’s informing her
+that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife
+that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was
+meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only
+when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not
+right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an
+open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as
+well as in his thoughts. “Should you like to know how I judge _him_?” she
+asked at last.
+
+“No, because you’d never tell me. And it would be painful for me to
+know.”
+
+There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel
+thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.
+“Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don’t despair,” she said
+abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.
+
+But Madame Merle’s expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only
+gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the
+air a faint, agreeable fragrance. “I don’t despair; I feel encouraged.
+And I didn’t come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I
+know you’ll tell it if I ask you. It’s an immense blessing with you that
+one can count upon that. No, you won’t believe what a comfort I take in
+it.”
+
+“What truth do you speak of?” Isabel asked, wondering.
+
+“Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own
+movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to
+please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite
+of having lost a little of it,” Madame Merle continued with a smile, “to
+ask such a question as that!” She sat looking at her friend, to judge
+the effect of her words, and then went on: “Now don’t be heroic, don’t
+be unreasonable, don’t take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour
+in speaking so. I don’t know another woman to whom I would do it. I
+haven’t the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And
+don’t you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It’s
+true that he doesn’t appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to
+extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn’t
+alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his
+daughter’s prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord
+Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that’s one thing, and it’s
+a pity. If he gave her up to please you it’s another. That’s a pity too,
+but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you’d perhaps resign
+yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter
+married. Let him off--let us have him!”
+
+Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and
+apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew
+pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her
+visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this
+was not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. “Who
+are you--what are you?” Isabel murmured. “What have you to do with my
+husband?” It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as
+if she had loved him.
+
+“Ah then, you take it heroically! I’m very sorry. Don’t think, however,
+that I shall do so.”
+
+“What have you to do with me?” Isabel went on.
+
+Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes
+from Isabel’s face. “Everything!” she answered.
+
+Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost
+a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman’s eyes seemed
+only a darkness. “Oh misery!” she murmured at last; and she fell
+back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a
+high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married
+her. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.
+
+Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away,
+under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread
+upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her
+confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a
+less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that
+had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her
+secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern
+quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a
+sun-warmed angle on a winter’s day, or stood in a mouldy church to which
+no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.
+Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the
+continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the
+greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it
+interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it
+chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to
+her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from
+pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the
+musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was
+no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of
+worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could
+not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor
+have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy,
+as we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess
+Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage;
+but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her
+mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several
+resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low
+parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front
+of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,
+between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After
+the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than
+usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the
+other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she felt the touch
+of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind,
+rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to
+tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where
+the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the
+flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and
+gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness
+of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft
+confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the
+hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.
+
+On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution
+not to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this
+lady’s image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an
+almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate
+friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were
+to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary
+works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance
+with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,
+and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with
+some success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it
+was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that
+was what Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel’s Aunt
+Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her
+niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she had a much
+richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own
+career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor
+stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted;
+she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which
+could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much
+have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making
+passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great
+artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of
+marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage
+but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain,
+and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her
+naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was
+imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed
+to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly
+affectionate after Mr. Touchett’s death and after learning that her
+young friend had been subject to the good old man’s charity. She had
+found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in
+the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young
+woman’s fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her
+closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert
+occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with
+the conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the
+least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money.
+Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought
+a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular
+injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying
+to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman
+for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least
+he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her
+money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let
+her go. Ah, if Mr. Touchett’s great charity would but help her to-day it
+would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame
+Merle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the
+boon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in
+regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they
+have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but
+a characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive
+she had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: “Poor, poor Madame
+Merle!”
+
+Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same
+afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of
+time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the
+lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which
+we once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that
+apartment, towards six o’clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his
+hostess stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion
+commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to
+its apparent as to its real importance.
+
+“I don’t believe you’re unhappy; I believe you like it,” said Madame
+Merle.
+
+“Did I say I was unhappy?” Osmond asked with a face grave enough to
+suggest that he might have been.
+
+“No, but you don’t say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.”
+
+“Don’t talk about gratitude,” he returned dryly. “And don’t aggravate
+me,” he added in a moment.
+
+Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white
+hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were,
+to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. “On
+your side, don’t try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my
+thoughts.”
+
+“I trouble about them no more than I can help. I’ve quite enough of my
+own.”
+
+“That’s because they’re so delightful.”
+
+Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at
+his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an
+expression of fatigue. “You do aggravate me,” he remarked in a moment.
+“I’m very tired.”
+
+“_Eh moi donc!_” cried Madame Merle.
+
+“With you it’s because you fatigue yourself. With me it’s not my own
+fault.”
+
+“When I fatigue myself it’s for you. I’ve given you an interest. That’s
+a great gift.”
+
+“Do you call it an interest?” Osmond enquired with detachment.
+
+“Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.”
+
+“The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.”
+
+“You’ve never looked better; you’ve never been so agreeable, so
+brilliant.”
+
+“Damn my brilliancy!” he thoughtfully murmured. “How little, after all,
+you know me!”
+
+“If I don’t know you I know nothing,” smiled Madame Merle. “You’ve the
+feeling of complete success.”
+
+“No, I shall not have that till I’ve made you stop judging me.”
+
+“I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express
+yourself more too.”
+
+Osmond just hung fire. “I wish you’d express yourself less!”
+
+“You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I’ve never been a
+chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to
+say to you first. Your wife doesn’t know what to do with herself,” she
+went on with a change of tone.
+
+“Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means
+to carry out her ideas.”
+
+“Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.”
+
+“Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.”
+
+“She was unable to show me any this morning,” said Madame Merle. “She
+seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was
+completely bewildered.”
+
+“You had better say at once that she was pathetic.”
+
+“Ah no, I don’t want to encourage you too much.”
+
+He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one
+foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. “I should like to
+know what’s the matter with you,” he said at last.
+
+“The matter--the matter--!” And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went
+on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a
+clear sky: “The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to
+weep, and that I can’t!”
+
+“What good would it do you to weep?”
+
+“It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.”
+
+“If I’ve dried your tears, that’s something. But I’ve seen you shed
+them.”
+
+“Oh, I believe you’ll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a
+wolf. I’ve a great hope, I’ve a great need, of that. I was vile this
+morning; I was horrid,” she said.
+
+“If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably
+didn’t perceive it,” Osmond answered.
+
+“It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn’t help it; I
+was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don’t know.
+You’ve not only dried up my tears; you’ve dried up my soul.”
+
+“It’s not I then that am responsible for my wife’s condition,” Osmond
+said. “It’s pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your
+influence upon her. Don’t you know the soul is an immortal principle?
+How can it suffer alteration?”
+
+“I don’t believe at all that it’s an immortal principle. I believe it
+can perfectly be destroyed. That’s what has happened to mine, which
+was a very good one to start with; and it’s you I have to thank for it.
+You’re _very_ bad,” she added with gravity in her emphasis.
+
+“Is this the way we’re to end?” Osmond asked with the same studied
+coldness.
+
+“I don’t know how we’re to end. I wish I did--How do bad people
+end?--especially as to their _common_ crimes. You have made me as bad as
+yourself.”
+
+“I don’t understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,” said Osmond,
+his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
+
+Madame Merle’s self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and
+she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the
+pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile
+betrayed a painful effort. “Good enough for anything that I’ve done with
+myself? I suppose that’s what you mean.”
+
+“Good enough to be always charming!” Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
+
+“Oh God!” his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on
+Isabel’s part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her
+hands.
+
+“Are you going to weep after all?” Osmond asked; and on her remaining
+motionless he went on: “Have I ever complained to you?”
+
+She dropped her hands quickly. “No, you’ve taken your revenge
+otherwise--you have taken it on _her_.”
+
+Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling
+and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the
+heavenly powers. “Oh, the imagination of women! It’s always vulgar, at
+bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.”
+
+“Of course you haven’t complained. You’ve enjoyed your triumph too
+much.”
+
+“I’m rather curious to know what you call my triumph.”
+
+“You’ve made your wife afraid of you.”
+
+Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on
+his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at
+his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one’s valuation
+of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a
+peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse
+with. “Isabel’s not afraid of me, and it’s not what I wish,” he said
+at last. “To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as
+that?”
+
+“I’ve thought over all the harm you can do me,” Madame Merle answered.
+“Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you
+she feared.”
+
+“You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I’m not
+responsible for that. I didn’t see the use of your going to see her at
+all: you’re capable of acting without her. I’ve not made you afraid of
+me that I can see,” he went on; “how then should I have made her? You’re
+at least as brave. I can’t think where you’ve picked up such rubbish;
+one might suppose you knew me by this time.” He got up as he spoke and
+walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if
+he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare
+porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it
+in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,
+he pursued: “You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you
+lose sight of the real. I’m much simpler than you think.”
+
+“I think you’re very simple.” And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
+“I’ve come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it’s
+only since your marriage that I’ve understood you. I’ve seen better what
+you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please
+be very careful of that precious object.”
+
+“It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,” said Osmond dryly as he put
+it down. “If you didn’t understand me before I married it was cruelly
+rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box
+myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I
+only asked that she should like me.”
+
+“That she should like you so much!”
+
+“So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she
+should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.”
+
+“I never adored you,” said Madame Merle.
+
+“Ah, but you pretended to!”
+
+“It’s true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,” Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+“My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort,” said
+Osmond. “If you’re determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy’s
+hardly for her.”
+
+“The tragedy’s for me!” Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long
+low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her
+mantel-shelf.
+
+“It appears that I’m to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false
+position.”
+
+“You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for
+our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn’t like me, at least
+my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I
+haven’t a fault to find with her.”
+
+“Ah,” she said softly, “if I had a child--!”
+
+Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, “The children of
+others may be a great interest!” he announced.
+
+“You’re more like a copy-book than I. There’s something after all that
+holds us together.”
+
+“Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?” Osmond asked.
+
+“No; it’s the idea of the good I may do for you. It’s that,” Madame
+Merle pursued, “that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be
+_my_ work,” she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter,
+relaxing to its habit of smoothness.
+
+Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the
+former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, “On the whole, I
+think,” he said, “you had better leave it to me.”
+
+After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the
+mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the
+existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. “Have I
+been so vile all for nothing?” she vaguely wailed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments
+Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics
+and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who
+professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made
+an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if
+they had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense,
+though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself
+the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only
+desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour
+every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a
+condition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was
+not a severe cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they
+offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs
+of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary
+of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the
+Countess forbade herself every form of active research; her preference
+was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most
+interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the
+Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--with all the respect
+that she owed her--could not see why she should not descend from the
+vehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble
+that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be
+divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents’ guest
+might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when
+the Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild
+afternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional
+puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together,
+but Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often
+ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to
+bellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed)
+bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed
+to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the
+Countess often asked more from one’s attention than she gave in return;
+and Isabel believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the
+dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so
+remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt
+to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks
+the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the
+western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of
+travertine--the latent colour that is the only living element in the
+immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking
+up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a multitude of
+swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became aware
+that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had
+turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with
+a certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before
+perceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose.
+Such an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and
+this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of
+speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied
+he drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters
+she would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She
+replied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only
+give him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon
+a broken block.
+
+“It’s very soon told,” said Edward Rosier. “I’ve sold all my bibelots!”
+ Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had
+told her he had had all his teeth drawn. “I’ve sold them by auction at
+the Hôtel Drouot,” he went on. “The sale took place three days ago, and
+they’ve telegraphed me the result. It’s magnificent.”
+
+“I’m glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.”
+
+“I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think
+me rich enough now?”
+
+“Is it for that you did it?” Isabel asked gently.
+
+“For what else in the world could it be? That’s the only thing I think
+of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn’t stop for the
+sale; I couldn’t have seen them going off; I think it would have killed
+me. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I
+should tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my
+pocket, and he can’t say I’m poor!” the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+
+“He’ll say now that you’re not wise,” said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond
+had never said this before.
+
+Rosier gave her a sharp look. “Do you mean that without my bibelots I’m
+nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That’s what they
+told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn’t seen
+<i>her</i>!”
+
+“My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,” said Isabel very kindly.
+
+“You say that so sadly that it’s the same as if you said I shouldn’t.”
+ And he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had
+the air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and
+is full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful
+suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons
+still have the perversity to think him diminutive. “I know what happened
+here while I was away,” he went on; “What does Mr. Osmond expect after
+she has refused Lord Warburton?”
+
+Isabel debated. “That she’ll marry another nobleman.”
+
+“What other nobleman?”
+
+“One that he’ll pick out.”
+
+Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.
+“You’re laughing at some one, but this time I don’t think it’s at me.”
+
+“I didn’t mean to laugh,” said Isabel. “I laugh very seldom. Now you had
+better go away.”
+
+“I feel very safe!” Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but
+it evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather
+a loud voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and
+looking all round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience.
+Suddenly Isabel saw him change colour; there was more of an audience
+than he had suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions
+had returned from their excursion. “You must really go away,” she said
+quickly. “Ah, my dear lady, pity me!” Edward Rosier murmured in a voice
+strangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then
+he added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by
+a happy thought: “Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I’ve a great desire
+to be presented to her.”
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. “She has no influence with her brother.”
+
+“Ah, what a monster you make him out!” And Rosier faced the Countess,
+who advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps
+to the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in
+conversation with a very pretty young man.
+
+“I’m glad you’ve kept your enamels!” Isabel called as she left him. She
+went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,
+with lowered eyes. “We’ll go back to the carriage,” she said gently.
+
+“Yes, it’s getting late,” Pansy returned more gently still. And she
+went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel,
+however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had
+immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had
+removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced
+himself, while the Countess’s expressive back displayed to Isabel’s eye
+a gracious inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost
+to sight, for Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage.
+Pansy, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her
+lap; then she raised them and rested them on Isabel’s. There shone out
+of each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion which
+touched Isabel to the heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over
+her soul, as she compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal
+of the child with her own dry despair. “Poor little Pansy!” she
+affectionately said.
+
+“Oh never mind!” Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then
+there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. “Did you show
+your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?” Isabel asked at last.
+
+“Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.”
+
+“And you’re not tired, I hope.”
+
+“Oh no, thank you, I’m not tired.”
+
+The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman
+to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently
+returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not
+to wait--she would come home in a cab!
+
+About a week after this lady’s quick sympathies had enlisted themselves
+with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found
+Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her;
+she got up from her low chair. “Pardon my taking the liberty,” she said
+in a small voice. “It will be the last--for some time.”
+
+Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,
+frightened look. “You’re not going away!” Isabel exclaimed.
+
+“I’m going to the convent.”
+
+“To the convent?”
+
+Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round
+Isabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment,
+perfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver
+of her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel
+nevertheless pressed her. “Why are you going to the convent?”
+
+“Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl’s better, every now
+and then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the
+world, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little
+seclusion--a little reflexion.” Pansy spoke in short detached sentences,
+as if she could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph
+of self-control: “I think papa’s right; I’ve been so much in the world
+this winter.”
+
+Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a
+larger meaning than the girl herself knew. “When was this decided?” she
+asked. “I’ve heard nothing of it.”
+
+“Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn’t be
+too much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine’s to come for me at a
+quarter past seven, and I’m only to take two frocks. It’s only for a few
+weeks; I’m sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who
+used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being
+educated. I’m very fond of little girls,” said Pansy with an effect
+of diminutive grandeur. “And I’m also very fond of Mother Catherine. I
+shall be very quiet and think a great deal.”
+
+Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
+“Think of _me_ sometimes.”
+
+“Ah, come and see me soon!” cried Pansy; and the cry was very different
+from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
+
+Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how
+little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,
+tender kiss.
+
+Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had
+arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to
+the drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and
+this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful
+toss of the head, “_En voilà, ma chère, une pose!_” But if it was an
+affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She
+could only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed.
+It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him
+that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after
+he had come in, to allude to his daughter’s sudden departure: she
+spoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden
+herself ever to ask Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a
+declaration, and there was one that came very naturally. “I shall miss
+Pansy very much.”
+
+He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of
+flowers in the middle of the table. “Ah yes,” he said at last, “I had
+thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I
+dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I
+can make you understand. It doesn’t matter; don’t trouble yourself about
+it. That’s why I had not spoken of it. I didn’t believe you would enter
+into it. But I’ve always had the idea; I’ve always thought it a part
+of the education of one’s daughter. One’s daughter should be fresh and
+fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present
+time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy’s a little
+dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This
+bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society--one should take her
+out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very
+salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under
+the arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are
+gentlewomen born; several of them are noble. She will have her books
+and her drawing, she will have her piano. I’ve made the most liberal
+arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there’s just to be a
+certain little sense of sequestration. She’ll have time to think, and
+there’s something I want her to think about.” Osmond spoke deliberately,
+reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at
+the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so
+much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words--almost into
+pictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the
+picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he
+went on: “The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great
+institution; we can’t do without it; it corresponds to an essential need
+in families, in society. It’s a school of good manners; it’s a school
+of repose. Oh, I don’t want to detach my daughter from the world,” he
+added; “I don’t want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This
+one’s very well, as _she_ should take it, and she may think of it as much
+as she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way.”
+
+Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found
+it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her
+husband’s desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point of
+playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She
+could not understand his purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it
+better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced
+that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to
+herself and destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do
+something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to
+mark the difference between his sympathies and her own, and show that
+if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural
+he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he
+wished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill
+into Isabel’s heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood and
+had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were
+very fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite
+hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the
+impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough.
+The old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel’s imagination,
+and as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of
+her husband’s genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of
+flowers--poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond
+wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it
+hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief presently,
+in hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess
+too, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a
+different conclusion from Isabel.
+
+“It’s very absurd, my dear Osmond,” she said, “to invent so many pretty
+reasons for poor Pansy’s banishment. Why don’t you say at once that you
+want to get her out of my way? Haven’t you discovered that I think very
+well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me _simpaticissimo_. He has
+made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you’ve
+made up your mind that with those convictions I’m dreadful company for
+Pansy.”
+
+Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.
+“My dear Amy,” he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece
+of gallantry, “I don’t know anything about your convictions, but if
+I suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to
+banish _you_.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure
+of her brother’s hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received
+a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of
+Mrs. Touchett’s authorship. “Ralph cannot last many days,” it ran, “and
+if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come
+only if you’ve not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk
+a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious
+to see whether you’ve found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there’s
+no other company.” Isabel was prepared for this news, having received
+from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England
+with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,
+but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to
+his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave
+again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands
+instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly
+use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.
+Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to
+Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given
+her to understand that she didn’t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.
+Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting
+her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should
+lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an
+acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel
+received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.
+
+Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it
+into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband’s study.
+Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and
+went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio
+volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open
+at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he
+had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of
+water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already
+transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted
+disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife
+without looking round.
+
+“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said.
+
+“When I come to your room I always knock,” he answered, going on with
+his work.
+
+“I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin’s dying.”
+
+“Ah, I don’t believe that,” said Osmond, looking at his drawing through
+a magnifying glass. “He was dying when we married; he’ll outlive us
+all.”
+
+Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful
+cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of
+her own intention “My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to
+Gardencourt.”
+
+“Why must you go to Gardencourt?” Osmond asked in the tone of impartial
+curiosity.
+
+“To see Ralph before he dies.”
+
+To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his
+chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no
+negligence. “I don’t see the need of it,” he said at last. “He came to
+see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great
+mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you
+should see him. Now you tell me it’s not to have been the last. Ah,
+you’re not grateful!”
+
+“What am I to be grateful for?”
+
+Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust
+from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his
+wife. “For my not having interfered while he was here.”
+
+“Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you
+didn’t like it. I was very glad when he went away.”
+
+“Leave him alone then. Don’t run after him.”
+
+Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little
+drawing. “I must go to England,” she said, with a full consciousness
+that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly
+obstinate.
+
+“I shall not like it if you do,” Osmond remarked.
+
+“Why should I mind that? You won’t like it if I don’t. You like nothing
+I do or don’t do. You pretend to think I lie.”
+
+Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. “That’s why you must
+go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.”
+
+“I know nothing about revenge.”
+
+“I do,” said Osmond. “Don’t give me an occasion.”
+
+“You’re only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would
+commit some folly.”
+
+“I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.”
+
+“If I disobeyed you?” said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of
+mildness.
+
+“Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the
+most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.”
+
+“How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt’s telegram but three
+minutes ago.”
+
+“You calculate rapidly; it’s a great accomplishment. I don’t see why we
+should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.” And he stood there as
+if he expected to see her withdraw.
+
+But she never moved; she couldn’t move, strange as it may seem; she
+still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary
+degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her
+imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. “You’ve no
+reason for such a wish,” said Isabel, “and I’ve every reason for going.
+I can’t tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It’s
+your own opposition that’s calculated. It’s malignant.”
+
+She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the
+sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no
+surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed
+his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious
+endeavour to draw her out. “It’s all the more intense then,” he
+answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly
+counsel: “This is a very important matter.” She recognised that; she
+was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between
+them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she
+said nothing, and he went on. “You say I’ve no reason? I have the very
+best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It’s
+dishonourable; it’s indelicate; it’s indecent. Your cousin is nothing
+whatever to me, and I’m under no obligation to make concessions to him.
+I’ve already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he
+was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from
+week to week I expected him to go. I’ve never liked him and he has never
+liked me. That’s why you like him--because he hates me,” said Osmond
+with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. “I’ve an ideal of what
+my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe
+alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other
+men. Your cousin’s nothing to you; he’s nothing to us. You smile most
+expressively when I talk about _us_, but I assure you that _we_, _we_, Mrs.
+Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to
+have found a way of not doing so. I’m not aware that we’re divorced or
+separated; for me we’re indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than
+any human creature, and I’m nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable
+proximity; it’s one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You
+don’t like to be reminded of that, I know; but I’m perfectly willing,
+because--because--” And he paused a moment, looking as if he had
+something to say which would be very much to the point. “Because I think
+we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most
+in life is the honour of a thing!”
+
+He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped
+out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife’s quick
+emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself
+caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,
+they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any
+expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,
+they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign
+of the cross or the flag of one’s country. He spoke in the name of
+something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.
+They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers
+had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not
+changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in
+the very thick of her sense of her husband’s blasphemous sophistry, it
+began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It
+came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after
+all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes
+before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which
+she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
+slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond’s touch. If she
+must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather
+than a dupe. “I know you’re a master of the art of mockery,” she said.
+“How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of
+your being contented? Where’s our union when you accuse me of falsity?
+Where’s your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in
+your heart?”
+
+“It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.”
+
+“We don’t live decently together!” cried Isabel.
+
+“Indeed we don’t if you go to England.”
+
+“That’s very little; that’s nothing. I might do much more.”
+
+He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived
+long enough in Italy to catch this trick. “Ah, if you’ve come to
+threaten me I prefer my drawing.” And he walked back to his table, where
+he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood
+studying it.
+
+“I suppose that if I go you’ll not expect me to come back,” said Isabel.
+
+He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was
+not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, “Are you out of your
+mind?” he enquired.
+
+“How can it be anything but a rupture?” she went on; “especially if all
+you say is true?” She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
+rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
+
+He sat down before his table. “I really can’t argue with you on the
+hypothesis of your defying me,” he said. And he took up one of his
+little brushes again.
+
+She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye
+his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after
+which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,
+were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly
+encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of
+eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the
+Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in
+which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.
+The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been
+glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the
+sound of Isabel’s step she raised her head.
+
+“Ah my dear,” she said, “you, who are so literary, do tell me some
+amusing book to read! Everything here’s of a dreariness--! Do you think
+this would do me any good?”
+
+Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without
+reading or understanding it. “I’m afraid I can’t advise you. I’ve had
+bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.”
+
+The Countess threw down her book. “Ah, he was so simpatico. I’m awfully
+sorry for you.”
+
+“You would be sorrier still if you knew.”
+
+“What is there to know? You look very badly,” the Countess added. “You
+must have been with Osmond.”
+
+Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of
+her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
+embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady’s
+fluttering attention. “I’ve been with Osmond,” she said, while the
+Countess’s bright eyes glittered at her.
+
+“I’m sure then he has been odious!” the Countess cried. “Did he say he
+was glad poor Mr. Touchett’s dying?”
+
+“He said it’s impossible I should go to England.”
+
+The Countess’s mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she
+already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to
+Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then
+there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for
+a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,
+picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment.
+After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had
+already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for
+Isabel’s trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel’s trouble
+was deep.
+
+It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had
+no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression
+of her sister-in-law’s eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous
+expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the
+conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to
+England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing
+would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt
+an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. “Nothing’s
+impossible for you, my dear,” she said caressingly. “Why else are you
+rich and clever and good?”
+
+“Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.”
+
+“Why does Osmond say it’s impossible?” the Countess asked in a tone
+which sufficiently declared that she couldn’t imagine.
+
+From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew
+back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately
+taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. “Because
+we’re so happy together that we can’t separate even for a fortnight.”
+
+“Ah,” cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, “when I want to make
+a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!”
+
+Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It
+may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is
+certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily
+to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the
+great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as
+this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one’s
+husband. “I’m afraid--yes, I’m afraid,” she said to herself more than
+once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her
+husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her
+own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held
+her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when
+Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between
+them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was
+a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with
+which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what
+he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for
+all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with
+whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank
+down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.
+
+When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her.
+She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin
+lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She
+lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now
+she was leaning far out. “I knocked,” she began, “but you didn’t
+answer me. So I ventured in. I’ve been looking at you for the past five
+minutes. You’re very unhappy.”
+
+“Yes; but I don’t think you can comfort me.”
+
+“Will you give me leave to try?” And the Countess sat down on the
+sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something
+communicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have
+a deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that her
+sister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her
+glittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. “After
+all,” she soon resumed, “I must tell you, to begin with, that I don’t
+understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so
+many reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my
+husband’s dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply
+let me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel,
+you’re not simple enough.”
+
+“No, I’m not simple enough,” said Isabel.
+
+“There’s something I want you to know,” the Countess declared--“because
+I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you’ve guessed it.
+But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you
+shouldn’t do as you like.”
+
+“What do you wish me to know?” Isabel felt a foreboding that made her
+heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this
+alone was portentous.
+
+But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject.
+“In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really
+suspected?”
+
+“I’ve guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don’t know what
+you mean.”
+
+“That’s because you’ve such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman
+with such a pure mind!” cried the Countess.
+
+Isabel slowly got up. “You’re going to tell me something horrible.”
+
+“You can call it by whatever name you will!” And the Countess rose
+also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood
+a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even
+then, of ugliness; after which she said: “My first sister-in-law had no
+children.”
+
+Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. “Your
+first sister-in-law?”
+
+“I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has
+been married before! I’ve never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it
+mightn’t be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must
+have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died
+childless. It wasn’t till after her death that Pansy arrived.”
+
+Isabel’s brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,
+vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to
+follow than she could see. “Pansy’s not my husband’s child then?”
+
+“Your husband’s--in perfection! But no one else’s husband’s. Some one
+else’s wife’s. Ah, my good Isabel,” cried the Countess, “with you one
+must dot one’s i’s!”
+
+“I don’t understand. Whose wife’s?” Isabel asked.
+
+“The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more
+than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing
+what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no
+reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to
+fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife’s having died in
+childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little
+girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from
+nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and
+in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had
+gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but
+where she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,
+sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody
+heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without
+researches,” the Countess lucidly proceeded; “as also, you’ll
+understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond and
+me. Don’t you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle
+it?--that is to settle _me_ if I should say anything. I said nothing,
+right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of
+me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all
+this time, as I’ve never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me,
+from the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was
+my brother’s daughter. As for her veritable mother--!” But with this
+Pansy’s wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression
+of her sister-in-law’s face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to
+look at her than she had ever had to meet.
+
+She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an
+echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.
+“Why have you told me this?” she asked in a voice the Countess hardly
+recognised.
+
+“Because I’ve been so bored with your not knowing. I’ve been bored,
+frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this
+time I couldn’t have managed! _Ça me depasse_, if you don’t mind my saying
+so, the things, all round you, that you’ve appeared to succeed in not
+knowing. It’s a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that
+I’ve always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that
+of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally
+found itself exhausted. It’s not a black lie, moreover, you know,” the
+Countess inimitably added. “The facts are exactly what I tell you.”
+
+“I had no idea,” said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner
+that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
+
+“So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to
+you that he was for six or seven years her lover?”
+
+“I don’t know. Things _have_ occurred to me, and perhaps that was what
+they all meant.”
+
+“She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about
+Pansy!” the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+
+“Oh, no idea, for me,” Isabel went on, “ever _definitely_ took that form.”
+ She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn’t.
+“And as it is--I don’t understand.”
+
+She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to
+have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She
+had expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a
+spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have
+been, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister
+passage of public history. “Don’t you recognise how the child could
+never pass for _her_ husband’s?--that is with M. Merle himself,” her
+companion resumed. “They had been separated too long for that, and he
+had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever
+had children--which I’m not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions
+happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a
+pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was
+dead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain
+accommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean,
+that suspicion wasn’t started; which was what they had to take care of.
+What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and
+for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,
+_poverina_, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life?
+With the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been living with her
+at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course
+left it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor
+sister-in-law, in her grave, couldn’t help herself, and the real mother,
+to save _her_ skin, renounced all visible property in the child.”
+
+“Ah, poor, poor woman!” cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It
+was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction
+from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the
+Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture.
+
+“It’s very kind of you to pity her!” she discordantly laughed. “Yes
+indeed, you have a way of your own--!”
+
+“He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!” said Isabel
+with a sudden check.
+
+“That’s all that’s wanting--that you should take up her cause!” the
+Countess went on. “I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too
+soon.”
+
+“But to me, to me--?” And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as
+if her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all
+for herself.
+
+“To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you
+call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another
+woman--_such_ a lover as he had been, _cara mia_, between their risks and
+their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had
+passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her
+own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances
+so intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may
+therefore imagine what it was--when he couldn’t patch it on conveniently
+to _any_ of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.”
+
+“Yes,” Isabel mechanically echoed, “the whole past is between them.”
+
+“Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,
+they had kept it up.”
+
+She was silent a little. “Why then did she want him to marry me?”
+
+“Ah my dear, that’s her superiority! Because you had money; and because
+she believed you would be good to Pansy.”
+
+“Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn’t like her!” cried Isabel.
+
+“That’s the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows
+it; she knows everything.”
+
+“Will she know that you’ve told me this?”
+
+“That will depend upon whether you tell her. She’s prepared for it, and
+do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that
+I lie. Perhaps you do; don’t make yourself uncomfortable to hide it.
+Only, as it happens this time, I don’t. I’ve told plenty of little
+idiotic fibs, but they’ve never hurt any one but myself.”
+
+Isabel sat staring at her companion’s story as at a bale of fantastic
+wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her
+feet. “Why did Osmond never marry her?” she finally asked.
+
+“Because she had no money.” The Countess had an answer for everything,
+and if she lied she lied well. “No one knows, no one has ever known,
+what she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I
+don’t believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn’t have married
+him.”
+
+“How can she have loved him then?”
+
+“She doesn’t love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I
+suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was
+living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won’t say his ancestors,
+because he never had any--her relations with Osmond had changed, and she
+had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,”
+ the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically
+afterwards--“she _had_ never had, what you might call any illusions of
+_intelligence_. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always
+been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but
+she has never succeeded. I don’t call Madame Merle a success, you know.
+I don’t know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very
+little to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,
+of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of
+expense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did
+that, my dear; you needn’t look as if you doubted it. I’ve watched
+them for years; I know everything--everything. I’m thought a great
+scatterbrain, but I’ve had enough application of mind to follow up those
+two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for
+ever defending me. When people say I’ve had fifteen lovers she looks
+horrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She
+has been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the
+vile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I’d
+expose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his
+court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that
+afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She
+let me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that
+game. She pretends there’s a good deal more to tell about me than about
+her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don’t care a fig what she
+may say, simply because I know _you_ don’t care a fig. You can’t trouble
+your head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge
+as she chooses; I don’t think she’ll frighten you very much. Her great
+idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown
+lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god.
+There should be no scandal about Caesar’s wife, you know; and, as I say,
+she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn’t
+marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would put
+things together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror
+lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the
+mother has never done so.”
+
+“Yes, yes, the mother has done so,” said Isabel, who had listened to
+all this with a face more and more wan. “She betrayed herself to me the
+other day, though I didn’t recognise her. There appeared to have been a
+chance of Pansy’s making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at
+its not coming off she almost dropped the mask.”
+
+“Ah, that’s where she’d dish herself!” cried the Countess. “She has
+failed so dreadfully that she’s determined her daughter shall make it
+up.”
+
+Isabel started at the words “her daughter,” which her guest threw off
+so familiarly. “It seems very wonderful,” she murmured; and in this
+bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
+touched by the story.
+
+“Now don’t go and turn against the poor innocent child!” the Countess
+went on. “She’s very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself
+have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she
+had become yours.”
+
+“Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
+seeing me--!” Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
+
+“I don’t believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.
+Osmond’s marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before
+that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That
+you might take such a fancy to the child that you’d do something for
+her. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really
+extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,”
+ cried the Countess, “why did you ever inherit money?” She stopped a
+moment as if she saw something singular in Isabel’s face. “Don’t tell
+me now that you’ll give her a dot. You’re capable of that, but I would
+refuse to believe it. Don’t try to be too good. Be a little easy and
+natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in
+your life!”
+
+“It’s very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I’m sorry,” Isabel
+said. “I’m much obliged to you.”
+
+“Yes, you seem to be!” cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.
+“Perhaps you are--perhaps you’re not. You don’t take it as I should have
+thought.”
+
+“How should I take it?” Isabel asked.
+
+“Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.” Isabel made
+no answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. “They’ve
+always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke
+off--or _he_ did. But he has always been more for her than she has been
+for him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that
+each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also
+do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know
+such a thing as that. I know it by the way they’ve behaved. Now see how
+much better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but
+Osmond has never lifted a little finger for _her_. She has worked for him,
+plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found
+money for him; and the end of it is that he’s tired of her. She’s an old
+habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn’t
+miss her if she were removed. And, what’s more, to-day she knows it. So
+you needn’t be jealous!” the Countess added humorously.
+
+Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath;
+her head was humming with new knowledge. “I’m much obliged to you,” she
+repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: “How
+do you know all this?”
+
+This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel’s
+expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold
+stare, with which, “Let us assume that I’ve invented it!” she cried. She
+too, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel’s
+arm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: “Now will you
+give up your journey?”
+
+Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a
+moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a
+minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed
+eyes and pale lips.
+
+“I’ve done wrong to speak--I’ve made you ill!” the Countess cried.
+
+“Ah, I must see Ralph!” Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in
+the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of
+far-reaching, infinite sadness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the
+Countess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with
+her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought
+(except of her journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy;
+from her she couldn’t turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had
+given her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five
+o’clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza
+Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and
+obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had
+come with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women,
+and she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that
+the well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she
+disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her; not for
+the world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more
+than before the impression of a well-appointed prison; for it was not
+possible to pretend Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature
+had been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary
+effect of the revelation was to make her reach out a hand.
+
+The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she
+went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady.
+The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a
+large clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax
+flowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures
+on the walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome
+than like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment
+only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned
+at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got
+up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her
+extreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect
+was strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision
+that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully,
+seeing a painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her
+falsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these
+dark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the
+room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of
+handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It
+made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot
+she would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to
+her; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to
+Madame Merle. In one’s relations with this lady, however, there were
+never any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off
+not only her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was
+different from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and
+Isabel instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her
+habitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she
+had undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a
+peculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw
+that she was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the
+whole the wonderful woman had never been so natural. She looked at her
+young friend from head to foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a
+cold gentleness rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their
+last meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She had
+been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+
+“You can leave us alone,” she said to the portress; “in five minutes
+this lady will ring for you.” And then she turned to Isabel, who, after
+noting what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let
+her eyes wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished
+never to look at Madame Merle again. “You’re surprised to find me here,
+and I’m afraid you’re not pleased,” this lady went on. “You don’t see
+why I should have come; it’s as if I had anticipated you. I confess I’ve
+been rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission.” There
+was none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply
+and mildly; but Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could
+not have told herself with what intention it was uttered. “But I’ve not
+been sitting long,” Madame Merle continued; “that is I’ve not been long
+with Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon
+that she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable.
+It may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I
+can’t tell. At any rate it’s a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the
+chance. I knew of course that you’d come, and her father as well;
+still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good
+woman--what’s her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection whatever. I
+stayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not
+in the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has arranged
+it delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it’s all none of my
+business, but I feel happier since I’ve seen her. She may even have a
+maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears
+a little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see
+Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don’t
+find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most
+coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly
+like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says
+it’s a great happiness for them to have her. She’s a little saint of
+heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame
+Catherine the portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the
+signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me
+go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I must tell you
+that--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother Superior; it was
+of such high importance that you should be treated with respect. I
+requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her how she
+supposed I would treat you!”
+
+So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had
+long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases
+and gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel’s
+ear, though her eyes were absent from her companion’s face. She had not
+proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse
+in her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle
+modulation marked a momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely
+new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in
+the space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in
+the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person
+who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a
+very different person--a person who knew her secret. This discovery was
+tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of
+women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the
+conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed
+on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had
+the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been touched with
+a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the alertness of her
+will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her not betraying
+herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her voice
+refused to improve--she couldn’t help it--while she heard herself say
+she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able
+only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+
+Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large
+clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might
+have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and
+saw before her the phantom of exposure--this in itself was a revenge,
+this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a
+moment during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with
+her back half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side
+of the window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she
+saw; she saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon.
+She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become
+a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in
+which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry
+staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool,
+as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron. All the
+bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it was as if
+she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment during
+which, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something that
+would hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous
+vision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world
+standing there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to
+think as the meanest. Isabel’s only revenge was to be silent still--to
+leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. She left her there
+for a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who at last
+seated herself with a movement which was in itself a confession of
+helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down at her. Madame
+Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel’s face. She might see
+what she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never accuse
+her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her the
+opportunity to defend herself.
+
+“I’m come to bid Pansy good-bye,” our young woman said at last. “I go to
+England to-night.”
+
+“Go to England to-night!” Madame Merle repeated sitting there and
+looking up at her.
+
+“I’m going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett’s dying.”
+
+“Ah, you’ll feel that.” Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance
+to express sympathy. “Do you go alone?”
+
+“Yes; without my husband.”
+
+Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the
+general sadness of things. “Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I’m sorry
+he’s dying. Shall you see his mother?”
+
+“Yes; she has returned from America.”
+
+“She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have
+changed,” said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a
+moment, then added: “And you’ll see dear old Gardencourt again!”
+
+“I shall not enjoy it much,” Isabel answered.
+
+“Naturally--in your grief. But it’s on the whole, of all the houses I
+know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I
+don’t venture to send a message to the people,” Madame Merle added; “but
+I should like to give my love to the place.”
+
+Isabel turned away. “I had better go to Pansy. I’ve not much time.”
+
+While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and
+admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet
+smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump
+white hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she
+had already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss
+Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly
+and said: “It will be good for her to see you. I’ll take you to her
+myself.” Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+
+“Will you let me remain a little?” this lady asked. “It’s so good to be
+here.”
+
+“You may remain always if you like!” And the good sister gave a knowing
+laugh.
+
+She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long
+staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean;
+so, thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine
+gently pushed open the door of Pansy’s room and ushered in the visitor;
+then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and
+embraced.
+
+“She’s glad to see you,” she repeated; “it will do her good.” And she
+placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement
+to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. “How does this dear child
+look?” she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+
+“She looks pale,” Isabel answered.
+
+“That’s the pleasure of seeing you. She’s very happy. _Elle éclaire la
+maison_,” said the good sister.
+
+Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was
+perhaps this that made her look pale. “They’re very good to me--they
+think of everything!” she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to
+accommodate.
+
+“We think of you always--you’re a precious charge,” Madame Catherine
+remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and
+whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with
+a leaden weight on Isabel’s ears; it seemed to represent the surrender
+of a personality, the authority of the Church.
+
+When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid
+her head in her stepmother’s lap. So she remained some moments, while
+Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and
+looking about the room. “Don’t you think I’ve arranged it well? I’ve
+everything I have at home.”
+
+“It’s very pretty; you’re very comfortable.” Isabel scarcely knew what
+she could say to her. On the one hand she couldn’t let her think she had
+come to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend
+to rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: “I’ve come to
+bid you good-bye. I’m going to England.”
+
+Pansy’s white little face turned red. “To England! Not to come back?”
+
+“I don’t know when I shall come back.”
+
+“Ah, I’m sorry,” Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had
+no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
+
+“My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he’ll probably die. I wish to see
+him,” Isabel said.
+
+“Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa
+go?”
+
+“No; I shall go alone.”
+
+For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she
+thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never
+by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed
+them deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel
+was sure; and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands
+and wives who were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet
+even in thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle
+stepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have
+stood almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the
+saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted
+heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would
+(for very solemnity’s sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon,
+so she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her
+own. “You’ll be very far away,” she presently went on.
+
+“Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,” Isabel
+explained; “since so long as you’re here I can’t be called near you.”
+
+“Yes, but you can come and see me; though you’ve not come very often.”
+
+“I’ve not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing
+with me. I can’t amuse you.”
+
+“I’m not to be amused. That’s not what papa wishes.”
+
+“Then it hardly matters whether I’m in Rome or in England.”
+
+“You’re not happy, Mrs. Osmond,” said Pansy.
+
+“Not very. But it doesn’t matter.”
+
+“That’s what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to
+come out.”
+
+“I wish indeed you might.”
+
+“Don’t leave me here,” Pansy went on gently.
+
+Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. “Will you come
+away with me now?” she asked.
+
+Pansy looked at her pleadingly. “Did papa tell you to bring me?”
+
+“No; it’s my own proposal.”
+
+“I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?”
+
+“I don’t think he knew I was coming.”
+
+“He thinks I’ve not had enough,” said Pansy. “But I have. The ladies are
+very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some
+very little ones--such charming children. Then my room--you can see for
+yourself. All that’s very delightful. But I’ve had enough. Papa wished
+me to think a little--and I’ve thought a great deal.”
+
+“What have you thought?”
+
+“Well, that I must never displease papa.”
+
+“You knew that before.”
+
+“Yes; but I know it better. I’ll do anything--I’ll do anything,” said
+Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into
+her face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been
+vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!
+Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated
+easily. She laid her hand on Pansy’s as if to let her know that her
+look conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl’s
+momentary resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only
+her tribute to the truth of things. She didn’t presume to judge others,
+but she had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no
+vocation for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of
+sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her
+pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful.
+Yes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few articles!
+
+Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. “Good-bye then. I leave
+Rome to-night.”
+
+Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child’s
+face. “You look strange, you frighten me.”
+
+“Oh, I’m very harmless,” said Isabel.
+
+“Perhaps you won’t come back?”
+
+“Perhaps not. I can’t tell.”
+
+“Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won’t leave me!”
+
+Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. “My dear child, what can I do
+for you?” she asked.
+
+“I don’t know--but I’m happier when I think of you.”
+
+“You can always think of me.”
+
+“Not when you’re so far. I’m a little afraid,” said Pansy.
+
+“What are you afraid of?”
+
+“Of papa--a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see me.”
+
+“You must not say that,” Isabel observed.
+
+“Oh, I’ll do everything they want. Only if you’re here I shall do it
+more easily.”
+
+Isabel considered. “I won’t desert you,” she said at last. “Good-bye, my
+child.”
+
+Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two
+sisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor
+to the top of the staircase. “Madame Merle has been here,” she remarked
+as they went; and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: “I
+don’t like Madame Merle!”
+
+Isabel hesitated, then stopped. “You must never say that--that you don’t
+like Madame Merle.”
+
+Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a
+reason for non-compliance. “I never will again,” she said with exquisite
+gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it
+appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which
+Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she
+reached the bottom the girl was standing above. “You’ll come back?” she
+called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+
+“Yes--I’ll come back.”
+
+Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of
+the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. “I won’t
+go in,” said the good sister. “Madame Merle’s waiting for you.”
+
+At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking
+if there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment’s reflexion
+assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her
+desire to avoid Pansy’s other friend. Her companion grasped her arm
+very gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said
+in French and almost familiarly: “_Eh bien, chère Madame, qu’en
+pensez-vous?_”
+
+“About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.”
+
+“We think it’s enough,” Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she
+pushed open the door of the parlour.
+
+Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so
+absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame
+Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been
+thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full
+possession of her resources. “I found I wished to wait for you,” she
+said urbanely. “But it’s not to talk about Pansy.”
+
+Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame
+Merle’s declaration she answered after a moment: “Madame Catherine says
+it’s enough.”
+
+“Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about
+poor Mr. Touchett,” Madame Merle added. “Have you reason to believe that
+he’s really at his last?”
+
+“I’ve no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a
+probability.”
+
+“I’m going to ask you a strange question,” said Madame Merle. “Are
+you very fond of your cousin?” And she gave a smile as strange as her
+utterance.
+
+“Yes, I’m very fond of him. But I don’t understand you.”
+
+She just hung fire. “It’s rather hard to explain. Something has occurred
+to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit
+of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never
+guessed it?”
+
+“He has done me many services.”
+
+“Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.”
+
+“_He_ made me--?”
+
+Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more
+triumphantly: “He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required
+to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it’s him you’ve to thank.” She
+stopped; there was something in Isabel’s eyes.
+
+“I don’t understand you. It was my uncle’s money.”
+
+“Yes; it was your uncle’s money, but it was your cousin’s idea. He
+brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!”
+
+Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by
+lurid flashes. “I don’t know why you say such things. I don’t know what
+you know.”
+
+“I know nothing but what I’ve guessed. But I’ve guessed that.”
+
+Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment
+with her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only revenge: “I
+believed it was you I had to thank!”
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud
+penance. “You’re very unhappy, I know. But I’m more so.”
+
+“Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.”
+
+Madame Merle raised her eyes. “I shall go to America,” she quietly
+remarked while Isabel passed out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel
+descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the
+arms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of Henrietta Stackpole.
+She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not
+definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt
+her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from
+Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question
+the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took
+little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they
+were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their
+course through other countries--strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless
+lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed,
+a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but
+it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of
+memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their
+will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a
+logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now
+that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much
+concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt
+to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things,
+their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their
+horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She
+remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity
+of a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that
+they had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after
+all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of
+use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all
+desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge.
+Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers
+it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in
+her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had
+been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph
+his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect
+of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything
+more--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble
+tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
+
+She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as
+good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive,
+simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and
+regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures
+couched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret
+now--that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of
+her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle
+had been so--well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped,
+from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been.
+Whatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and
+doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was
+going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression that she
+should never again see Madame Merle. This impression carried her into
+the future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She
+saw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who
+had her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of
+the present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away,
+further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was
+evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any appetite
+for renunciation--was the sense that life would be her business for a
+long time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost
+enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength--it was a
+proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn’t be she was to live
+only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things
+might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury
+of life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable,
+too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid
+to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be
+valuable? Wasn’t all history full of the destruction of precious things?
+Wasn’t it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It
+involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but
+Isabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow
+of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.
+Then the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of
+her indifference closed her in.
+
+Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid
+she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,
+looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she
+wished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped.
+She rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an
+arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station,
+the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her
+with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend’s. She
+remembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty
+spectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered
+how she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded
+streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the
+incident came before her as the deed of another person.
+
+“It’s too beautiful that you should have come,” said Henrietta, looking
+at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the
+proposition. “If you hadn’t--if you hadn’t; well, I don’t know,”
+ remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
+
+Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another
+figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment
+she recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little
+apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about
+him to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken--that of
+abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their
+embraces.
+
+“There’s Mr. Bantling,” said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely
+caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+
+“Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!” Henrietta
+exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile--a smile
+tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. “Isn’t it lovely she
+has come?” Henrietta asked. “He knows all about it,” she added; “we had
+quite a discussion. He said you wouldn’t, I said you would.”
+
+“I thought you always agreed,” Isabel smiled in return. She felt she
+could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling’s brave
+eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to
+remember he was an old friend of her cousin--that he understood, that
+it was all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him,
+extravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.
+
+“Oh, I always agree,” said Mr. Bantling. “But she doesn’t, you know.”
+
+“Didn’t I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?” Henrietta enquired.
+“Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.”
+
+“I don’t care,” said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never
+found so interesting.
+
+“Stay with her while I go and see,” Henrietta commanded, leaving the two
+for a moment together.
+
+They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel
+how it had been on the Channel.
+
+“Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,” she said, to her
+companion’s obvious surprise. After which she added: “You’ve been to
+Gardencourt, I know.”
+
+“Now how do you know that?”
+
+“I can’t tell you--except that you look like a person who has been to
+Gardencourt.”
+
+“Do you think I look awfully sad? It’s awfully sad there, you know.”
+
+“I don’t believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,”
+ said Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she
+should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
+
+Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed
+a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue,
+and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. “You can ask Miss
+Stackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.”
+
+“Did you see my cousin?”
+
+“Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been
+there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he
+was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can’t speak,”
+ Mr. Bantling pursued. “He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He
+was just as clever as ever. It’s awfully wretched.”
+
+Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. “Was
+that late in the day?”
+
+“Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you’d like to know.”
+
+“I’m greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?”
+
+“Ah, I don’t think _she’ll_ let you go,” said Mr. Bantling. “She wants you
+to stop with her. I made Touchett’s man promise to telegraph me to-day,
+and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. ‘Quiet and easy,’
+that’s what it says, and it’s dated two o’clock. So you see you can wait
+till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.”
+
+“Yes, I’m awfully tired. And I thank you again.”
+
+“Oh,” said Mr. Bantling, “We were certain you would like the last news.”
+ On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to
+agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel’s maid, whom she had caught
+in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of
+losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress’s
+luggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station.
+“You know you’re not to think of going to the country to-night,”
+ Henrietta remarked to her. “It doesn’t matter whether there’s a train
+or not. You’re to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn’t a
+corner to be had in London, but I’ve got you one all the same. It isn’t
+a Roman palace, but it will do for a night.”
+
+“I’ll do whatever you wish,” Isabel said.
+
+“You’ll come and answer a few questions; that’s what I wish.”
+
+“She doesn’t say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?” Mr.
+Bantling enquired jocosely.
+
+Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. “I see you’re
+in a great hurry to get your own. You’ll be at the Paddington Station
+to-morrow morning at ten.”
+
+“Don’t come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,” said Isabel.
+
+“He’ll come for mine,” Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into
+a cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street--to do her
+justice there had been dinner enough--she asked those questions to which
+she had alluded at the station. “Did your husband make you a scene about
+your coming?” That was Miss Stackpole’s first enquiry.
+
+“No; I can’t say he made a scene.”
+
+“He didn’t object then?”
+
+“Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you’d call a scene.”
+
+“What was it then?”
+
+“It was a very quiet conversation.”
+
+Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. “It must have been hellish,”
+ she then remarked. And Isabel didn’t deny that it had been hellish. But
+she confined herself to answering Henrietta’s questions, which was easy,
+as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no
+new information. “Well,” said Miss Stackpole at last, “I’ve only one
+criticism to make. I don’t see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go
+back.”
+
+“I’m not sure I myself see now,” Isabel replied. “But I did then.”
+
+“If you’ve forgotten your reason perhaps you won’t return.”
+
+Isabel waited a moment. “Perhaps I shall find another.”
+
+“You’ll certainly never find a good one.”
+
+“In default of a better my having promised will do,” Isabel suggested.
+
+“Yes; that’s why I hate it.”
+
+“Don’t speak of it now. I’ve a little time. Coming away was a
+complication, but what will going back be?”
+
+“You must remember, after all, that he won’t make you a scene!” said
+Henrietta with much intention.
+
+“He will, though,” Isabel answered gravely. “It won’t be the scene of a
+moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.”
+
+For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and
+then Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested,
+announced abruptly: “I’ve been to stay with Lady Pensil!”
+
+“Ah, the invitation came at last!”
+
+“Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.”
+
+“Naturally enough.”
+
+“It was more natural than I think you know,” said Henrietta, who fixed
+her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly:
+“Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don’t know why? Because I
+criticised you, and yet I’ve gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at
+least, was born on the other side!”
+
+It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so
+modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel’s mind was not
+possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with
+a quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately
+recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,
+“Henrietta Stackpole,” she asked, “are you going to give up your
+country?”
+
+“Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won’t pretend to deny it; I look the fact
+in the face. I’m going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in
+London.”
+
+“It seems very strange,” said Isabel, smiling now.
+
+“Well yes, I suppose it does. I’ve come to it little by little. I think
+I know what I’m doing; but I don’t know as I can explain.”
+
+“One can’t explain one’s marriage,” Isabel answered. “And yours doesn’t
+need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn’t a riddle.”
+
+“No, he isn’t a bad pun--or even a high flight of American humour. He
+has a beautiful nature,” Henrietta went on. “I’ve studied him for many
+years and I see right through him. He’s as clear as the style of a good
+prospectus. He’s not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the
+other hand he doesn’t exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in
+the United States.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, “you’re changed indeed! It’s the first time I’ve ever
+heard you say anything against your native land.”
+
+“I only say that we’re too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after
+all, isn’t a vulgar fault. But I _am_ changed; a woman has to change a
+good deal to marry.”
+
+“I hope you’ll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see something
+of the inner life.”
+
+Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. “That’s the key to the
+mystery, I believe. I couldn’t endure to be kept off. Now I’ve as good
+a right as any one!” she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly
+diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta,
+after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she
+had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was
+a disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was
+subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had
+not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+marrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to
+Isabel’s sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A
+little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was
+original. But she didn’t see how Henrietta could give up her country.
+She herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her
+country as it had been Henrietta’s. She presently asked her if she had
+enjoyed her visit to Lady Pensil.
+
+“Oh yes,” said Henrietta, “she didn’t know what to make of me.”
+
+“And was that very enjoyable?”
+
+“Very much so, because she’s supposed to be a master mind. She thinks
+she knows everything; but she doesn’t understand a woman of my modern
+type. It would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better
+or a little worse. She’s so puzzled; I believe she thinks it’s my duty
+to go and do something immoral. She thinks it’s immoral that I should
+marry her brother; but, after all, that isn’t immoral enough. And she’ll
+never understand my mixture--never!”
+
+“She’s not so intelligent as her brother then,” said Isabel. “He appears
+to have understood.”
+
+“Oh no, he hasn’t!” cried Miss Stackpole with decision. “I really
+believe that’s what he wants to marry me for--just to find out the
+mystery and the proportions of it. That’s a fixed idea--a kind of
+fascination.”
+
+“It’s very good in you to humour it.”
+
+“Oh well,” said Henrietta, “I’ve something to find out too!” And Isabel
+saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She
+was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.
+
+Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington
+Station, where she found herself, at ten o’clock, in the company both
+of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his
+perplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found
+out at least the great point--that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting
+in initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had
+been on his guard against this deficiency.
+
+“Henrietta has told me, and I’m very glad,” Isabel said as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+“I dare say you think it awfully odd,” Mr. Bantling replied, resting on
+his neat umbrella.
+
+“Yes, I think it awfully odd.”
+
+“You can’t think it so awfully odd as I do. But I’ve always rather liked
+striking out a line,” said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Isabel’s arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even
+quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small
+household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that
+instead of being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown
+into the drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to
+her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to
+come to her. She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared--as
+scared as if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious
+things, watching her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark
+and cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The
+house was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it
+had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She
+left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the library and
+along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep
+made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had
+seen years before; it might have been only yesterday she had stood
+there. She envied the security of valuable “pieces” which change by no
+hair’s breadth, only grow in value, while their owners lose inch by
+inch youth, happiness, beauty; and she became aware that she was walking
+about as her aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany.
+She was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It
+suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just
+that way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She
+might have had another life and she might have been a woman more blest.
+She stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture--a charming and
+precious Bonington--upon which her eyes rested a long time. But she was
+not looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had
+not come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+
+Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the
+big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her
+eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a
+repository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most
+undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first
+time, if her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the
+matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel’s hot cheek.
+
+“I’ve kept you waiting because I’ve been sitting with Ralph,” Mrs.
+Touchett said. “The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her
+place. He has a man who’s supposed to look after him, but the man’s good
+for nothing; he’s always looking out of the window--as if there were
+anything to see! I didn’t wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be
+sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the
+nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house.”
+
+“I find I know it better even than I thought; I’ve been walking
+everywhere,” Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.
+
+“He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn’t move. But I’m not sure that
+it’s always sleep.”
+
+“Will he see me? Can he speak to me?”
+
+Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. “You can try him,” was the
+limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her
+room. “I thought they had taken you there; but it’s not my house, it’s
+Ralph’s; and I don’t know what they do. They must at least have taken
+your luggage; I don’t suppose you’ve brought much. Not that I care,
+however. I believe they’ve given you the same room you had before; when
+Ralph heard you were coming he said you must have that one.”
+
+“Did he say anything else?”
+
+“Ah, my dear, he doesn’t chatter as he used!” cried Mrs. Touchett as she
+preceded her niece up the staircase.
+
+It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept
+in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous;
+Mrs. Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. “Is there really
+no hope?” our young woman asked as she stood before her.
+
+“None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful
+life.”
+
+“No--it has only been a beautiful one.” Isabel found herself already
+contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by that; there’s no beauty without health.
+That is a very odd dress to travel in.”
+
+Isabel glanced at her garment. “I left Rome at an hour’s notice; I took
+the first that came.”
+
+“Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to
+be their principal interest. I wasn’t able to tell them--but they seemed
+to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black
+brocade.”
+
+“They think I’m more brilliant than I am; I’m afraid to tell them the
+truth,” said Isabel. “Lily wrote me you had dined with her.”
+
+“She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she
+should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been
+expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to
+America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn’t go for my pleasure.”
+
+These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece,
+whom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this
+repast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the
+melancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not
+to be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman’s
+inexpressiveness, her want of regret, of disappointment, came back to
+her. Unmistakeably she would have found it a blessing to-day to be able
+to feel a defeat, a mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she
+were not even missing those enrichments of consciousness and privately
+trying--reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet;
+the testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other
+hand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all
+it might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had
+come over her dimly that she had failed of something, that she saw
+herself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her little
+sharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Ralph had as yet not
+moved, but that he probably would be able to see her before dinner.
+And then in a moment she added that he had seen Lord Warburton the day
+before; an announcement which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed
+an intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an
+accident might bring them together. Such an accident would not be happy;
+she had not come to England to struggle again with Lord Warburton. She
+none the less presently said to her aunt that he had been very kind to
+Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome.
+
+“He has something else to think of now,” Mrs. Touchett returned. And she
+paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+
+Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant.
+But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished
+to gain a moment. “Ah yes--the House of Lords and all that.”
+
+“He’s not thinking of the Lords; he’s thinking of the ladies. At least
+he’s thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he’s engaged to be married.”
+
+“Ah, to be married!” Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+
+“Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.
+Poor Ralph can’t go to the wedding, though I believe it’s to take place
+very soon.
+
+“And who’s the young lady?”
+
+“A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--something of
+that sort.”
+
+“I’m very glad,” Isabel said. “It must be a sudden decision.”
+
+“Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just
+been made public.”
+
+“I’m very glad,” Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her
+aunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed soreness,
+and the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this
+kind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone
+almost of relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that
+ladies, even married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as
+an offence to themselves. Isabel’s first care therefore was to show
+that however that might be in general she was not offended now. But
+meanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some
+moments thoughtful--she presently forgot Mrs. Touchett’s observation--it
+was not because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed
+half Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in the
+city of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband that Lord
+Warburton was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course
+not aware how extremely wan she must have looked while she made this
+intellectual effort. But at last she collected herself and said to her
+aunt: “He was sure to do it some time or other.”
+
+Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the
+head. “Ah, my dear, you’re beyond me!” she cried suddenly. They went on
+with their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord
+Warburton’s death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was
+all over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A
+servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him
+to leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her
+hands folded on the edge of the table. “I should like to ask you three
+questions,” she observed when the servant had gone.
+
+“Three are a great many.”
+
+“I can’t do with less; I’ve been thinking. They’re all very good ones.”
+
+“That’s what I’m afraid of. The best questions are the worst,” Isabel
+answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left
+the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows,
+she felt herself followed by her eyes.
+
+“Have you ever been sorry you didn’t marry Lord Warburton?” Mrs.
+Touchett enquired.
+
+Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. “No, dear aunt.”
+
+“Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.”
+
+“Your believing me’s an immense temptation,” she declared, smiling
+still.
+
+“A temptation to lie? I don’t recommend you to do that, for when I’m
+misinformed I’m as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don’t mean to crow
+over you.”
+
+“It’s my husband who doesn’t get on with me,” said Isabel.
+
+“I could have told him he wouldn’t. I don’t call that crowing over _you_,”
+ Mrs. Touchett added. “Do you still like Serena Merle?” she went on.
+
+“Not as I once did. But it doesn’t matter, for she’s going to America.”
+
+“To America? She must have done something very bad.”
+
+“Yes--very bad.”
+
+“May I ask what it is?”
+
+“She made a convenience of me.”
+
+“Ah,” cried Mrs. Touchett, “so she did of me! She does of every one.”
+
+“She’ll make a convenience of America,” said Isabel, smiling again and
+glad that her aunt’s questions were over.
+
+It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
+dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
+there, but after a while went away--the local doctor, who had attended
+his father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day; he
+was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope,
+but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his
+mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further
+need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew
+that her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel’s arrival Ralph gave no
+sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised
+himself and said he knew that she had come.
+
+How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no
+one had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in
+the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room.
+She told the nurse she might go--she herself would sit with him for the
+rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had
+moved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take
+it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained
+perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a
+long time--till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He
+might have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the
+figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome,
+and this was worse; there was but one change possible now. There was a
+strange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box.
+With this he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes to
+greet her it was as if she were looking into immeasurable space. It was
+not till midnight that the nurse came back; but the hours, to Isabel,
+had not seemed long; it was exactly what she had come for. If she had
+come simply to wait she found ample occasion, for he lay three days in
+a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to
+wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as
+if he too were waiting for something--for something that certainly would
+come. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming
+had already arrived; and yet she never lost the sense that they were
+still together. But they were not always together; there were other
+hours that she passed in wandering through the empty house and listening
+for a voice that was not poor Ralph’s. She had a constant fear; she
+thought it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained
+silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Countess
+Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the third day.
+
+“I feel better to-night,” he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless
+dimness of her vigil; “I think I can say something.” She sank upon her
+knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him
+not to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face was of necessity
+serious--it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner
+apparently had not lost a perception of incongruities. “What does it
+matter if I’m tired when I’ve all eternity to rest? There’s no harm in
+making an effort when it’s the very last of all. Don’t people always
+feel better just before the end? I’ve often heard of that; it’s what I
+was waiting for. Ever since you’ve been here I thought it would come.
+I tried two or three times; I was afraid you’d get tired of sitting
+there.” He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice
+seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his face
+turned to Isabel and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. “It
+was very good of you to come,” he went on. “I thought you would; but I
+wasn’t sure.”
+
+“I was not sure either till I came,” said Isabel.
+
+“You’ve been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the
+angel of death. It’s the most beautiful of all. You’ve been like that;
+as if you were waiting for me.”
+
+“I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this. This is
+not death, dear Ralph.”
+
+“Not for you--no. There’s nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see
+others die. That’s the sensation of life--the sense that we remain. I’ve
+had it--even I. But now I’m of no use but to give it to others. With me
+it’s all over.” And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till
+it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She couldn’t
+see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. “Isabel,” he
+went on suddenly, “I wish it were over for you.” She answered nothing;
+she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay
+silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. “Ah, what
+is it you have done for me?”
+
+“What is it you did for me?” she cried, her now extreme agitation half
+smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
+things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them
+supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. “You did
+something once--you know it. O Ralph, you’ve been everything! What have
+I done for you--what can I do to-day? I would die if you could live.
+But I don’t wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you.” Her
+voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+
+“You won’t lose me--you’ll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be
+nearer to you than I’ve ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in
+life there’s love. Death is good--but there’s no love.”
+
+“I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should be!”
+ Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse
+herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the
+moment, became single and melted together into this present pain. “What
+must you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I
+only know to-day because there are people less stupid than I.”
+
+“Don’t mind people,” said Ralph. “I think I’m glad to leave people.”
+
+She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to
+pray to him. “Is it true--is it true?” she asked.
+
+“True that you’ve been stupid? Oh no,” said Ralph with a sensible
+intention of wit.
+
+“That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?”
+
+He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:
+“Ah, don’t speak of that--that was not happy.” Slowly he moved his face
+toward her again, and they once more saw each other. “But for that--but
+for that--!” And he paused. “I believe I ruined you,” he wailed.
+
+She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he
+seemed already so little of this world. But even if she had not had
+it she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only
+knowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge that they were
+looking at the truth together.
+
+“He married me for the money,” she said. She wished to say everything;
+she was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a
+little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he
+raised them in a moment, and then, “He was greatly in love with you,” he
+answered.
+
+“Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn’t have married me if I had
+been poor. I don’t hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you
+to understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that’s
+all over.”
+
+“I always understood,” said Ralph.
+
+“I thought you did, and I didn’t like it. But now I like it.”
+
+“You don’t hurt me--you make me very happy.” And as Ralph said this
+there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her
+head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. “I always
+understood,” he continued, “though it was so strange--so pitiful. You
+wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you
+were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the
+conventional!”
+
+“Oh yes, I’ve been punished,” Isabel sobbed.
+
+He listened to her a little, and then continued: “Was he very bad about
+your coming?”
+
+“He made it very hard for me. But I don’t care.”
+
+“It is all over then between you?”
+
+“Oh no; I don’t think anything’s over.”
+
+“Are you going back to him?” Ralph gasped.
+
+“I don’t know--I can’t tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don’t
+want to think--I needn’t think. I don’t care for anything but you, and
+that’s enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my
+knees, with you dying in my arms, I’m happier than I have been for a
+long time. And I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad;
+only to feel that I’m near you and I love you. Why should there be
+pain--? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That’s not
+the deepest thing; there’s something deeper.”
+
+Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared
+to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then
+he murmured simply: “You must stay here.”
+
+“I should like to stay--as long as seems right.”
+
+“As seems right--as seems right?” He repeated her words. “Yes, you think
+a great deal about that.”
+
+“Of course one must. You’re very tired,” said Isabel.
+
+“I’m very tired. You said just now that pain’s not the deepest thing.
+No--no. But it’s very deep. If I could stay--”
+
+“For me you’ll always be here,” she softly interrupted. It was easy to
+interrupt him.
+
+But he went on, after a moment: “It passes, after all; it’s passing now.
+But love remains. I don’t know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I
+shall find out. There are many things in life. You’re very young.”
+
+“I feel very old,” said Isabel.
+
+“You’ll grow young again. That’s how I see you. I don’t believe--I don’t
+believe--” But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+
+She begged him to be quiet now. “We needn’t speak to understand each
+other,” she said.
+
+“I don’t believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for
+more than a little.”
+
+“Oh Ralph, I’m very happy now,” she cried through her tears.
+
+“And remember this,” he continued, “that if you’ve been hated
+you’ve also been loved. Ah but, Isabel--_adored_!” he just audibly and
+lingeringly breathed.
+
+“Oh my brother!” she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that
+if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost
+with which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled
+the necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint
+dawn, she knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down
+without undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast
+the night. She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such
+waiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the
+night wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock,
+but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up
+from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed
+to her for an instant that he was standing there--a vague, hovering
+figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his
+white face--his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not
+afraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty
+passed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that
+shone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside Ralph’s door she
+stopped a moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that
+filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she were
+lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting
+motionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his
+hands in her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ralph’s
+further wrist resting in his professional fingers. The two nurses were
+at the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but
+the doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Ralph’s hand
+in a proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very
+hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only looked at what she had
+come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been in life, and there
+was a strange resemblance to the face of his father, which, six years
+before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt
+and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a general thing
+neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this
+one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed;
+her acute white face was terrible.
+
+“Dear Aunt Lydia,” Isabel murmured.
+
+“Go and thank God you’ve no child,” said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging
+herself.
+
+Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the
+height of the London “season,” to take a morning train down to a quiet
+station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which
+stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this
+edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself
+at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton
+himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs.
+Touchett. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one;
+there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather
+had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous
+May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the
+hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it
+was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been
+dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and
+prepared. There were tears in Isabel’s eyes, but they were not tears
+that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the
+splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the
+bowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group
+of gentlemen all unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards
+learned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she
+knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling
+beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the
+rest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was
+conscious of Mr. Goodwood’s gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than
+he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon
+the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she
+thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found
+she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt
+he had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that
+pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and
+something in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex
+intention. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, though there was doubtless
+sympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the
+little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to
+her--though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett--was Henrietta Stackpole.
+Henrietta had been crying.
+
+Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,
+and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself
+that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was
+fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been
+greatly in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had
+left her husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting
+the hours of her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive.
+He was not one of the best husbands, but that didn’t alter the case.
+Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were
+quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel
+thought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a
+distance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder
+of Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew
+back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day,
+postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must
+decide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a
+decision. On that occasion she had simply started. Osmond gave no sound
+and now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From
+Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had told
+her not to write.
+
+Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel’s company, but offered her no assistance;
+she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but
+with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs.
+Touchett was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she
+managed to extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion
+that, after all, such things happened to other people and not to
+herself. Death was disagreeable, but in this case it was her son’s
+death, not her own; she had never flattered herself that her own would
+be disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than
+poor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind him,
+and indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was, to Mrs.
+Touchett’s mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage of. For
+herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so good as that. She
+made known to Isabel very punctually--it was the evening her son was
+buried--several of Ralph’s testamentary arrangements. He had told her
+everything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money;
+of course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of
+Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books and the use of the
+place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by
+the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons
+suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the
+will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property,
+which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various
+bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his
+father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small
+legacies.
+
+“Some of them are extremely peculiar,” said Mrs. Touchett; “he has left
+considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I
+asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at
+various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn’t
+like him, for he hasn’t left you a penny. It was his opinion that you
+had been handsomely treated by his father, which I’m bound to say I
+think you were--though I don’t mean that I ever heard him complain of
+it. The pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one
+by one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to
+Lord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library?
+It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss
+Stackpole--‘in recognition of her services to literature.’ Does he mean
+her following him up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It
+contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can’t carry
+it about the world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction.
+She will sell it of course at Christie’s, and with the proceeds she’ll
+set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?”
+
+This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her
+arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than
+to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one
+of the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She
+was quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her
+command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony
+in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes
+often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which
+looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest
+vehicle approach the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in
+rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had
+a high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under
+the circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come down
+from London to call on Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett
+he had come to see, and not Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the
+validity of this thesis Isabel presently stepped out of the house and
+wandered away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she
+had been but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for
+visiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first it
+struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory I have just
+mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her little rest, and
+if you had seen her pacing about you would have said she had a bad
+conscience. She was not pacified when at the end of a quarter of an
+hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge
+from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently
+proposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search of her. She
+was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have
+drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen
+and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt
+was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that,
+as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather
+stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently
+were silent; but Mrs. Touchett’s thin little glance, as she directed it
+toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say
+with cutting sharpness: “Here’s the eminently amenable nobleman you
+might have married!” When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,
+that was not what they said. They only said “This is rather awkward, you
+know, and I depend upon you to help me.” He was very grave, very proper
+and, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without
+a smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile.
+He looked extremely selfconscious.
+
+“Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,” said Mrs.
+Touchett. “He tells me he didn’t know you were still here. I know he’s
+an old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I
+brought him out to see for himself.”
+
+“Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back
+in time for dinner,” Mrs. Touchett’s companion rather irrelevantly
+explained. “I’m so glad to find you’ve not gone.”
+
+“I’m not here for long, you know,” Isabel said with a certain eagerness.
+
+“I suppose not; but I hope it’s for some weeks. You came to England
+sooner than--a--than you thought?”
+
+“Yes, I came very suddenly.”
+
+Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the
+grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton
+hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking
+about her husband--rather confusedly--and then had checked himself. He
+continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a
+place over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If
+he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had
+the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Isabel
+thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was
+another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+
+“My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were
+still here--if they had thought you would see them,” Lord Warburton went
+on. “Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.”
+
+“It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of
+them.”
+
+“I don’t know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two?
+You know there’s always that old promise.” And his lordship coloured a
+little as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more
+familiar air. “Perhaps I’m not right in saying that just now; of course
+you’re not thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a
+visit. My sisters are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days;
+and if you could come then--as you say you’re not to be very long in
+England--I would see that there should be literally no one else.”
+
+Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be
+there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+
+“Thank you extremely,” she contented herself with saying; “I’m afraid I
+hardly know about Whitsuntide.”
+
+“But I have your promise--haven’t I?--for some other time.”
+
+There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked
+at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was
+that--as had happened before--she felt sorry for him. “Take care you
+don’t miss your train,” she said. And then she added: “I wish you every
+happiness.”
+
+He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. “Ah yes,
+6.40; I haven’t much time, but I’ve a fly at the door. Thank you very
+much.” It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having
+reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. “Good-bye,
+Mrs. Osmond; good-bye.” He shook hands with her, without meeting her
+eyes, and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to
+them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two
+ladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn.
+
+“Are you very sure he’s to be married?” Isabel asked of her aunt.
+
+“I can’t be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and
+he accepted it.”
+
+“Ah,” said Isabel, “I give it up!”--while her aunt returned to the house
+and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.
+
+She gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while she
+strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the
+acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a
+rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as
+an object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before,
+nor even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something
+important had happened to her--that the place had an air of association.
+Then she remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before,
+when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar
+Goodwood informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when
+she had read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing
+that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an
+interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have
+something to say to her. She wouldn’t sit down on it now--she felt
+rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood the
+past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which
+persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this
+agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence
+of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have
+said that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or
+no, if you had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the
+former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment
+she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular
+absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in
+the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her.
+There was nothing to recall her to the house; the two ladies, in their
+seclusion, dined early and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she
+had sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight
+had grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She
+quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had
+become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood,
+who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on the
+unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her
+in the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised
+her of old.
+
+She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started
+forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked
+like violence, but felt like--she knew not what, he grasped her by the
+wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had
+not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was
+something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he
+had looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present
+it was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to
+her--beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost
+seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that.
+All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had
+disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. “You’ve
+frightened me,” she said.
+
+“I didn’t mean to,” he answered, “but if I did a little, no matter.
+I came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn’t come here
+directly. There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took
+a fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I
+don’t know who he was, but I didn’t want to come with him; I wanted to
+see you alone. So I’ve been waiting and walking about. I’ve walked all
+over, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was
+a keeper, or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I
+had made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that
+gentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you.” Goodwood
+spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had parted in Rome.
+Isabel had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into
+herself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out
+sail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was
+a feeling of danger. There was indeed something really formidable in his
+resolution. She gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee,
+leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed
+to darken round them. “I want to speak to you,” he repeated; “I’ve
+something particular to say. I don’t want to trouble you--as I did
+the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I
+couldn’t help it; I knew I was wrong. But I’m not wrong now; please
+don’t think I am,” he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment
+into entreaty. “I came here to-day for a purpose. It’s very different.
+It was vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you.”
+
+She couldn’t have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or
+because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she
+listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep
+into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and
+it was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. “How can you
+help me?” she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had
+said seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+
+“By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you remember
+what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I
+know on good authority; everything’s clear to me to-day. It was a good
+thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,
+a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He
+explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of
+your family and he left you--so long as you should be in England--to my
+care,” said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. “Do you know
+what he said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he
+died? He said: ‘Do everything you can for her; do everything she’ll let
+you.’”
+
+Isabel suddenly got up. “You had no business to talk about me!”
+
+“Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?” he demanded, following
+her fast. “And he was dying--when a man’s dying it’s different.” She
+checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more
+than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That
+had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea,
+which she scented in all her being. “But it doesn’t matter!” he
+exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem
+of her garment. “If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have
+known all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin’s funeral
+to see what’s the matter with you. You can’t deceive me any more; for
+God’s sake be honest with a man who’s so honest with you. You’re the
+most unhappy of women, and your husband’s the deadliest of fiends.”
+
+She turned on him as if he had struck her. “Are you mad?” she cried.
+
+“I’ve never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don’t think it’s
+necessary to defend him. But I won’t say another word against him; I’ll
+speak only of you,” Goodwood added quickly. “How can you pretend you’re
+not heart-broken? You don’t know what to do--you don’t know where to
+turn. It’s too late to play a part; didn’t you leave all that behind you
+in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too--what it
+would cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it
+will”--and he flared almost into anger: “give me one word of truth! When
+I know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save
+you? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you
+go back to your reward? ‘It’s awful, what she’ll have to pay for
+it!’--that’s what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn’t I? He
+was such a near relation!” cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point
+again. “I’d sooner have been shot than let another man say those things
+to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was
+after he got home--when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too.
+I understand all about it: you’re afraid to go back. You’re perfectly
+alone; you don’t know where to turn. You can’t turn anywhere; you know
+that perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of _me_.”
+
+“To think of ‘you’?” Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The
+idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed
+large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had
+been a comet in the sky.
+
+“You don’t know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade
+you to trust me,” Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining
+eyes. “Why should you go back--why should you go through that ghastly
+form?”
+
+“To get away from you!” she answered. But this expressed only a little
+of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She
+had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the
+desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere
+sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her
+feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and
+strange, forced open her set teeth.
+
+At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that
+he would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was
+perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it
+all out. “I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you’ll only for
+once listen to me. It’s too monstrous of you to think of sinking back
+into that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It’s
+you that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+shouldn’t we be happy--when it’s here before us, when it’s so easy? I’m
+yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock.
+What have you to care about? You’ve no children; that perhaps would be
+an obstacle. As it is you’ve nothing to consider. You must save what you
+can of your life; you mustn’t lose it all simply because you’ve lost a
+part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look
+of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the
+world. We’ve nothing to do with all that; we’re quite out of it; we look
+at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next
+is nothing; it’s the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman
+deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life--in going
+down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and
+that’s why I’m here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under
+the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that
+has the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+question is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it! Were we
+born to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I never knew _you_
+afraid! If you’ll only trust me, how little you will be disappointed!
+The world’s all before us--and the world’s very big. I know something
+about that.”
+
+Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were
+pressing something that hurt her.
+
+“The world’s very small,” she said at random; she had an immense
+desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say
+something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never
+seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form
+of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted
+help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not
+whether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then
+that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her
+dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she
+felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her
+feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
+
+“Ah, be mine as I’m yours!” she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly
+given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,
+through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+
+This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the
+metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest
+of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of
+this. “Do me the greatest kindness of all,” she panted. “I beseech you
+to go away!”
+
+“Ah, don’t say that. Don’t kill me!” he cried.
+
+She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. “As you love
+me, as you pity me, leave me alone!”
+
+He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she
+felt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like
+white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and
+it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in
+his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his
+face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and
+made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked
+and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when
+darkness returned she was free. She never looked about her; she only
+darted from the spot. There were lights in the windows of the house;
+they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time--for
+the distance was considerable--she had moved through the darkness (for
+she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked
+all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the
+latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a
+very straight path.
+
+Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in
+Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.
+He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened
+and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and
+jacket; she was on the point of going out. “Oh, good-morning,” he said,
+“I was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond.”
+
+Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good
+deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. “Pray
+what led you to suppose she was here?”
+
+“I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she
+had come to London. He believed she was to come to you.”
+
+Again Miss Stackpole held him--with an intention of perfect kindness--in
+suspense. “She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this
+morning she started for Rome.”
+
+Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the
+doorstep. “Oh, she started--?” he stammered. And without finishing
+his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn’t
+otherwise move.
+
+Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out
+her hand and grasped his arm. “Look here, Mr. Goodwood,” she said; “just
+you wait!”
+
+On which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face, with a
+revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him
+with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his
+life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now
+the key to patience.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portrait of a Lady
+       Volume 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Posting Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2834]
+Release Date: September, 2001
+[Last updated: May 1, 2015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+VOLUME II (of II)
+
+
+By Henry James
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his
+friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they
+had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying
+them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when
+he had obtained his admittance--it was one of the secondary
+theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act
+had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After
+scanning two or three tiers of boxes he perceived in one of the largest
+of these receptacles a lady whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was
+seated facing the stage and partly screened by the curtain of the box;
+and beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They
+appeared to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their
+companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the relative
+coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on the interesting
+pair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the harmony. At
+last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and this accident determined
+him. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper
+regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his
+hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.
+
+"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely
+and want company," was Ralph's greeting.
+
+"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted."
+
+"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want me. Then
+Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice--Miss
+Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either.
+The opera's very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like
+peacocks. I feel very low."
+
+"You had better go home," Lord Warburton said without affectation.
+
+"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over
+her."
+
+"She seems to have plenty of friends."
+
+"Yes, that's why I must watch," said Ralph with the same large
+mock-melancholy.
+
+"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me."
+
+"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about."
+
+Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to a
+friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer
+temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr.
+Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before and who, after he
+came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in
+the subjects of allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor
+that Miss Archer had, in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a
+slight exaltation; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing,
+quickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been
+mistaken on this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence
+of mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to
+indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties. Poor
+Lord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him,
+formally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with
+such arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of
+reparation--preparation? Her voice had tricks of sweetness, but why play
+them on _him_? The others came back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera
+began again. The box was large, and there was room for him to remain
+if he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an
+hour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows
+on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from
+his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young
+lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was
+another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord
+Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however;
+after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said
+nothing to detain him, but it didn't prevent his being puzzled again.
+Why should she mark so one of his values--quite the wrong one--when she
+would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was
+angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+Verdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and
+walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic
+streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under
+the stars.
+
+"What's the character of that gentleman?" Osmond asked of Isabel after
+he had retired.
+
+"Irreproachable--don't you see it?"
+
+"He owns about half England; that's his character," Henrietta remarked.
+"That's what they call a free country!"
+
+"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!" said Gilbert Osmond.
+
+"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human beings?"
+cried Miss Stackpole. "He owns his tenants and has thousands of them.
+It's pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me.
+I don't insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences."
+
+"It seems to me you own a human being or two," Mr. Bantling suggested
+jocosely. "I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me."
+
+"Lord Warburton's a great radical," Isabel said. "He has very advanced
+opinions."
+
+"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a gigantic
+iron fence, some thirty miles round," Henrietta announced for the
+information of Mr. Osmond. "I should like him to converse with a few of
+our Boston radicals."
+
+"Don't they approve of iron fences?" asked Mr. Bantling.
+
+"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were
+talking to _you_ over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass."
+
+"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?" Osmond went on,
+questioning Isabel.
+
+"Well enough for all the use I have for him."
+
+"And how much of a use is that?"
+
+"Well, I like to like him."
+
+"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!" said Osmond.
+
+"No"--she considered--"keep that for liking to _dis_like."
+
+"Do you wish to provoke me then," Osmond laughed, "to a passion for
+_him_?"
+
+She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a
+disproportionate gravity. "No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I should ever
+dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate," she more easily
+added, "is a very nice man."
+
+"Of great ability?" her friend enquired.
+
+"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks."
+
+"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking. How
+detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be clever and
+handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your
+high favour! That's a man I could envy."
+
+Isabel considered him with interest. "You seem to me to be always
+envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to
+destroy the people--I only want to _be_ them. You see it would destroy
+only myself."
+
+"You'd like to be the Pope?" said Isabel.
+
+"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But
+why"--Osmond reverted--"do you speak of your friend as poor?"
+
+"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they've
+hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness," said Ralph,
+joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so
+transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
+
+"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows
+as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+
+"It serves him right if you have," said Henrietta while the curtain rose
+for the ballet.
+
+Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four
+hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she
+encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the
+lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come
+in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert
+Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase,
+entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her
+alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery.
+"And I'm leaving Rome," he added. "I must bid you goodbye." Isabel,
+inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps
+because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was
+thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret,
+but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which
+made him look at her rather unlightedly. "I'm afraid you'll think me
+very 'volatile.' I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop."
+
+"Oh no; you could easily change your mind."
+
+"That's what I have done."
+
+"_Bon voyage_ then."
+
+"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me," said his lordship quite
+dismally.
+
+"Not in the least. But I hate partings."
+
+"You don't care what I do," he went on pitifully.
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "Ah," she said, "you're not keeping your
+promise!"
+
+He coloured like a boy of fifteen. "If I'm not, then it's because I
+can't; and that's why I'm going."
+
+"Good-bye then."
+
+"Good-bye." He lingered still, however. "When shall I see you again?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: "Some
+day after you're married."
+
+"That will never be. It will be after you are."
+
+"That will do as well," she smiled.
+
+"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye."
+
+They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the
+shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of
+these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their
+beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence.
+It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of
+Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude;
+which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on
+the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially,
+because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The
+golden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so
+vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw
+a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows
+of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made
+them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm
+of their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their
+absent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would
+sound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the
+polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all
+before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater
+because she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,
+her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional
+tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and
+then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At
+the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance
+of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands
+behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. "I'm
+surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.
+
+"So I have--the best." And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
+
+"Do you call them better company than an English peer?"
+
+"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago." She got up, speaking with
+intention a little dryly.
+
+Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest
+of his question. "I'm afraid that what I heard the other evening is
+true: you're rather cruel to that nobleman."
+
+Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. "It's not true. I'm
+scrupulously kind."
+
+"That's exactly what I mean!" Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such
+happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was
+fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and
+now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example
+of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of
+taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in
+his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert
+Osmond had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so
+much for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for
+its solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing
+him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of
+such conduct as Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he might
+marry should have done something of that sort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly
+qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond's personal
+merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of
+that gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond
+spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended
+by affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have
+seen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which
+perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman was
+obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His
+good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his
+production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of
+a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man
+could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost
+applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would
+never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a
+knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what
+he called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too
+precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she
+had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as
+smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he
+was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing
+days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow
+irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the
+small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with
+everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at
+once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,
+going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to
+which he prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he
+showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining
+to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of
+life by a tribute to the muse.
+
+He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have
+admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the
+fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his
+spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever
+been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was
+simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human
+heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
+irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded
+himself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not been
+spoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed before I die
+I shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt to reason as if
+"earning" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and
+might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his
+career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here
+and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,
+some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had
+been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that
+is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional
+effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The
+desire to have something or other to show for his "parts"--to show
+somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went
+on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected
+him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs
+of beer to advertise what one could "stand." If an anonymous drawing on
+a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this
+peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as
+from the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of
+style. His "style" was what the girl had discovered with a little help;
+and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world
+without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing _for_ him,
+and he would not have waited in vain.
+
+Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young
+lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave
+Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other
+views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was
+very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know
+she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had
+done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as
+his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the
+cool shadow of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten
+days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.
+It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This
+exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our
+friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was
+to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the
+girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful
+American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable
+staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in
+travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages
+several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making
+arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a
+wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;
+the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the
+pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and
+painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly
+to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,
+bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,
+presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in
+her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient
+to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink
+tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale
+rosiness over the scene.
+
+"You say you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.
+
+"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the
+world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what
+you choose; you can roam through space."
+
+"Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it on the
+way."
+
+"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a
+parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on
+your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see
+you when you're tired and satiated," Osmond added in a moment. "I shall
+prefer you in that state."
+
+Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. "You turn
+things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,
+without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--you think them
+ridiculous."
+
+"Where do you find that?"
+
+She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the
+paper-knife. "You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about
+as if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put
+into my power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. You
+think it bold and ungraceful."
+
+"I think it beautiful," said Osmond. "You know my opinions--I've treated
+you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one ought
+to make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;
+but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be
+trying to do with your own."
+
+She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world is bad,
+is stupid art."
+
+"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good."
+
+"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me," she went
+on.
+
+Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their
+conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had
+seen it before. "You have one!"
+
+"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."
+
+"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries
+I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old
+lacquer?"
+
+"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.
+
+"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong in
+your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it into your
+head."
+
+"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should
+have the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything and I
+know nothing."
+
+"The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond.
+"Besides," he added as if it were a point to be made, "I don't know
+everything."
+
+Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she
+was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased
+her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have
+likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress
+overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages
+or historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That
+most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a
+reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done
+the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were
+a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be
+as well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure wore
+already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from
+which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the
+breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this
+strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better
+not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the
+greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a
+pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her
+silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. "Go
+everywhere," he said at last, in a low, kind voice; "do everything; get
+everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant."
+
+"What do you mean by being triumphant?"
+
+"Well, doing what you like."
+
+"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things
+one likes is often very tiresome."
+
+"Exactly," said Osmond with his quiet quickness. "As I intimated just
+now, you'll be tired some day." He paused a moment and then he went on:
+"I don't know whether I had better not wait till then for something I
+want to say to you."
+
+"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when
+I'm tired," Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+
+"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe,
+though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'"
+
+"Not even when I lose my temper?"
+
+"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful." Osmond
+spoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great moments to see."
+
+"If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.
+
+"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very
+seriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
+bent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to say to you," he went on at
+last, looking up, "is that I find I'm in love with you."
+
+She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"
+
+"Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes to her.
+"No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must
+say it now." She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped
+herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this
+situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the
+critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply
+respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. "I'm
+absolutely in love with you."
+
+He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke
+for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time
+they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow
+the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have said
+which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful
+and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,
+morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she
+had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. "Oh don't say
+that, please," she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread
+of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread
+great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have
+banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,
+that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there
+like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to
+begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
+
+"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said Osmond. "I've
+too little to offer you. What I have--it's enough for me; but it's not
+enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages
+of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it
+can't offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It
+gives me pleasure, I assure you," he went on, standing there before her,
+considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken
+up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,
+refined, slightly ravaged face. "It gives me no pain, because it's
+perfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most important woman in
+the world."
+
+Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking
+she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an
+expression of any such complacency. "You don't offend me; but you
+ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,
+troubled." "Incommoded," she heard herself saying that, and it struck
+her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
+
+"I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. But
+if it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave
+something that I may not be ashamed of."
+
+"I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm not
+overwhelmed," said Isabel with rather a pale smile. "I'm not too
+troubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome to-morrow."
+
+"Of course I don't agree with you there."
+
+"I don't at all _know_ you," she added abruptly; and then she coloured as
+she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord
+Warburton.
+
+"If you were not going away you'd know me better."
+
+"I shall do that some other time."
+
+"I hope so. I'm very easy to know."
+
+"No, no," she emphatically answered--"there you're not sincere. You're
+not easy to know; no one could be less so."
+
+"Well," he laughed, "I said that because I know myself. It may be a
+boast, but I do."
+
+"Very likely; but you're very wise."
+
+"So are you, Miss Archer!" Osmond exclaimed.
+
+"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had
+better go. Good-night."
+
+"God bless you!" said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed
+to surrender. After which he added: "If we meet again you'll find me as
+you leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same."
+
+"Thank you very much. Good-bye."
+
+There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go of
+his own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. "There's one thing more.
+I haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you
+must do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like to
+ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and
+it's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry
+to leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes."
+
+"She doesn't even wish it!" Isabel broke out strangely.
+
+Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match
+these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: "Ah well, it's
+proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper;
+I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't
+know me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for
+propriety."
+
+"You're not conventional?" Isabel gravely asked.
+
+"I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm
+convention itself. You don't understand that?" And he paused a moment,
+smiling. "I should like to explain it." Then with a sudden, quick,
+bright naturalness, "Do come back again," he pleaded. "There are so many
+things we might talk about."
+
+She stood there with lowered eyes. "What service did you speak of just
+now?"
+
+"Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at
+the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my
+ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much," said Gilbert
+Osmond gently.
+
+"It will be a great pleasure to me to go," Isabel answered. "I'll tell
+her what you say. Once more good-bye."
+
+On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood
+a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of
+deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with
+folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not
+diminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something
+that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but
+here, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke
+down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can
+only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether
+natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last
+vague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked
+ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the
+winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and
+Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought
+very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried
+his companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's
+preference--hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme
+of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little
+trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling's aid. Isabel was
+to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs.
+Touchett's departure, and she determined to devote the last of these
+to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for
+a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame
+Merle's. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the
+point of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle
+in the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that
+country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, "forever")
+seemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense
+crenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious
+privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had
+asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention that he had
+also made her a declaration of love.
+
+"_Ah, comme cela se trouve!_" Madame Merle exclaimed. "I myself have been
+thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I
+go off."
+
+"We can go together then," Isabel reasonably said: "reasonably" because
+the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had
+prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like
+it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic
+sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
+
+That personage finely meditated. "After all, why should we both go;
+having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?"
+
+"Very good; I can easily go alone."
+
+"I don't know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome
+bachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!"
+
+Isabel stared. "When Mr. Osmond's away what does it matter?"
+
+"They don't know he's away, you see."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify."
+
+"If you were going why shouldn't I?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman."
+
+"Granting all that, you've not promised."
+
+"How much you think of your promises!" said the elder woman in mild
+mockery.
+
+"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?"
+
+"You're right," Madame Merle audibly reflected. "I really think you wish
+to be kind to the child."
+
+"I wish very much to be kind to her."
+
+"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have
+come if you hadn't. Or rather," Madame Merle added, "_don't_ tell her. She
+won't care."
+
+As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
+way which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
+meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
+this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
+the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
+quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
+the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose
+that she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly
+done? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which
+in the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had
+time to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts
+of things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming
+at the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr.
+Osmond's drawing-room; the little girl was "practising," and Isabel was
+pleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately
+came in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's
+house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an
+hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the
+pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but
+conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel's affairs
+that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her;
+she had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower
+of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our
+admiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned;
+and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
+was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding,
+as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her,
+up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not
+really all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection
+of self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father's visitor,
+or was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that
+Isabel spent in Mr. Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows
+had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there,
+through an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a
+gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her interview
+with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this
+question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure white surface,
+successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor
+talent--only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a
+friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new
+frock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching withal, and she could
+be felt as an easy victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to
+resist, no sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,
+easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where to
+cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had asked leave
+to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy gave her judgement on
+several works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her occupations, her
+father's intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the propriety
+of supplying the information so distinguished a guest would naturally
+expect.
+
+"Please tell me," she said, "did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.
+Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education;
+it isn't finished yet, you know. I don't know what they can do with me
+more; but it appears it's far from finished. Papa told me one day he
+thought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the
+convent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa's
+not rich, and I should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for
+me, because I don't think I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough,
+and I have no memory. For what I'm told, yes--especially when it's
+pleasant; but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who
+was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when she
+was fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to make a dot. You
+don't say it in English? I hope it isn't wrong; I only mean they wished
+to keep the money to marry her. I don't know whether it is for that that
+papa wishes to keep the money--to marry me. It costs so much to marry!"
+Pansy went on with a sigh; "I think papa might make that economy. At
+any rate I'm too young to think about it yet, and I don't care for any
+gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like
+to marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of some
+strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might
+think, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always been
+principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you
+must not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I'm very sorry,
+and he'll be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best.
+That's not a great compliment, for there are not many people. It was
+very kind of you to come to-day--so far from your house; for I'm really
+as yet only a child. Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When
+did _you_ give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know
+how old you are, but I don't know whether it's right to ask. At the
+convent they told us that we must never ask the age. I don't like to do
+anything that's not expected; it looks as if one had not been properly
+taught. I myself--I should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left
+directions for everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off
+that side I go into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not
+to get scorched. I always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful.
+In Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I
+practise three hours. I don't play very well. You play yourself? I wish
+very much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea that I should
+hear good music. Madame Merle has played for me several times; that's
+what I like best about Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall
+never have facility. And I've no voice--just a small sound like the
+squeak of a slate-pencil making flourishes."
+
+Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down
+to the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white
+hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child
+good-bye, held her close, looked at her long. "Be very good," she said;
+"give pleasure to your father."
+
+"I think that's what I live for," Pansy answered. "He has not much
+pleasure; he's rather a sad man."
+
+Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it
+almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged
+her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in
+her head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say
+to Pansy about her father; there were things it would have given her
+pleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner
+became conscious of these things than her imagination was hushed with
+horror at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of
+this she would have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where
+he might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed
+state. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She
+rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a
+moment, still holding her small companion, drawing the child's sweet
+slimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obliged
+to confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in
+talking of Gilbert Osmond to this innocent, diminutive creature who
+was so near him. But she said no other word; she only kissed Pansy once
+again. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that
+opened on the court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather
+wistfully beyond. "I may go no further. I've promised papa not to pass
+this door."
+
+"You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable."
+
+"I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?"
+
+"Not for a long time, I'm afraid."
+
+"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl," said Pansy, "but
+I shall always expect you." And the small figure stood in the high, dark
+doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
+the brightness beyond the big _portone_, which gave a wider dazzle as it
+opened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval
+sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this
+interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is
+engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after
+her return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the
+incidents just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the
+smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses,
+and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have
+suggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open,
+and though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the
+garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
+warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her
+hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest.
+Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not
+be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should
+pass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through
+the garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She wished
+rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judge
+by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave
+she found herself, and positively more weighted, as by the experience of
+the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged,
+she would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and
+was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the
+frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the measure
+of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She
+flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal
+more of life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If
+her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead
+of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have
+evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have
+been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been
+projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for
+instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's
+wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her
+relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought
+her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and
+tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had
+been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing
+the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies
+in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet,
+even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so
+that while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to
+a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in
+the month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an
+Alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade
+of great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as
+might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had
+afterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with
+costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel,
+who in these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done,
+in a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her
+handkerchief.
+
+Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and
+wonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined
+her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these
+speculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as
+he had always done before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or
+mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law might have done
+or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently
+various. At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young
+woman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for
+instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the
+corner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the
+girl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies. On
+the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the
+probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession of
+fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her
+to offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but
+scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than
+Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being
+somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.
+Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she
+appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.
+Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of such
+achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had
+expected of Isabel--to give it form and body. Isabel could have done
+as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her
+husband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe
+which the society of that city might not offer her. We know ourselves
+that Isabel had made conquests--whether inferior or not to those she
+might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to
+decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that
+I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories
+public. She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor
+had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond's state of mind; and she had had
+no better reason for her silence than that she didn't wish to speak.
+It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of
+romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she
+would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing
+of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career
+a strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's
+silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the
+frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very
+often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost her
+courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as
+inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it
+added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+
+Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching
+its height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver
+things than spending the winter in Paris--Paris had sides by which it
+so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her close
+correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She
+had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and
+wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform
+at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the
+departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her
+children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale;
+she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of
+what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something
+that was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest
+moment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers.
+She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow
+had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and
+she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away;
+she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative
+child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and
+made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked
+back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could
+do whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the
+present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back
+from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon
+had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked
+weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long
+way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive
+enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order
+to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging
+policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle
+of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the
+London streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops,
+the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That
+evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start
+in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching
+at Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by
+Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that
+of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.
+Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in
+the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from
+the _Interviewer_. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a
+fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and
+Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Bantling that
+he would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to
+apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt
+replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,
+were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt
+in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one
+"would" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the
+idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank,
+but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She
+easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she
+took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than
+formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext
+for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had
+not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a
+fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should
+make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her
+friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been
+consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two
+ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months
+in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in
+these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among
+the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose
+and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled
+rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup
+after cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess
+circulating _incognita_, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel's
+invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl's
+uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have
+been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however,
+had no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking
+pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which
+was patroness and which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on
+acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend,
+who had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an
+intimacy of three months Isabel felt she knew her better; her character
+had revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed
+her promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a
+consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related
+from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so
+far as it concerned the late M. Merle, a positive adventurer, she might
+say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years
+before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who
+knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in
+startling and lamentable incidents that her companion wondered a person
+so _eprouv�e_ could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in
+life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable
+insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical,
+carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed
+and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much
+as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted;
+it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer,
+condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once
+said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the "old, old"
+world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of
+a different moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up
+under other stars.
+
+She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course
+the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our
+young woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at
+the shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth,
+that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this
+conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an
+occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had
+raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for
+the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might,
+in certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in
+decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had
+not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain;
+and there were evidently things in the world of which it was not
+advantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since
+it so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, "Heaven forgive
+her, she doesn't understand me!" Absurd as it may seem this discovery
+operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was
+even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the
+light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence;
+but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence.
+Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases
+to grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point of
+equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection,
+in other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other.
+However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for
+her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been.
+I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids
+in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the
+broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point
+designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these
+emotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt
+and Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival
+Gilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during
+which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose
+house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he
+should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.
+Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long
+before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on
+this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin
+was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day
+to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was
+prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood
+at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any
+of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,
+but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,
+and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she
+should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What
+he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing
+in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction
+doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked
+in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,
+and as if she were "worth more" for it, like some curious piece in an
+antiquary's collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
+apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
+tray. "Let the gentleman come in," she said, and continued to gaze out
+of the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had
+heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she
+looked round.
+
+Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to
+foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered
+a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel's
+we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to
+her critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight,
+strong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke
+positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor
+weakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same
+voluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in
+it of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled
+hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This
+gave Isabel time to make a reflexion: "Poor fellow, what great things
+he's capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his
+splendid force! What a pity too that one can't satisfy everybody!" It
+gave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: "I can't tell
+you how I hoped you wouldn't come!"
+
+"I've no doubt of that." And he looked about him for a seat. Not only
+had he come, but he meant to settle.
+
+"You must be very tired," said Isabel, seating herself, and generously,
+as she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+
+"No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?"
+
+"Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?"
+
+"Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.
+These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral."
+
+"That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury
+me!" And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their
+situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly
+clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all
+this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she
+was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked
+at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such
+a want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on
+her as a physical weight.
+
+"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I
+could!" he candidly declared.
+
+"I thank you immensely."
+
+"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man."
+
+"That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a real
+conviction. "If you're not happy yourself others have yet a right to
+be."
+
+"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so.
+I don't mind anything you can say now--I don't feel it. The cruellest
+things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you've
+done I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall
+feel all my life."
+
+Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,
+in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over
+propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than
+touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave
+her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure
+of this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. "When did
+you leave New York?"
+
+He threw up his head as if calculating. "Seventeen days ago."
+
+"You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains."
+
+"I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had been
+able."
+
+"It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood," she coldly smiled.
+
+"Not to you--no. But to me."
+
+"You gain nothing that I see."
+
+"That's for me to judge!"
+
+"Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself." And then, to
+change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.
+He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of
+Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young
+lady had been with him just before he left America. "She came to see
+you?" Isabel then demanded.
+
+"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I
+had got your letter."
+
+"Did you tell her?" Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+
+"Oh no," said Caspar Goodwood simply; "I didn't want to do that. She'll
+hear it quick enough; she hears everything."
+
+"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me," Isabel
+declared, trying to smile again.
+
+Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. "I guess she'll come right
+out," he said.
+
+"On purpose to scold me?"
+
+"I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly."
+
+"I'm glad you tell me that," Isabel said. "I must prepare for her."
+
+Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,
+raising them, "Does she know Mr. Osmond?" he enquired.
+
+"A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to
+please Henrietta," she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar
+if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn't
+say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To
+which she made answer that she didn't know yet. "I can only say it will
+be soon. I've told no one but yourself and one other person--an old
+friend of Mr. Osmond's."
+
+"Is it a marriage your friends won't like?" he demanded.
+
+"I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my friends."
+
+He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,
+doing it quite without delicacy. "Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert
+Osmond?"
+
+"Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable
+man. He's not in business," said Isabel. "He's not rich; he's not known
+for anything in particular."
+
+She disliked Mr. Goodwood's questions, but she said to herself that she
+owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor
+Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at
+her. "Where does he come from? Where does he belong?"
+
+She had never been so little pleased with the way he said "belawng." "He
+comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy."
+
+"You said in your letter he was American. Hasn't he a native place?"
+
+"Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy."
+
+"Has he never gone back?"
+
+"Why should he go back?" Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. "He has
+no profession."
+
+"He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the United
+States?"
+
+"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simple--he contents
+himself with Italy."
+
+"With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and
+no appearance of trying to make an epigram. "What has he ever done?" he
+added abruptly.
+
+"That I should marry him? Nothing at all," Isabel replied while her
+patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. "If he had done
+great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;
+I'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to take an interest in him.
+You can't."
+
+"I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean in
+the least that he's a perfect nonentity. You think he's grand, you think
+he's great, though no one else thinks so."
+
+Isabel's colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion,
+and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render
+perceptions she had never taken for fine. "Why do you always come back
+to what others think? I can't discuss Mr. Osmond with you."
+
+"Of course not," said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air
+of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were
+nothing else that they might discuss.
+
+"You see how little you gain," she accordingly broke out--"how little
+comfort or satisfaction I can give you."
+
+"I didn't expect you to give me much."
+
+"I don't understand then why you came."
+
+"I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are."
+
+"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later
+we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been
+pleasanter for each of us than this."
+
+"Waited till after you're married? That's just what I didn't want to do.
+You'll be different then."
+
+"Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You'll see."
+
+"That will make it all the worse," said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+
+"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in order to
+help you to resign yourself."
+
+"I shouldn't care if you did!"
+
+Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the
+window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round
+her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again
+and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just
+quitted. "Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That's better for
+you perhaps than for me."
+
+"I wished to hear the sound of your voice," he said.
+
+"You've heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet."
+
+"It gives me pleasure, all the same." And with this he got up. She had
+felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in
+Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She
+had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his
+messenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better
+pleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy
+implications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights,
+reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change
+her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed;
+and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor's
+remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that
+irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart
+beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself
+that she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the
+wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness
+to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a
+little. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no
+propriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden
+horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an
+opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him
+a month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her
+engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire
+to defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Isabel's part to
+desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile
+held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which
+she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused
+her: "I've not deceived you! I was perfectly free!"
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Caspar.
+
+"I gave you full warning that I'd do as I chose."
+
+"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner
+that I pretty well believed it."
+
+She considered this an instant. "No one can be more surprised than
+myself at my present intention."
+
+"You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe
+it," Caspar went on. "I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I
+remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and
+that's partly why I came."
+
+"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done. There's
+no mistake whatever."
+
+"I saw that as soon as I came into the room."
+
+"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?" she asked with a
+certain fierceness.
+
+"I should like it better than this."
+
+"You're very selfish, as I said before."
+
+"I know that. I'm selfish as iron."
+
+"Even iron sometimes melts! If you'll be reasonable I'll see you again."
+
+"Don't you call me reasonable now?"
+
+"I don't know what to say to you," she answered with sudden humility.
+
+"I shan't trouble you for a long time," the young man went on. He made
+a step towards the door, but he stopped. "Another reason why I came was
+that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having
+changed your mind."
+
+Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. "In explanation? Do you think
+I'm bound to explain?"
+
+He gave her one of his long dumb looks. "You were very positive. I did
+believe it."
+
+"So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?"
+
+"No, I suppose not. Well," he added, "I've done what I wished. I've seen
+you."
+
+"How little you make of these terrible journeys," she felt the poverty
+of her presently replying.
+
+"If you're afraid I'm knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be
+at your ease about it." He turned away, this time in earnest, and no
+hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.
+
+At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. "I shall leave
+Florence to-morrow," he said without a quaver.
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it!" she answered passionately. Five minutes
+after he had gone out she burst into tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had
+vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this
+expression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;
+Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She
+had an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact
+public before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about
+it. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a
+somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more;
+she waited till Mrs. Touchett came into the drawing-room before the
+mid-day breakfast, and then she began. "Aunt Lydia, I've something to
+tell you."
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. "You
+needn't tell me; I know what it is."
+
+"I don't know how you know."
+
+"The same way that I know when the window's open--by feeling a draught.
+You're going to marry that man."
+
+"What man do you mean?" Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+
+"Madame Merle's friend--Mr. Osmond."
+
+"I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the
+principal thing he's known by?"
+
+"If he's not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done for
+him!" cried Mrs. Touchett. "I shouldn't have expected it of her; I'm
+disappointed."
+
+"If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement
+you're greatly mistaken," Isabel declared with a sort of ardent
+coldness.
+
+"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman's
+having had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your
+attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she
+hadn't put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he
+was not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him."
+
+"He has taken a great deal for himself!" cried Isabel with a voluntary
+laugh.
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. "I think he must, after all, to have
+made you like him so much."
+
+"I thought he even pleased _you_."
+
+"He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him."
+
+"Be angry with me, not with him," said the girl.
+
+"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this
+that you refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr. Osmond, since
+others have done so?"
+
+"Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There's
+nothing _of_ him," Mrs. Touchett explained.
+
+"Then he can't hurt me," said Isabel.
+
+"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings,
+you should know."
+
+"I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?"
+
+"What _you_ will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as
+they go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your partnership
+you'll bring everything."
+
+"Is it that Mr. Osmond isn't rich? Is that what you're talking about?"
+Isabel asked.
+
+"He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such
+things and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very precious.
+Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some
+other reason."
+
+Isabel hesitated a little. "I think I value everything that's valuable.
+I care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a
+little."
+
+"Give it to him then; but marry some one else."
+
+"His name's good enough for me," the girl went on. "It's a very pretty
+name. Have I such a fine one myself?"
+
+"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen
+American names. Do you marry him out of charity?"
+
+"It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my duty
+to explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So please don't
+remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can't
+talk about it."
+
+"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of
+intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle."
+
+"You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very
+considerate."
+
+"It was not considerate--it was convenient," said Mrs. Touchett. "But I
+shall talk to Madame Merle."
+
+"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good
+friend to me."
+
+"Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me."
+
+"What has she done to you?"
+
+"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your
+engagement."
+
+"She couldn't have prevented it."
+
+"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she
+could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I
+didn't understand that she would play two at the same time."
+
+"I don't know what part she may have played to you," Isabel said;
+"that's between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and
+devoted."
+
+"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me
+she was watching you only in order to interpose."
+
+"She said that to please you," the girl answered; conscious, however, of
+the inadequacy of the explanation.
+
+"To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased
+to-day?"
+
+"I don't think you're ever much pleased," Isabel was obliged to reply.
+"If Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by
+insincerity?"
+
+"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you
+were marching away, and she was really beating the drum."
+
+"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and
+even if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have tried to stop me."
+
+"No, but some one else would."
+
+"Whom do you mean?" Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.
+Touchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained
+her gaze rather than returned it. "Would you have listened to Ralph?"
+
+"Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond."
+
+"Ralph doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much
+for you."
+
+"I know he does," said Isabel; "and I shall feel the value of it now,
+for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason."
+
+"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,
+and he argued the other way."
+
+"He did it for the sake of argument," the girl smiled. "You don't accuse
+him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?"
+
+"He never pretended he'd prevent it."
+
+"I'm glad of that!" cried Isabel gaily. "I wish very much," she
+presently added, "that when he comes you'd tell him first of my
+engagement."
+
+"Of course I'll mention it," said Mrs. Touchett. "I shall say nothing
+more to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others."
+
+"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the
+announcement should come from you than from me."
+
+"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!" And on this the aunt
+and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her
+word, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence,
+however, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an
+hour before.
+
+"From an old friend--an American gentleman," Isabel said with a colour
+in her cheek.
+
+"An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman who
+calls at ten o'clock in the morning."
+
+"It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+evening."
+
+"Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?"
+
+"He only arrived last night."
+
+"He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?" Mrs. Touchett cried.
+"He's an American gentleman truly."
+
+"He is indeed," said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what
+Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+
+Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.
+Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed
+at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of
+his health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been
+shocked by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten
+how ill he looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she
+wondered if he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed
+to living with an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to
+conventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently
+complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural
+oddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and
+still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper
+and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the
+exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was
+altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of
+relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; his
+hands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he shambled and stumbled and
+shuffled in a manner that denoted great physical helplessness. It was
+perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than
+ever as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his own
+disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well indeed with
+Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness marking his
+view of a world in which the reason for his own continued presence was
+past finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness
+had become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; they
+struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be
+charming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had
+hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed
+not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him
+from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of
+being exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful;
+he had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to
+consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally
+sick. Such had been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she
+had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal
+she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always had
+a dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth more to the
+giver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no great sensibility
+to feel that poor Ralph's tenure of life was less elastic than it should
+be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he had all the illumination
+of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.
+
+Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,
+and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now
+promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was
+not pleased with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of
+her affection for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not
+even prepared, or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for
+it would be his privilege--it would be indeed his natural line--to find
+fault with any step she might take toward marriage. One's cousin always
+pretended to hate one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it
+was a part of one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Ralph was
+nothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things
+being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any
+one, it would be absurd to regard as important that her choice should
+square with his views. What were his views after all? He had pretended
+to believe she had better have married Lord Warburton; but this was
+only because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted
+him Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the
+opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a
+marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only
+give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had
+other employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the
+care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must
+have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing.
+After three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman
+wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through
+the form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily
+believe that during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo
+Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had
+literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even more
+sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked
+and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the
+world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the
+house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden
+of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head
+thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the
+heart; he had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could
+he say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it?
+To attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the attempt should
+succeed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the
+man to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only
+in the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
+damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and to
+dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor protest with hope.
+Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that the affianced pair were
+daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself
+little at Palazzo Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere,
+as she was free to do after their engagement had been made public. She
+had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt
+for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved,
+and she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
+during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young lady,
+joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a while
+through the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
+luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
+instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed
+beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this
+moment could not have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over
+it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious
+caves. Ralph was sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a
+statue of Terpsichore--a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated
+draperies in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his
+attitude suggested at first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light
+footstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turning away she
+stood for a moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his
+eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his
+own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference she
+was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to brood
+over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the languor of
+his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the property
+inherited from his father--the fruit of eccentric arrangements of
+which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told Isabel, now
+encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to
+have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence;
+he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank
+than in the state of Patagonia.
+
+"I'm sorry I waked you," Isabel said; "you look too tired."
+
+"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you."
+
+"Are you tired of that?"
+
+"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never arrive."
+
+"What do you wish to arrive at?" she put to him, closing her parasol.
+
+"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your
+engagement."
+
+"Don't think too much of it," she lightly returned.
+
+"Do you mean that it's none of my business?"
+
+"Beyond a certain point, yes."
+
+"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me
+wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you."
+
+"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent."
+
+"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now," Ralph said.
+He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at
+her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against
+his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands
+laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable;
+he hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she
+was usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to
+utter a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. "I
+think I've hardly got over my surprise," he went on at last. "You were
+the last person I expected to see caught."
+
+"I don't know why you call it caught."
+
+"Because you're going to be put into a cage."
+
+"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you," she answered.
+
+"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of."
+
+"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm satisfied
+that I'm doing well."
+
+"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty
+beyond everything. You wanted only to see life."
+
+"I've seen it," said Isabel. "It doesn't look to me now, I admit, such
+an inviting expanse."
+
+"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view
+of it and wanted to survey the whole field."
+
+"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose a
+corner and cultivate that."
+
+"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible.
+I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that
+you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me
+off my guard."
+
+"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew
+nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your
+guard, however," Isabel asked, "what would you have done?"
+
+"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'"
+
+"Wait for what?"
+
+"Well, for a little more light," said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,
+while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+
+"Where should my light have come from? From you?"
+
+"I might have struck a spark or two."
+
+Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay
+upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her
+expression was not conciliatory. "You're beating about the bush, Ralph.
+You wish to say you don't like Mr. Osmond, and yet you're afraid."
+
+"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to wound _him_,
+yes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of him. If you marry
+him it won't be a fortunate way for me to have spoken."
+
+"_If_ I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?"
+
+"Of course that seems to you too fatuous."
+
+"No," said Isabel after a little; "it seems to me too touching."
+
+"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me."
+
+She stroked out her long gloves again. "I know you've a great affection
+for me. I can't get rid of that."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince
+you how intensely I want you to do well."
+
+"And how little you trust me!"
+
+There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. "I
+trust you, but I don't trust him," said Ralph.
+
+She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. "You've said it now,
+and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by it."
+
+"Not if you're just."
+
+"I'm very just," said Isabel. "What better proof of it can there be than
+that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the matter with me, but
+I'm not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought
+to be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn't think so. He wants me to know
+everything; that's what I like him for. You've nothing to gain, I know
+that. I've never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have
+much reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice;
+you've often done so. No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your
+wisdom," she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a
+kind of contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be
+just; it touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a
+creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a
+moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had
+said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse,
+as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that
+direction. "I see you've some special idea; I should like very much to
+hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange
+thing to argue about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that
+if you expect to dissuade me you may give it up. You'll not move me
+an inch; it's too late. As you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be
+pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will be in your own
+thoughts. I shall never reproach you."
+
+"I don't think you ever will," said Ralph. "It's not in the least the
+sort of marriage I thought you'd make."
+
+"What sort of marriage was that, pray?"
+
+"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I
+had a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for that type."
+
+"What's the matter with Mr. Osmond's type, if it be one? His being
+so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him," the girl
+declared. "What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all."
+
+"Yes," Ralph said, "I know him very little, and I confess I haven't
+facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can't help
+feeling that you're running a grave risk."
+
+"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as mine."
+
+"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he
+would."
+
+Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her
+cousin. "I don't think I understand you," she said at last coldly. "I
+don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance."
+
+Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped
+into her face. "Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that
+one's husband should be of importance to one's self!"
+
+Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking
+he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,
+resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an
+air of the most respectful deliberation.
+
+"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean," he presently said. He felt
+agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he
+wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively
+gentle.
+
+Isabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. "In everything
+that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may
+be nobler natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.
+Osmond's is the finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting
+enough, and clever enough. I'm far more struck with what he has and what
+he represents than with what he may lack."
+
+"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future," Ralph
+observed without answering this; "I had amused myself with planning out
+a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You
+were not to come down so easily or so soon."
+
+"Come down, you say?"
+
+"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to
+me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light,
+over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud--a
+missile that should never have reached you--and straight you drop to
+the ground. It hurts me," said Ralph audaciously, "hurts me as if I had
+fallen myself!"
+
+The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face. "I
+don't understand you in the least," she repeated. "You say you amused
+yourself with a project for my career--I don't understand that.
+Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you're doing it at my
+expense."
+
+Ralph shook his head. "I'm not afraid of your not believing that I've
+had great ideas for you."
+
+"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?" she pursued.
+
+"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now. There's
+nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she likes," said
+poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+
+"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my
+dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a
+more active, larger, freer sort of nature." Ralph hesitated, then added:
+"I can't get over the sense that Osmond is somehow--well, small." He had
+uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would
+flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of
+considering.
+
+"Small?" She made it sound immense.
+
+"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!"
+
+"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that," said
+Isabel. "It makes one more sure to respect others."
+
+Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+
+"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation to
+things--to others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."
+
+"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's excellent."
+
+"He's the incarnation of taste," Ralph went on, thinking hard how he
+could best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without putting
+himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished
+to describe him impersonally, scientifically. "He judges and measures,
+approves and condemns, altogether by that."
+
+"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite."
+
+"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as
+his bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite
+one--ruffled?"
+
+"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's."
+
+At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. "Ah, that's
+wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in
+that way--you were meant for something better than to keep guard over
+the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!"
+
+Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment
+looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult.
+But "You go too far," she simply breathed.
+
+"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love you!"
+
+Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden
+wish to strike him off. "Ah then, you're not disinterested!"
+
+"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph quickly, forcing a
+smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more
+than he intended.
+
+Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the
+garden; but after a little she turned back to him. "I'm afraid your talk
+then is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it--but it doesn't
+matter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible I should; I've only
+tried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to you for attempting to
+explain," she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just
+sprung up had already subsided. "It's very good of you to try to warn
+me, if you're really alarmed; but I won't promise to think of what
+you've said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it
+yourself; you've done your duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain
+to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could." She
+paused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph
+observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of
+concession. "I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it
+justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not important--no,
+he's not important; he's a man to whom importance is supremely
+indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call him 'small,' then
+he's as small as you please. I call that large--it's the largest thing
+I know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I'm going to
+marry," Isabel repeated. "I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr.
+Osmond; he's not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would
+seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and
+coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any
+one but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer you once
+for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage--what
+they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one ambition--to be free to
+follow out a good feeling. I had others once, but they've passed away.
+Do you complain of Mr. Osmond because he's not rich? That's just what I
+like him for. I've fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful
+for it as to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and
+kneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing than
+he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a man who has
+borne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond
+has never scrambled nor struggled--he has cared for no worldly prize. If
+that's to be narrow, if that's to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm
+not frightened by such words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry
+that you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm
+surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see
+one--you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows
+everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest,
+highest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea. It's a pity, but
+I can't help it; it regards you more than me." Isabel paused a moment,
+looking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a sentiment which
+contradicted the careful calmness of her manner--a mingled sentiment,
+to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of
+having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness
+and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said
+nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly
+solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. "What
+sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?" she asked suddenly.
+"You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one
+touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in
+one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother
+has never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding
+with Lord Warburton, and she's horrified at my contenting myself with a
+person who has none of his great advantages--no property, no title,
+no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor
+brilliant belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these
+things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very
+cultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious proprietor."
+
+Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said
+merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of
+the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself
+to the weight of his total impression--the impression of her ardent good
+faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was
+dismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that,
+having invented a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not
+for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as
+honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing
+to put it into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He
+had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor
+Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with
+a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion,
+and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the
+house. Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court together
+and reached the big staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused,
+turning on him a face of elation--absolutely and perversely of
+gratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct
+clearer to her. "Shall you not come up to breakfast?" she asked.
+
+"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry."
+
+"You ought to eat," said the girl; "you live on air."
+
+"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another
+mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that
+if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how
+I feel to-day."
+
+"Do you think I'm in trouble?"
+
+"One's in trouble when one's in error."
+
+"Very well," said Isabel; "I shall never complain of my trouble to you!"
+And she moved up the staircase.
+
+Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with
+his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and
+made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the
+Florentine sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse
+to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The
+discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin
+made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was
+simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming
+to Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to
+throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she
+married to please herself. One did other things to please other people;
+one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction
+was confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was
+in love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright
+days, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his
+hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief
+impression produced on Isabel's spirit by this criticism was that the
+passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the
+loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever
+known before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope
+that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her
+not having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of
+anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late,
+on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly
+console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from
+her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she
+was not sorry to display her contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk
+about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for
+a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her not to marry
+at all--that was what it really meant--because he was amused with the
+spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made
+him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
+flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the
+more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little
+free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident,
+in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert
+Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She
+tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious,
+almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed
+and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed
+virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's
+right was always made of the wrong of some one else.
+
+The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted
+meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on
+his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of
+men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however,
+made him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten
+and dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he
+never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance--which
+presented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions.
+He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him
+a present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live
+with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness
+be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired
+the air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than
+a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one's
+thought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought
+reproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred
+it to be freshened in the reproduction even as "words" by music. His
+egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this
+lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a
+plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give
+a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served
+dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he
+could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew
+perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little
+favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so
+completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary
+to express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one
+morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. "It's the difference in our
+fortune they don't like," he said. "They think I'm in love with your
+money."
+
+"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?" Isabel asked. "How do you
+know what they think?"
+
+"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett
+the other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I
+should have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you
+rich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course
+when a poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations.
+I don't mind them; I only care for one thing--for your not having
+the shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask nothing
+think--I'm not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so
+concerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I
+have taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend
+I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's
+yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow,
+but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've
+sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life
+tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than
+most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their
+business to suspect--that of your family; it's proper on the whole they
+should. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.
+Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to
+be thankful for life and love." "It has made me better, loving you," he
+said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser and easier and--I won't
+pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want
+a great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them.
+Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself
+I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to
+have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really
+satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when
+one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the
+lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and
+finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it
+properly I see it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't tell you
+how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer afternoon
+awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day--with a golden haze,
+and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light,
+the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and which you
+love to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've
+got what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We've the faculty
+of admiration and several capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're
+not mean, we're not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness.
+You're remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor
+child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's
+all soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring."
+
+They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal
+of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live
+for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had
+been a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy
+should be a party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old
+acquaintance and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her
+a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire
+for unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense
+that life was vacant without some private duty that might gather one's
+energies to a point. She had told Ralph she had "seen life" in a year
+or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of
+that of observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations,
+her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient
+conviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed
+in a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away
+numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the
+situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the
+stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the
+fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be
+of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she
+could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was
+giving.
+
+He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--Pansy who
+was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she
+would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who
+held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to
+go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore
+a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her.
+She found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the
+end of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an
+appeal for approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance
+had the personal touch that the child's affectionate nature craved.
+She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on
+them--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render,
+part of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the
+childish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new
+relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. "She doesn't
+know," he said to Isabel; "she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly
+natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good
+friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's
+the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think;
+I've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've
+brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way."
+
+He was very fond, in all things, of the "old way"; that had struck
+Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. "It occurs to me that
+you'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told her," she
+said. "You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she
+may be jealous."
+
+"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I
+should like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will
+come into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be."
+
+Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it
+somehow appeared, of Pansy's innocence--her own appreciation of it being
+more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told
+her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter,
+who had made such a pretty little speech--"Oh, then I shall have a
+beautiful sister!" She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not
+cried, as he expected.
+
+"Perhaps she had guessed it," said Isabel.
+
+"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
+would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her
+good manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for
+yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person."
+
+The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither
+Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
+in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
+that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
+visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
+ushered into the Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her
+aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,
+who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+company. It was Isabel's view that the little girl might have given
+lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified
+this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself
+while they waited together for the Countess. Her father's decision, the
+year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive
+the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her
+theory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+
+"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him," said this
+excellent woman's pupil. "It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very
+well."
+
+"You think I shall suit _you_?"
+
+"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will
+suit each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're not so
+quiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you're more quiet than many
+others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's
+always in motion, in agitation--to-day especially; you'll see when she
+comes in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders,
+but I suppose there's no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a
+delightful companion for papa."
+
+"For you too, I hope," Isabel said.
+
+"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself
+think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I
+think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be
+my model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be
+very feeble. I'm very glad for papa--he needed something more than
+me. Without you I don't see how he could have got it. You'll be my
+stepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be
+cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me.
+I'm not afraid at all."
+
+"My good little Pansy," said Isabel gently, "I shall be ever so kind to
+you." A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need
+it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+
+"Very well then, I've nothing to fear," the child returned with her
+note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to
+suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
+
+Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini
+was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room
+with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead
+and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite.
+She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of
+turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand
+before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to
+a composition of figures already sketched in. "If you expect me to
+congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care
+if I do or not; I believe you're supposed not to care--through being so
+clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell
+fibs; I never tell them unless there's something rather good to be
+gained. I don't see what's to be gained with you--especially as you
+wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any more than I make paper
+flowers or flouncey lampshades--I don't know how. My lampshades would be
+sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very
+glad for my own sake that you're to marry Osmond; but I won't pretend
+I'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way
+you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and
+original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family.
+Our family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and
+my mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne.
+But we're dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up.
+I've great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to
+talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think
+they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose
+Pansy oughtn't to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me
+for--to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing what
+horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had
+designs on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the
+strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be
+disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was
+enchanted for myself; and after all I'm very selfish. By the way, you
+won't respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate.
+I should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the same, we shall be
+better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and
+see you, though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with
+Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not afraid
+of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you
+won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair,
+and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you can
+stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go
+out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir."
+
+"Let her stay, please," said Isabel. "I would rather hear nothing that
+Pansy may not!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of
+pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third
+floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame
+Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face
+and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room
+and requested the favour of his name. "Mr. Edward Rosier," said the
+young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
+
+The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an
+ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered
+that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of
+several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits
+he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this
+charming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him
+which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary
+sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at
+Saint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to
+pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the
+household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,
+he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare
+his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go
+down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under
+bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if
+he were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in
+the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr.
+Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it
+on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the
+young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might
+expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in
+November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the
+brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had
+at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to
+a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain
+to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably
+finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece.
+He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have
+thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the
+bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose
+taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate.
+That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods
+would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame
+Merle's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every
+style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He
+had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then "By
+Jove, she has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured. The
+room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression
+of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved.
+Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over
+the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with
+princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before
+the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce
+attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately,
+as if he were smelling it.
+
+"It's old Venetian," she said; "it's rather good."
+
+"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it."
+
+"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation."
+
+"Ah, but I can't wear mine," smiled the visitor.
+
+"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear."
+
+His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. "You've some very
+good things."
+
+"Yes, but I hate them."
+
+"Do you want to get rid of them?" the young man quickly asked.
+
+"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!"
+
+"I love my things," said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his
+recognitions. "But it's not about them, nor about yours, that I came
+to talk to you." He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: "I
+care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!"
+
+Madame Merle opened wide eyes. "Did you come to tell me that?"
+
+"I came to ask your advice."
+
+She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her
+large white hand. "A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice."
+
+"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a
+man in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But never so much as
+this time--really never so much. I should like particularly to know what
+you think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Osmond I'm not--well,
+a real collector's piece."
+
+"Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms
+folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+
+"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There
+will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to
+believe her father will consent."
+
+"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in
+rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize."
+
+"You've been very kind to me," said the young man. "That's why I came."
+
+"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare
+now, and there's no telling what one may get by it." With which the
+left-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression to the joke.
+
+But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently
+strenuous. "Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!"
+
+"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me
+if I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I
+must tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of Pansy Osmond."
+
+"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her
+family, and I thought you might have influence."
+
+Madame Merle considered. "Whom do you call her family?"
+
+"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere."
+
+"Mr. Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed
+a member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying
+her."
+
+"I'm sorry for that," said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. "I
+think Mrs. Osmond would favour me."
+
+"Very likely--if her husband doesn't."
+
+He raised his eyebrows. "Does she take the opposite line from him?"
+
+"In everything. They think quite differently."
+
+"Well," said Rosier, "I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business.
+She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Yes, she's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves
+her as if she were her own mother."
+
+"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor
+child," said Madame Merle. "Have you declared your sentiments?"
+
+"Never!" cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. "Never till I've
+assured myself of those of the parents."
+
+"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the
+proprieties."
+
+"I think you're laughing at me," the young man murmured, dropping back
+in his chair and feeling his small moustache. "I didn't expect that of
+you, Madame Merle."
+
+She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.
+"You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and
+the best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think."
+
+"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for
+that," said Ned Rosier.
+
+"I'm glad, after all, that you've told me," Madame Merle went on. "Leave
+it to me a little; I think I can help you."
+
+"I said you were the person to come to!" her visitor cried with prompt
+elation.
+
+"You were very clever," Madame Merle returned more dryly. "When I say I
+can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a
+little if it is."
+
+"I'm awfully decent, you know," said Rosier earnestly. "I won't say I've
+no faults, but I'll say I've no vices."
+
+"All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call
+vices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What have you got
+besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?"
+
+"I've a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a year.
+With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an
+income."
+
+"Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you
+live."
+
+"Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris."
+
+Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. "It wouldn't be famous; you'd
+have to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken."
+
+"We don't want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything
+pretty it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can
+afford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but
+muslin--without the sprig," said Rosier reflectively.
+
+"Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to you at
+any rate for that theory."
+
+"It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into it.
+She understands all that; that's why I love her."
+
+"She's a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely graceful.
+But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing."
+
+Rosier scarce demurred. "I don't in the least desire that he should. But
+I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man."
+
+"The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do
+something."
+
+"For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!" Madame Merle
+exclaimed with a laugh.
+
+"I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond," Madame Merle went on, "will probably prefer to keep her
+money for her own children."
+
+"Her own children? Surely she has none."
+
+"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago,
+six months after his birth. Others therefore may come."
+
+"I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid woman."
+
+Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. "Ah, about her there's much to
+be said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out that you're a
+_parti_. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.
+
+"Pardon me, I think it may be," said Rosier quite lucidly.
+
+"You'll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!"
+
+"I think you underrate me."
+
+"You're not so innocent as that? Seriously," said Madame Merle,
+"of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a
+combination to be considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at, but
+there might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline
+to believe he can do better."
+
+"_He_ can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do better
+than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know," Rosier added
+eagerly.
+
+"She does--I know it."
+
+"Ah," cried the young man, "I said you were the person to come to."
+
+"But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her," Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+"In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say, we're
+an innocent couple. How did _you_ know it?"
+
+"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find
+out for you."
+
+Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. "You say that rather coldly.
+Don't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be."
+
+"I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages."
+
+"Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"_Gardez-vous-en bien!_" And Madame Merle was on her feet. "Don't set her
+going, or you'll spoil everything."
+
+Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess _had_ been
+after all the right person to come to. "I don't think I understand
+you. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to
+succeed."
+
+"Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the
+better, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her new. But don't
+for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband
+may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you
+not to multiply points of difference between them."
+
+Poor Rosier's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand
+of Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste
+for proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which
+he concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner's "best
+set" came to his assistance. "I don't see that I'm bound to consider Mr.
+Osmond so very much!" he exclaimed. "No, but you should consider _her_.
+You say you're an old friend. Would you make her suffer?"
+
+"Not for the world."
+
+"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few
+soundings."
+
+"Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I'm in love."
+
+"Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to heed
+what I say?"
+
+"You're very kind; I'll be very good," the young man promised. "But I'm
+afraid Mr. Osmond's pretty hard," he added in his mild voice as he went
+to the door.
+
+Madame Merle gave a short laugh. "It has been said before. But his wife
+isn't easy either."
+
+"Ah, she's a splendid woman!" Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.
+He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was
+already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he
+had given Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself
+in spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond's home. He reflected
+constantly on what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his
+mind the impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her
+_de confiance_, as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been
+precipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had
+incurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had
+known Madame Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her
+a delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for
+assuming that she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms,
+gracefully arranged as these members might be to receive her. She had
+indeed shown him benevolence, and she was a person of consideration
+among the girl's people, where she had a rather striking appearance
+(Rosier had more than once wondered how she managed it) of being
+intimate without being familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these
+advantages. There was no particular reason why she should take trouble
+for him; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Rosier felt
+rather a fool when he thought of his having appealed to her on the
+ground that she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had
+appeared to say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his
+bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or three
+of the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss
+Osmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say
+so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like
+her to believe it.
+
+It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond's,
+Mrs. Osmond having an "evening"--she had taken the Thursday of each
+week--when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of
+civility. The object of Mr. Rosier's well-regulated affection dwelt in
+a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure
+overlooking a sunny _piazzetta_ in the neighbourhood of the Farnese
+Palace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived--a palace by Roman measure,
+but a dungeon to poor Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of
+evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious
+father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in
+a kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name,
+which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which
+was mentioned in "Murray" and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague
+survey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio
+in the _piano nobile_ and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the
+wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain
+gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he
+could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered
+into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on
+settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this
+habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour enough,
+and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels
+he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details
+of the cornice had quite the grand air. But Rosier was haunted by the
+conviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up
+there to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of
+being thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There
+was one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he
+found himself in Mrs. Osmond's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which
+were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very
+strong in "good things." It was a taste of Osmond's own--not at all of
+hers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when,
+after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even
+better "French" than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit
+that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman
+should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of
+her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a
+large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed
+a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his
+greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.
+Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.
+For "advice" read "cash," he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert
+Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season
+confirmed his most cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may
+freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented
+himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls
+of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really
+yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme
+seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about
+for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted
+a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took
+everything comfortable for granted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a
+concave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here
+Mrs. Osmond usually sat--though she was not in her most customary place
+to-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about
+the fire. The room was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it
+contained the larger things and--almost always--an odour of flowers.
+Pansy on this occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the
+resort of younger visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before
+the chimney, leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up
+and was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were
+talking together; but he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an
+expression, frequent with them, that seemed to represent them as engaged
+with objects more worth their while than the appearances actually
+thrust upon them. Rosier, coming in unannounced, failed to attract his
+attention; but the young man, who was very punctilious, though he was
+even exceptionally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he
+had come to see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put out his
+left hand, without changing his attitude.
+
+"How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about."
+
+"Never fear; I shall find her," said Rosier cheerfully.
+
+Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so
+efficiently looked at. "Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn't like
+it," he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there,
+but she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or
+would come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond,
+having a fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly
+resentful, and where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of
+being quite in the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without
+help, and then in a moment, "I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte
+to-day," he said.
+
+Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his
+boot-sole, "I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!" he returned.
+
+"I hope you're not losing your interest?"
+
+"In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest."
+
+Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. "You're not
+thinking of parting with a--a piece or two?"
+
+"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier," said
+Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
+
+"Ah, you want to keep, but not to add," Rosier remarked brightly.
+
+"Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match."
+
+Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of
+assurance. "Ah, well, I have!" was all he could murmur; and he knew
+his murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the
+adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She
+was dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had
+said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought
+of her and the terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his
+admiration. Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it
+was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for
+authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that
+secret of a "lustre" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering,
+which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him
+to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such
+tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her
+youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost
+something of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately
+taken exception--she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all
+events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the
+picture of a gracious lady. "You see I'm very regular," he said. "But
+who should be if I'm not?"
+
+"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in
+tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady."
+
+"Ah, please, what young lady?" Rosier was immensely obliging; but this
+was not what he had come for.
+
+"She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to." Rosier
+hesitated a moment. "Can't Mr. Osmond speak to her? He's within six feet
+of her."
+
+Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. "She's not very lively, and he doesn't like
+dull people."
+
+"But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!"
+
+"I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so obliging."
+
+"No, he's not--to me." And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+
+"That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+
+"So I tell him," she said, still smiling.
+
+"You see I want some tea," Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
+
+"That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady."
+
+"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple
+truth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, turning away, "I can't help you there!"
+
+Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink,
+whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in
+making to Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken
+the spirit of his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable
+of occupying this young man's mind for a considerable time. At last,
+however, he became--comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little
+what promises he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to
+abandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy
+Osmond, who had given him the tea for his companion--Pansy was as fond
+as ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her. Into this mild
+colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his
+small sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at
+first not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at
+Florence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the
+Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked together of matters
+sacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at
+nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the
+part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree
+the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style;
+and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart
+attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it--very much as if it
+were lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have
+been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was
+not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted.
+Only he called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed
+were happy enough. "No, she's unique--she's absolutely unique," he used
+to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he
+have admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had
+the style of a little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye.
+It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression
+in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only
+looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier,
+who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her
+charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish
+prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked
+him--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him
+feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he
+had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect _jeune fille_, and
+one couldn't make of a _jeune fille_ the enquiry requisite for throwing
+light on such a point. A _jeune fille_ was what Rosier had always dreamed
+of--a _jeune fille_ who should yet not be French, for he had felt that
+this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had
+never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she
+had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An American jeune
+fille--what could be better than that? She would be frank and gay, and
+yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men,
+nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Rosier
+could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of
+hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but
+he was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were
+the most sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he
+entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of greater
+importance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of the house.
+There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been placed on his
+guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the warning to Pansy;
+it would not have been part of his policy to let her know that a
+prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he _was_ in love
+with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions of
+circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant
+by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely
+he himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl
+in so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her
+mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that
+she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter
+departed together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be
+virtually alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before;
+he had never been alone with a _jeune fille_. It was a great moment; poor
+Rosier began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond
+the one in which they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and
+lighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty
+all the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow;
+there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very
+temple of authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture;
+he was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of
+stretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other
+maiden had left them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on
+the far side of the room. For a little it occurred to him that she was
+frightened--too frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured
+him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed
+for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and
+look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He
+had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was
+of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he
+didn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He
+therefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
+
+"Certainly, you may go," said Pansy; "and if you like I'll show you."
+She was not in the least frightened.
+
+"That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind," Rosier
+murmured.
+
+They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it
+seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. "It's not for
+winter evenings; it's more for summer," she said. "It's papa's taste; he
+has so much."
+
+He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He
+looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation.
+"Doesn't Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature," said Pansy--"and
+for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows
+everything."
+
+Rosier was silent a little. "There's one thing I'm sure he knows!" he
+broke out presently. "He knows that when I come here it's, with all
+respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who's so charming--it's
+really," said the young man, "to see you!"
+
+"To see me?" And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+
+"To see you; that's what I come for," Rosier repeated, feeling the
+intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+
+Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not
+needed to make her face more modest. "I thought it was for that."
+
+"And it was not disagreeable to you?"
+
+"I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me," said Pansy.
+
+"I was afraid of offending you."
+
+"You don't offend me," the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel
+had kissed her.
+
+"You like me then, Pansy?" Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
+
+"Yes--I like you."
+
+They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock
+was perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from
+without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him
+the very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her
+hand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted,
+still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something
+ineffably passive. She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now
+anything might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting
+for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever;
+but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.
+Rosier felt that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his
+heart she would submit without a murmur, would rest there without a
+question. It was true that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow
+Empire _salottino_. She had known it was for her he came, and yet like
+what a perfect little lady she had carried it off!
+
+"You're very dear to me," he murmured, trying to believe that there was
+after all such a thing as hospitality.
+
+She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. "Did you say
+papa knows?"
+
+"You told me just now he knows everything."
+
+"I think you must make sure," said Pansy.
+
+"Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of _you_!" Rosier murmured in her ear;
+whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of
+consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
+
+The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame
+Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.
+How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for
+she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor
+dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the
+audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very
+tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest
+thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more
+striking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master
+of the house. There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these
+two--they always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the
+commonplace--and then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked
+if little Mr. Rosier had come this evening.
+
+"He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared," Osmond said.
+
+"And where's Pansy?"
+
+"In the other room. There are several people there."
+
+"He's probably among them," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Do you wish to see him?" Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
+
+Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the
+eighth of a note. "Yes, I should like to say to him that I've told you
+what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly."
+
+"Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more--which is exactly
+what I don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal."
+
+"But you don't hate it."
+
+"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this
+evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's a great
+bore. There's no hurry."
+
+"I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over."
+
+"No, don't do that. He'll hang on."
+
+"If I discourage him he'll do the same."
+
+"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain--which would be
+exceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold his tongue and go
+in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a
+donkey."
+
+"Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?"
+
+"Oh, he's a nuisance--with his eternal majolica."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. "He's a gentleman,
+he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand
+francs!"
+
+"It's misery--'genteel' misery," Osmond broke in. "It's not what I've
+dreamed of for Pansy."
+
+"Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her."
+
+"Do you believe him?" Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+
+"Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't
+suppose you consider that that matters."
+
+"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has
+thought of him."
+
+"That opinion's more convenient," said Madame Merle quietly.
+
+"Has she told you she's in love with him?"
+
+"For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?" Madame Merle
+added in a moment.
+
+Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other
+knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his long, fine
+forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and gazed a while
+before him. "This kind of thing doesn't find me unprepared. It's what I
+educated her for. It was all for this--that when such a case should come
+up she should do what I prefer."
+
+"I'm not afraid that she'll not do it."
+
+"Well then, where's the hitch?"
+
+"I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of
+Mr. Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful."
+
+"I can't keep him. Keep him yourself."
+
+"Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day."
+Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing
+about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit
+to interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the
+last words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out
+of the adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a
+few steps and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her
+father.
+
+"He has spoken to her," Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+
+Her companion never turned his head. "So much for your belief in his
+promises. He ought to be horsewhipped."
+
+"He intends to confess, poor little man!"
+
+Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. "It
+doesn't matter," he murmured, turning away.
+
+Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner
+of unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was not more
+intimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly
+smile.
+
+"You're very late," the young creature gently said.
+
+"My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be."
+
+Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward
+Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it
+off his mind, "I've spoken to her!" he whispered.
+
+"I know it, Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Did she tell you?"
+
+"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come
+and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five." She was severe, and in
+the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of
+contempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
+
+He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor
+the place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking
+with an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady
+was Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. "You
+said just now you wouldn't help me," he began to Mrs. Osmond. "Perhaps
+you'll feel differently when you know--when you know--!"
+
+Isabel met his hesitation. "When I know what?"
+
+"That she's all right."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Well, that we've come to an understanding."
+
+"She's all wrong," said Isabel. "It won't do."
+
+Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
+testified to his sense of injury. "I've never been treated so," he said.
+"What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually
+considered. I could have married twenty times."
+
+"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once,
+comfortably," Isabel added, smiling kindly. "You're not rich enough for
+Pansy."
+
+"She doesn't care a straw for one's money."
+
+"No, but her father does."
+
+"Ah yes, he has proved that!" cried the young man.
+
+Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
+ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
+to look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of miniatures, which were neatly
+arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
+seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
+certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used
+to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such
+a fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
+searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire
+was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to
+Isabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a
+rude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of
+him.
+
+"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago," he
+began. "But you must remember my situation."
+
+"I don't remember what you said," she answered coldly.
+
+"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me."
+
+She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: "It's not
+that I won't; I simply can't!" Her manner was almost passionate.
+
+"If you _could_, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save
+as an angel."
+
+"The inducement's great," said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he
+afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the
+eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow
+that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked,
+and he took himself off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let
+him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop
+there till something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher
+expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his
+daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if
+one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that
+tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be
+a miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy
+her father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by
+precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a
+sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of
+itself--it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own
+situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world,
+and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly
+declared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had learned that
+lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert
+Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter
+dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have
+anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+
+"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn't like it at
+all," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!"
+
+"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the
+house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to
+me."
+
+"As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?"
+
+"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,
+but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I'll see
+that she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take
+it quietly."
+
+Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was
+advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to
+Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he
+went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual,
+was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so
+that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+
+"I'm glad that you can take a hint," Pansy's father said, slightly
+closing his keen, conscious eyes.
+
+"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be."
+
+"You took it? Where did you take it?"
+
+It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
+asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. "Madame Merle
+gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you
+declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain
+my wishes to you." And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.
+
+"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
+Madame Merle?"
+
+"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had
+seemed to me to know you very well."
+
+"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond.
+
+"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
+hope."
+
+Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my
+daughter."
+
+"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to
+marry her?"
+
+"I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
+which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
+
+"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't
+marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
+more."
+
+"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
+loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+
+"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken."
+
+"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
+his eyes to his boot-toes.
+
+"I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+exasperation.
+
+As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
+some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
+had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: "I think she has no
+recollection of having given it."
+
+They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
+uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again
+to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a
+gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the
+Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter
+smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face
+and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.
+
+"You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that expressed
+more than Osmond's.
+
+"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you."
+
+Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as
+usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond
+in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously
+indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your husband's awfully
+cold-blooded."
+
+She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. "You can't
+expect every one to be as hot as yourself."
+
+"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his
+daughter?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Don't you take any interest?" Rosier demanded with his sense that she
+too was irritating.
+
+For a moment she answered nothing; then, "No!" she said abruptly and
+with a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
+
+"Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?"
+
+"In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there."
+
+Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by
+intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely
+given to her occupation. "What on earth has he done to her?" he asked
+again imploringly. "He declares to me she has given me up."
+
+"She has not given you up," Isabel said in a low tone and without
+looking at him.
+
+"Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think
+proper!"
+
+He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware
+that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had
+just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good
+looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. "Isabel,"
+said her husband, "I bring you an old friend."
+
+Mrs. Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's,
+not perfectly confident. "I'm very happy to see Lord Warburton," she
+said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been
+interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He
+had a quick impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn't notice what he did.
+
+Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe
+him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or
+a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her,
+was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey
+eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and
+attestation strictly sincere. He was "heavier" than of yore and looked
+older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.
+
+"I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said; "I've but just
+arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost
+no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on
+Thursdays."
+
+"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England," Osmond
+remarked to his wife.
+
+"It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly
+flattered," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,"
+Osmond went on.
+
+"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you
+four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a
+long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?" his lordship
+asked of his hostess. "It was in the Capitol, in the first room."
+
+"I remember that myself," said Osmond. "I was there at the time."
+
+"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry
+that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never
+cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here," her
+old friend went on to Isabel, "and I assure you I've often thought of
+you. It must be a charming place to live in," he added with a look,
+round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the
+dim ghost of his old ruefulness.
+
+"We should have been glad to see you at any time," Osmond observed with
+propriety.
+
+"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a
+month ago I really supposed my travels over."
+
+"I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had already,
+with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what
+meeting him again meant for her.
+
+"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
+blank."
+
+"Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared to
+think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so
+conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more
+nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It
+was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a
+deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good
+deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. "I'll leave you and
+Mrs. Osmond together," he added. "You have reminiscences into which I
+don't enter."
+
+"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!" Lord Warburton called after him, as
+he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation
+of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the
+deepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious.
+"I'm really very glad to see you."
+
+"It's very pleasant. You're very kind."
+
+"Do you know that you're changed--a little?"
+
+She just hesitated. "Yes--a good deal."
+
+"I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the
+better?"
+
+"I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to _you_," she bravely
+returned.
+
+"Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't
+be something to show for it." They sat down and she asked him about
+his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He
+answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments
+she saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his
+whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without
+chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel
+felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was
+certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or
+like her at least, to know him for such. "There's something I must tell
+you without more delay," he resumed. "I've brought Ralph Touchett with
+me."
+
+"Brought him with you?" Isabel's surprise was great.
+
+"He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed."
+
+"I'll go to see him," she immediately said.
+
+"That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen
+much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a
+little more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton."
+
+"I'm as fond of Ralph as ever," Isabel answered. "But why has he come to
+Rome?" The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
+
+"Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined
+to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England,
+indoors, in what he called an artificial climate."
+
+"Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him
+three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has
+been getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He
+smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed;
+the house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it
+into his head to start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did
+the doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know,
+is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea
+that it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania.
+He said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself
+comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I wanted
+him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea
+and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish,
+I made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as--what do you call it
+in America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph's very moderate now. We
+left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He
+can't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the
+cold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human
+help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some
+sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my
+saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to
+decide on going to America."
+
+Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. "My
+aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When
+the date comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Ralph had
+been dying."
+
+"I sometimes think he _is_ dying," Lord Warburton said.
+
+Isabel sprang up. "I'll go to him then now."
+
+He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his
+words. "I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day,
+in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching
+Rome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago,
+when I bade him good-night, he told me he was very tired, but very happy.
+Go to him in the morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was
+coming here; I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I
+remembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very
+Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here, and let
+you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he
+said he hadn't written to you." There was no need of Isabel's declaring
+that she would act upon Lord Warburton's information; she looked, as she
+sat there, like a winged creature held back. "Let alone that I wanted to
+see you for myself," her visitor gallantly added.
+
+"I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild," she said.
+"I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt."
+
+"He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company."
+
+"You went to see him; you've been extremely kind."
+
+"Oh dear, I had nothing to do," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one
+speaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name
+in the Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence.
+You're apparently as wild a radical as ever."
+
+"I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.
+Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way
+from London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me
+the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal
+appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him
+yet."
+
+Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from
+asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived
+that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject--he had a
+conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say
+to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she
+was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old,
+such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted
+and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new
+trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live
+with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her
+and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was
+not a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to
+punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice
+to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a
+good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation
+of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never
+fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She
+gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free
+to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course
+spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even
+went so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly
+time. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her
+marriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond's
+acquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other
+occasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her
+history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing he
+implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very
+much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short
+pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a
+person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of
+guesses--
+
+"Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?"
+
+Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her
+almost as the accent of comedy. "Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell
+you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't see why not."
+
+"I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy."
+
+"You've got an awfully good house."
+
+"Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my husband's."
+
+"You mean he has arranged it?"
+
+"Yes, it was nothing when we came."
+
+"He must be very clever."
+
+"He has a genius for upholstery," said Isabel.
+
+"There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a
+taste of your own."
+
+"I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never
+propose anything."
+
+"Do you mean you accept what others propose?"
+
+"Very willingly, for the most part."
+
+"That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something."
+
+"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small
+ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you
+to some of these people."
+
+"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young
+lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face."
+
+"The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter."
+
+"Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!"
+
+"You must make her acquaintance."
+
+"In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here." He ceased
+to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs.
+Osmond. "Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?" he
+presently went on. "You seem to me, after all, very much the same."
+
+"And yet I find it a great change to be married," said Isabel with mild
+gaiety.
+
+"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't
+gone in for that."
+
+"It rather surprises me."
+
+"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry," he
+added more simply.
+
+"It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising--after which she
+reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the
+person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the
+pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having
+contributed then to the facility.
+
+Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's
+tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she
+asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
+
+"He's an English lord," said Rosier. "I don't know more."
+
+"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea."
+
+"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you."
+
+"Don't speak so loud every one will hear," said Pansy.
+
+"They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only
+thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil."
+
+"It has just been filled; the servants never know!"--and she sighed with
+the weight of her responsibility.
+
+"Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean
+what you said a week ago."
+
+"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean
+what I say to you."
+
+"He told me you had forgotten me."
+
+"Ah no, I don't forget," said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed
+smile.
+
+"Then everything's just the very same?"
+
+"Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe."
+
+"What has he done to you?"
+
+"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he
+forbade me to marry you."
+
+"You needn't mind that."
+
+"Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa."
+
+"Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?"
+
+She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;
+then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. "I love you just as
+much."
+
+"What good will that do me?"
+
+"Ah," said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, "I don't know that."
+
+"You disappoint me," groaned poor Rosier.
+
+She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. "Please
+don't talk any more."
+
+"Is this to be all my satisfaction?"
+
+"Papa said I was not to talk with you."
+
+"Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!"
+
+"I wish you'd wait a little," said the girl in a voice just distinct
+enough to betray a quaver.
+
+"Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away."
+
+"I'll not give you up--oh no!" Pansy went on.
+
+"He'll try and make you marry some one else."
+
+"I'll never do that."
+
+"What then are we to wait for?"
+
+She hesitated again. "I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help us." It
+was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
+
+"She won't help us much. She's afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of your father, I suppose."
+
+Pansy shook her little head. "She's not afraid of any one. We must have
+patience."
+
+"Ah, that's an awful word," Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.
+Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his
+hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the
+carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about
+him and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her
+little curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had
+introduced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett
+should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done
+before that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardly
+prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we
+know, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him
+to resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That
+discussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather than
+the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out her
+engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.
+No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph's opinion of
+Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they
+managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a
+difference, as Ralph often said to himself--there was a difference. She
+had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had
+gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care;
+and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should
+justify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was
+of the sort that women remember best. As Osmond's wife she could never
+again be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity
+she expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had
+attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the
+other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he
+should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed
+his cousin's marriage, Ralph's prevision of the future; and if his
+meditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom
+of health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed)
+beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united
+to Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the month of
+June. He learned from his mother that Isabel at first had thought of
+celebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity was
+what she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spite
+of Osmond's professed willingness to make a journey of any length, that
+this characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by the
+nearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore at
+the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only of
+Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That
+severity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the result
+of the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on the
+occasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle
+had been invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had
+written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not been
+invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by Mr.
+Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but
+she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle's, intimating
+that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been
+present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe had
+taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel
+in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too
+freely--her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject
+of it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. "It
+isn't in the least that you've married--it is that you have married
+_him_," she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen,
+much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few of
+his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe,
+however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the
+moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he
+took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon
+the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.
+Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she
+had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the
+Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for
+her masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband's
+not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even
+wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense
+of humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herself
+looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing
+to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond had thought their
+alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in
+common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow tourist was simply the most
+vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.
+Against this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an
+ardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his
+wife's tastes. Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to
+know people who were as different as possible from herself. "Why
+then don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?" Osmond
+had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her
+washerwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.
+
+Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that
+had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her
+residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been
+joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him
+to England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she
+couldn't induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at
+San Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but
+late in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.
+It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face
+with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She
+had written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing
+he wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of her
+life, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she was
+making the best of it. Mrs. Touchett had not the imagination that
+communes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy with
+her niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to
+be living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still
+remained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It
+had given her no pleasure to think of Isabel's establishment, which she
+was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, she
+rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best always to minimise
+the contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond, who made her
+think of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these days; but Mrs.
+Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talked
+of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person
+of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett had
+undergone a perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, without
+circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame
+Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one
+worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,
+for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of
+irritation--Madame Merle now took a very high tone and declared that
+this was an accusation from which she couldn't stoop to defend herself.
+She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only
+too simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel
+was not eager to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated
+visits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top
+and he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to
+herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown
+dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event--she was
+unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any part
+in it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly
+protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude,
+and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming
+seasons, that Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many months
+in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had
+done her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But
+Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite
+in her dignity.
+
+Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in
+this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the
+girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the
+game. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would
+always wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in
+her union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should
+fall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he
+had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in
+order to know Isabel's real situation. At present, however, she neither
+taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was
+justified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There was
+something fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was
+not an expression, Ralph said--it was a representation, it was even an
+advertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a
+sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she
+could say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred
+six months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning.
+She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken
+of as having a "charming position." He observed that she produced the
+impression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among
+many people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not open
+to every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people
+were not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain
+magnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive
+it; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even
+to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in
+all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel had
+no faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as having
+a great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, of
+fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to be
+bored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, to
+explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain
+of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was
+much less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness of
+development on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There was
+a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her
+experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even
+spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage.
+Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care so
+much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight
+in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked
+so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a
+crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she
+appeared now to think there was nothing worth people's either differing
+about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was
+greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had
+gained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a
+brilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence
+to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten
+her? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent
+head sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become
+quite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to
+represent something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself;
+and he could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond.
+"Good heavens, what a function!" he then woefully exclaimed. He was lost
+in wonder at the mystery of things.
+
+He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He
+saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated,
+animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had
+material to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects
+were deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the
+motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior
+with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense
+of exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every
+other, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold
+originality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom
+Isabel had attributed a superior morality. "He works with superior
+material," Ralph said to himself; "it's rich abundance compared with his
+former resources." Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never--to his
+own sense--been so clever as when he observed, _in petto_, that under the
+guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for
+the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was
+its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only
+measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,
+and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything
+he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the
+lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived
+so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his
+accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on
+his hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His
+solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his
+bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present
+to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was
+not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's
+curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,
+ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most
+directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this
+case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,
+who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found
+a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had
+suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little
+sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.
+It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
+theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this
+period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in
+the least as an enemy.
+
+For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
+had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.
+He was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on
+this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
+asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
+climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
+the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;
+but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in
+the presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward
+the end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond's making it of small ease to
+his wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not
+jealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But
+he made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was
+still left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his
+suspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he
+had deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had been
+constantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She had
+decided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation had been
+better than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous
+stroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, and
+was so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk
+been highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The
+reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and
+the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept
+Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of
+the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet
+satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose
+that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what her
+husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and
+he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had held
+good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of
+his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an
+air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,
+unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been
+before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant
+land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal
+of the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she
+should find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord
+Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+
+She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert
+Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for
+him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,
+at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought
+after all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together
+after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had
+left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,
+which he instantly removed from his lips.
+
+"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?"
+
+"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa, all
+shamelessly.
+
+"Do you mean you'll return to England?"
+
+"Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome."
+
+"Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough."
+
+"It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been."
+
+Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying
+to see it. "You've been better than you were on the journey, certainly.
+I wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand your
+condition. I recommend you to try Sicily."
+
+"I can't try," said poor Ralph. "I've done trying. I can't move further.
+I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I
+don't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, like
+Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades."
+
+"What the deuce then did you come for?" his lordship enquired.
+
+"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't
+matter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've swallowed
+all climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single cousin in
+Sicily--much less a married one."
+
+"Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?"
+
+"I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond
+will bury me. But I shall not die here."
+
+"I hope not." Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. "Well,
+I must say," he resumed, "for myself I'm very glad you don't insist on
+Sicily. I had a horror of that journey."
+
+"Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you
+in my train."
+
+"I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone."
+
+"My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,"
+Ralph cried.
+
+"I should have gone with you and seen you settled," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man."
+
+"Then I should have come back here."
+
+"And then you'd have gone to England."
+
+"No, no; I should have stayed."
+
+"Well," said Ralph, "if that's what we are both up to, I don't see where
+Sicily comes in!"
+
+His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking
+up, "I say, tell me this," he broke out; "did you really mean to go to
+Sicily when we started?"
+
+"_Ah, vous m'en demandez trop!_ Let me put a question first. Did you come
+with me quite--platonically?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad."
+
+"I suspect we've each been playing our little game."
+
+"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here
+a while."
+
+"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
+Affairs."
+
+"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing."
+
+"I think you've forgotten what you came for," said Ralph.
+
+"Perhaps I have," his companion answered rather gravely.
+
+These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
+absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
+without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
+There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
+recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival
+in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same
+half-diffident, half-confident silence.
+
+"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," Lord
+Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+
+"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help
+it."
+
+"What then does Mrs. Osmond think?" Ralph's friend demanded. "I've not
+told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go
+with me to Catania. She's capable of that."
+
+"In your place I should like it."
+
+"Her husband won't like it."
+
+"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to
+mind his likings. They're his affair."
+
+"I don't want to make any more trouble between them," said Ralph.
+
+"Is there so much already?"
+
+"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make
+the explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."
+
+"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop
+here?"
+
+"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
+then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop
+and defend her."
+
+"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!" Lord Warburton began with
+a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him.
+"Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," he
+observed instead.
+
+Ralph for a short time answered nothing. "It's true that my defensive
+powers are small," he returned at last; "but as my aggressive ones are
+still smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At
+any rate," he added, "there are things I'm curious to see."
+
+"You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?"
+
+"I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested in Mrs.
+Osmond."
+
+"So am I. But not as I once was," Lord Warburton added quickly. This was
+one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.
+
+"Does she strike you as very happy?" Ralph enquired, emboldened by this
+confidence.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other night
+she was happy."
+
+"Ah, she told _you_, of course," Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+
+"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she
+might have complained to."
+
+"Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she _has_
+done--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all. She's very
+careful."
+
+"She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of _your_ duty."
+
+"Ah no," said Lord Warburton gravely; "none!"
+
+"Permit me to ask," Ralph went on, "whether it's to bring out the fact
+that you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very civil to the
+little girl?"
+
+Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,
+looking at it hard. "Does that strike you as very ridiculous?"
+
+"Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her."
+
+"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of
+that age has pleased me more."
+
+"She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine."
+
+"Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty years."
+
+"My dear Warburton," said Ralph, "are you serious?"
+
+"Perfectly serious--as far as I've got."
+
+"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how cheered-up old
+Osmond will be!"
+
+His companion frowned. "I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose for
+his daughter to please _him_."
+
+"He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same."
+
+"He's not so fond of me as that," said his lordship.
+
+"As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that
+people needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you.
+Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that
+they loved me."
+
+Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general
+axioms--he was thinking of a special case. "Do you judge she'll be
+pleased?"
+
+"The girl herself? Delighted, surely."
+
+"No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Ralph looked at him a moment. "My dear fellow, what has she to do with
+it?"
+
+"Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Very true--very true." And Ralph slowly got up. "It's an interesting
+question--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her." He stood there
+a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. "I
+hope, you know, that you're very--very sure. The deuce!" he broke off.
+"I don't know how to say it."
+
+"Yes, you do; you know how to say everything."
+
+"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's merits
+her being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?"
+
+"Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton angrily, "for what do you
+take me?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady
+having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had
+spent six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a
+winter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and
+gave countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less
+inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the
+past only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of
+the sunniest niches of the Pincian--an apartment which often stood
+empty--this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a
+danger which Isabel at one period had been much inclined to deplore.
+Familiarity had modified in some degree her first impression of Madame
+Merle, but it had not essentially altered it; there was still much
+wonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it
+was a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the social
+battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished
+steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more
+and more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with
+disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own
+ideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Isabel, who
+knew also that under an appearance of extreme self-control her
+highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was
+mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the way she kept
+going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of
+life were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew
+older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days
+when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness
+what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old habit had
+been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly-perceived
+possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As a younger person
+she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation to the other:
+there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Merle had
+suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she
+lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel
+would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant
+friend had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had
+become aware more than before of the advantage of being like that--of
+having made one's self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
+
+But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed
+acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again
+a continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done
+since her marriage; but by this time Isabel's needs and inclinations
+had considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she
+would have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this
+lady's clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself,
+and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself
+beaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an
+ornament to any circle; but was she--would she be--of use to others
+in periods of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her
+friend--this indeed Isabel had always thought--was to imitate her, to be
+as firm and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,
+considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside
+her own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which
+had virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was
+almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear
+of being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion
+that she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the
+vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge--had
+never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle's conduct, to her
+perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always "quiet."
+But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the
+Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a
+little. That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent.
+She remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other
+interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and
+his little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not
+after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of
+their affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was
+wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid
+as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+
+"I _must_ be on my guard," she said; "I might so easily, without
+suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my
+intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew
+your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you
+were a silly woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I
+know that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I'm determined not
+to get into trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made
+before one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your
+husband I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't
+likely I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractive than I
+was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't
+belong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection; you'd simply say I
+was forgetting certain differences. I'm determined not to forget them.
+Certainly a good friend isn't always thinking of that; one doesn't
+suspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in
+the least; but I suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself
+uncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently
+prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however,
+that if you were to be jealous--that's the form it would take--I should
+be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be your
+husband's."
+
+Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory that
+Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had
+at first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's
+marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was the
+work of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of
+the eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt's complaint had
+been not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had
+brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such
+guilt would not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make
+a crime of Madame Merle's having been the producing cause of the most
+important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just
+before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a
+time when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the
+tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If
+Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had
+been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly
+straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert
+Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less
+convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk,
+this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. "Don't you like
+Madame Merle?" Isabel had once said to him. "She thinks a great deal of
+you."
+
+"I'll tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. "I liked her once
+better than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of it.
+She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; it makes
+for relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much;
+it seems to bring her back. She'll come back in plenty of time."
+
+Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late,
+I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime,
+if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel's feelings were
+also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as
+acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind,
+whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as
+thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a
+hand in Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not
+so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and
+Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would
+not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an
+immediate horror at having made it. "Whatever happens to me let me not
+be unjust," she said; "let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them
+upon others!" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious
+apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make
+and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something
+irritating--there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat
+discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there
+was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of
+fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had
+just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little
+what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to
+explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert? The idea just then
+suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible;
+it would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner
+one of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so
+wise that she might have been pretending to know Isabel better than
+Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in
+resolutions--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had
+they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day.
+It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been
+summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should
+not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had
+a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously
+discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to
+pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its
+disappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as the pleasure to
+be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed
+her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was
+impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever
+a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a
+free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself.
+There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and
+chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to
+repair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it.
+One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second
+one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a
+certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been
+right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
+
+One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel
+came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
+determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for
+Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure
+and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her
+life that had the rightness of the young creature's attachment or
+the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft
+presence--like a small hand in her own; on Pansy's part it was more than
+an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side
+her sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated
+as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said
+to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
+must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was a direct
+admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent
+perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could
+hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child
+was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to
+remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she
+now perceived that Pansy's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of
+vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so
+extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this
+delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It
+was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to
+interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests
+she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs.
+Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her
+company; it had the effect of one's carrying a nosegay composed all
+of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any
+provocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion.
+The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel's society
+than in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an
+intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite
+pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel
+knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of
+pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was
+negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which
+certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She
+was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she
+was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to
+Isabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could have
+thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions,
+and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale
+when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked
+toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes
+the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo
+Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a
+reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to
+propose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances,
+for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this
+exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy.
+Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome
+parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at
+the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this
+vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative
+posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken
+to drive for the first time.
+
+On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of
+the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await
+them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the
+Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate
+flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a
+walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her
+first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved
+best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with
+a shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their
+return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit
+of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of
+flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching
+Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into
+water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
+occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was
+entered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond's rich
+devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just
+beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the
+reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The
+impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as
+something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take
+in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her
+bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were
+unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly;
+but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their
+colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar
+silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would
+startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from
+the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her.
+Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck
+Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was
+an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had
+arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing,
+face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange
+ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they
+were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a
+moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their
+absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all
+over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and
+had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had
+instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a
+walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.
+
+"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I
+waited for you," Madame Merle said.
+
+"Didn't he ask you to sit down?" Isabel asked with a smile.
+
+Madame Merle looked about her. "Ah, it's very true; I was going away."
+
+"You must stay now."
+
+"Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind."
+
+"I've told you that before," Isabel said--"that it takes something
+extraordinary to bring you to this house."
+
+"And you know what I've told _you_; that whether I come or whether I stay
+away, I've always the same motive--the affection I bear you."
+
+"Yes, you've told me that."
+
+"You look just now as if you didn't believe it," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Ah," Isabel answered, "the profundity of your motives, that's the last
+thing I doubt!"
+
+"You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "I know you've always been kind to me."
+
+"As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has
+to let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however, that I've come
+to-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of
+my own--to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about
+it."
+
+"I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles."
+
+"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I
+suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It's
+about poor Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel reflectively, "it's his trouble then, not yours."
+
+"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a
+week, to talk about Pansy."
+
+"Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated. "I gathered from your husband that perhaps you
+didn't."
+
+"How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the
+matter."
+
+"It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it."
+
+"It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault."
+
+"Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
+To-day he doesn't."
+
+"Haven't you been telling him?" Isabel asked.
+
+Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. "Do you know you're a
+little dry?"
+
+"Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me."
+
+"In that there's some reason. You're so near the child."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me
+dry, I wonder what _he_ thinks."
+
+"I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done."
+
+"I can do nothing."
+
+"You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious
+connection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to
+me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps
+coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his
+feelings."
+
+"He's very much in love," said Isabel.
+
+"Very much--for him."
+
+"Very much for Pansy, you might say as well."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. "Don't you think she's
+attractive?"
+
+"The dearest little person possible--but very limited."
+
+"She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier's not
+unlimited."
+
+"No," said Isabel, "he has about the extent of one's
+pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders." Her humour had
+lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed
+of exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy's suitor. "He's very
+kind, very honest," she presently added; "and he's not such a fool as he
+seems."
+
+"He assures me that she delights in him," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I don't know; I've not asked her."
+
+"You've never sounded her a little?"
+
+"It's not my place; it's her father's."
+
+"Ah, you're too literal!" said Madame Merle.
+
+"I must judge for myself."
+
+Madame Merle gave her smile again. "It isn't easy to help you."
+
+"To help me?" said Isabel very seriously. "What do you mean?"
+
+"It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful?
+I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of
+the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. _Je n'y peux rien,
+moi!_ I can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially," added Madame Merle,
+"as I don't think him a paragon of husbands."
+
+Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, "You don't wash
+your hands then!" she said. After which again she added in another tone:
+"You can't--you're too much interested."
+
+Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the
+intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before.
+Only this time the latter saw nothing. "Ask him the next time, and
+you'll see."
+
+"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let
+him know that he's not welcome."
+
+"Ah yes," said Madame Merle, "I forgot that--though it's the burden of
+his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same," she
+went on, "Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as he thinks." She had got
+up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her,
+and had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the
+point she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not
+opening the way.
+
+"That must have pleased him, if you've told him," she answered, smiling.
+
+"Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've
+preached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only
+hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his
+head to be jealous."
+
+"Jealous?"
+
+"Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here."
+
+Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.
+"Ah!" she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame
+Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the
+mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
+
+"Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord
+Warburton's falling in love with Pansy," Madame Merle went on. Isabel
+was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. "It's true--there's
+nothing impossible," she returned at last, gravely and more gently.
+
+"So I've had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks."
+
+"That I don't know."
+
+"Ask him and you'll see."
+
+"I shall not ask him," said Isabel.
+
+"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course," Madame Merle
+added, "you've had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton's
+behaviour than I."
+
+"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter
+very much."
+
+Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. "Likes her, you mean--as
+Mr. Rosier means?"
+
+"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know
+that he's charmed with Pansy."
+
+"And you've never told Osmond?" This observation was immediate,
+precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle's lips.
+
+Isabel's eyes rested on her. "I suppose he'll know in time; Lord
+Warburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself."
+
+Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly
+than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave
+the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been
+thinking it over a little: "That would be better than marrying poor Mr.
+Rosier."
+
+"Much better, I think."
+
+"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really
+very kind of him."
+
+"Very kind of him?"
+
+"To drop his eyes on a simple little girl."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--"
+
+"After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever
+known!" Isabel exclaimed.
+
+Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. "Ah, a moment
+ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her."
+
+"I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton."
+
+"So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy
+deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier
+I won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse."
+
+"Mr. Rosier's a nuisance!" Isabel cried abruptly.
+
+"I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected
+to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be
+closed to him." And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared
+to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an
+inconsequent request from Isabel.
+
+"All the same, you know, be kind to him."
+
+She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend.
+"I don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan't be kind to
+him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"You had better wait till he asks her."
+
+"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially," said Madame Merle
+in a moment, "if you make him."
+
+"If I make him?"
+
+"It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him."
+
+Isabel frowned a little. "Where did you learn that?"
+
+"Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you--never!" said Madame Merle, smiling.
+
+"I certainly never told you anything of the sort."
+
+"You _might_ have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were by
+way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very
+little; I've often thought so since."
+
+Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction.
+But she didn't admit it now--perhaps because she wished not to appear to
+exult in it. "You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,"
+she simply returned.
+
+"She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject.
+Of course I think you've done better in doing as you did. But if you
+wouldn't marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of
+helping him to marry some one else."
+
+Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting
+the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a moment she said,
+reasonably and gently enough: "I should be very glad indeed if, as
+regards Pansy, it could be arranged." Upon which her companion, who
+seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more
+tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming
+very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had
+spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had
+been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged
+his books and which he called his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton
+had come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to
+be at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour.
+Isabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on
+purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to
+read; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if
+she mightn't leave the room. She had come little by little to think
+well of the idea of Pansy's becoming the wife of the master of beautiful
+Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to
+excite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the
+match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Isabel was
+unhappy she always looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by
+theory--for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself
+of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering as
+opposed to doing. To "do"--it hardly mattered what--would therefore
+be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to
+convince herself that she had done everything possible to content her
+husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife's
+limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married
+to an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was
+so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her
+duty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good
+wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely,
+and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking
+had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired
+occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse
+herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to
+Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming
+girl. It was a little "weird" he should--being what he was; but there
+was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any
+one--any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her
+too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was
+always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been
+looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They
+looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when
+they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more
+unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for
+_her_ it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different;
+but he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had,
+he had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair
+had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might
+succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but
+it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what
+happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for
+her husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had crossed
+their path!
+
+At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path
+lost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that
+Pansy thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men--as sure as if
+she had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome
+she should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing
+herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it
+into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It
+was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;
+the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of
+the type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It
+was true that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a
+statesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and
+she would make a perfect little pearl of a peeress.
+
+It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden
+strangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this
+difficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied
+in poor Rosier could not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there
+were always means of levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly
+aware that she had not taken the measure of Pansy's tenacity, which
+might prove to be inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her
+as rather letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under
+deprecation--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in
+a very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling, yes,
+she would cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she
+clung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier--especially as
+she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed this sentiment to Isabel
+without a single reservation; she had said she thought his conversation
+most interesting--he had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy
+had been of the rightest and easiest--Isabel noticed that for herself,
+as she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a
+patronising way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but
+quite as if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which
+she followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far enough
+for attention to the music and the barytone. He was careful only to be
+kind--he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young chit at
+Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how
+she herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been
+as simple as Pansy the impression would have been deeper still. She
+had not been simple when she refused him; that operation had been
+as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy,
+however, in spite of _her_ simplicity, really did understand, and was
+glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her partners and
+bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry,
+the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of Roman society.
+She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with
+sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet
+oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if
+she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might have reminded
+her, was better than Mr. Rosier's. But Isabel contented herself at such
+moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all
+to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken
+of her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+
+It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch
+upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had
+been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and
+leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in
+this light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was
+trying as much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded
+after a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all
+she couldn't rise to it; something held her and made this impossible.
+It was not exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a
+general thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience,
+and Isabel was instinctively much more true than false to the common
+genius of her sex. There was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that
+she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a
+while Lord Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give
+Pansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered
+if she had prevented something which would have happened if she
+had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she
+pronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished visitor
+should wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know
+it. Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel
+studiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after
+he should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to
+this than might seem to accord with the description he had given Isabel
+of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that
+she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her
+transparent little companion was for the moment not to be seen through.
+
+She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an
+hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and
+then sat down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had
+transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to
+Osmond's face, and she watched him while he kept his silence. Covert
+observation had become a habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not
+an exaggeration to say that it was allied to that of self-defence, had
+made it habitual. She wished as much as possible to know his thoughts,
+to know what he would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her
+answer. Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she had
+rarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever
+things she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned it in
+a measure from her husband's very countenance. It was the same face she
+had looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating,
+on the terrace of a Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown
+slightly stouter since his marriage. He still, however, might strike one
+as very distinguished.
+
+"Has Lord Warburton been here?" he presently asked.
+
+"Yes, he stayed half an hour."
+
+"Did he see Pansy?"
+
+"Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her."
+
+"Did he talk with her much?"
+
+"He talked almost only to her."
+
+"It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?"
+
+"I don't call it anything," said Isabel; "I've waited for you to give it
+a name."
+
+"That's a consideration you don't always show," Osmond answered after a
+moment.
+
+"I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've so often
+failed of that."
+
+Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. "Are you trying to
+quarrel with me?"
+
+"No, I'm trying to live at peace."
+
+"Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself."
+
+"What do you call it when you try to make me angry?" Isabel asked.
+
+"I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing in the
+world. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now."
+
+Isabel smiled. "It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be angry
+again."
+
+"That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good."
+
+"No--it's not good." She pushed away the book she had been reading and
+took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
+
+"That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of my
+daughter's," Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most
+frequent with him. "I was afraid I should encounter opposition--that you
+too would have views on the subject. I've sent little Rosier about his
+business."
+
+"You were afraid I'd plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven't you noticed that I've
+never spoken to you of him?"
+
+"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these
+days. I know he was an old friend of yours."
+
+"Yes; he's an old friend of mine." Isabel cared little more for him than
+for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he
+was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to
+extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which
+fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they
+were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion
+of tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they
+belonged to her unmarried life. "But as regards Pansy," she added in a
+moment, "I've given him no encouragement."
+
+"That's fortunate," Osmond observed.
+
+"Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little."
+
+"There's no use talking of him," Osmond said. "As I tell you, I've
+turned him out."
+
+"Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even more of
+one. Mr. Rosier still has hope."
+
+"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit
+perfectly quiet to become Lady Warburton."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not
+so affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for
+Osmond had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her.
+The intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady
+Warburton had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But
+that was for herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should
+have put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that
+he thought Lord Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was
+unusual among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert's constant intimation that for
+him nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal
+with the most distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter
+had only to look about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore
+a lapse from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord
+Warburton and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might
+not be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary
+implications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his
+wife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she
+was face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost
+invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating,
+would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of
+her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was
+terribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was also
+capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an
+almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a
+small opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a great
+one.
+
+Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. "I should like it
+extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has
+another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for
+him to come into the family. It's very odd Pansy's admirers should all
+be your old friends."
+
+"It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they
+see Pansy. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in love with her."
+
+"So I think. But you're not bound to do so."
+
+"If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad," Isabel went
+on frankly. "He's an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only
+to sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit perfectly still. If she
+loses Mr. Rosier she may jump up!"
+
+Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire.
+"Pansy would like to be a great lady," he remarked in a moment with a
+certain tenderness of tone. "She wishes above all to please," he added.
+
+"To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps."
+
+"No, to please me."
+
+"Me too a little, I think," said Isabel.
+
+"Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like."
+
+"If you're sure of that, it's very well," she went on.
+
+"Meantime," said Osmond, "I should like our distinguished visitor to
+speak."
+
+"He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to
+him to believe she could care for him."
+
+Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, "Why
+didn't you tell me that?" he asked sharply.
+
+"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first
+chance that has offered."
+
+"Did you speak to him of Rosier?"
+
+"Oh yes, a little."
+
+"That was hardly necessary."
+
+"I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--" And Isabel
+paused.
+
+"So that what?"
+
+"So that he might act accordingly."
+
+"So that he might back out, do you mean?"
+
+"No, so that he might advance while there's yet time."
+
+"That's not the effect it seems to have had."
+
+"You should have patience," said Isabel. "You know Englishmen are shy."
+
+"This one's not. He was not when he made love to _you_."
+
+She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to
+her. "I beg your pardon; he was extremely so," she returned.
+
+He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the
+pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy's tapestry.
+"You must have a great deal of influence with him," Osmond went on at
+last. "The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point."
+
+This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of
+his saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said
+to herself. "Why should I have influence?" she asked. "What have I ever
+done to put him under an obligation to me?"
+
+"You refused to marry him," said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
+
+"I must not presume too much on that," she replied.
+
+He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire
+with his hands behind him. "Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I
+shall leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think
+that over and remember how much I count on you." He waited a little,
+to give her time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently
+strolled out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before
+her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them
+that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust
+herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and
+closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still
+further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation.
+A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh
+candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had
+said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion
+from another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this
+had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it
+true that there was something still between them that might be a handle
+to make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility, on his part, to
+approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not
+asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now
+that it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer
+frightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Lord Warburton's
+part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united
+them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been
+reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,
+but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself
+nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought;
+it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a
+better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might
+be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory
+of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?
+Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But
+what were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they
+mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was
+he in love with Gilbert Osmond's wife, and if so what comfort did he
+expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in
+love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother
+he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she
+possessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would
+do so for her sake and not for the small creature's own--was this the
+service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty
+with which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to
+herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for
+her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive
+one. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were
+pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another
+satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement
+of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him
+in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion
+this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered
+among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way;
+some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then
+she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her
+imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband's did him
+even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she
+was no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till
+the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical
+intimation of Osmond's.
+
+Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace,
+for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of
+thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set
+them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange
+impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband's being in
+more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That
+impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it
+had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond
+half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making
+everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he
+looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty;
+the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a
+presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his
+presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in
+himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This
+mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf
+had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes
+that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It
+was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an
+opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of
+contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no
+deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the
+first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found
+the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley
+with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of
+happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one
+could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and
+choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of
+restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier
+and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the
+feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was
+what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not
+so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time
+and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual
+perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was
+not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of
+speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself
+that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one
+suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she
+thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first
+year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed
+that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it
+was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could
+still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again
+it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect
+that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from
+her own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be
+just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were
+a kind of creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They
+were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that
+is but of one thing, which was _not_ a crime. She knew of no wrong he had
+done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated
+her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was
+precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have
+found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was
+not what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first
+he could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.
+But she was, after all, herself--she couldn't help that; and now there
+was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and
+had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension
+he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort.
+He would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the
+wrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he
+would have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts,
+she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she
+almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she
+understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced
+herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending
+there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been
+under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to
+put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the
+year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his
+nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked
+by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the
+whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free
+field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.
+
+Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it
+was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond
+delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love
+to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he
+had succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never
+occurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her
+why: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might
+very well have been true; for during those months she had imagined
+a world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous
+vision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred
+fancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features
+had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures.
+That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was
+what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There
+had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind,
+in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and
+ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness
+which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager
+strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet
+not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She
+would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be
+a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously
+and yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in
+him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich
+the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she
+perceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who
+felt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But
+for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then
+her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf,
+the beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact.
+At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which
+was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other
+conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her
+own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the
+best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital
+there would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was
+no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as
+in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her
+think better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good
+luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate
+in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.
+Touchett's leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring
+him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.
+There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and
+if he loved her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the
+courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+
+Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married
+on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with
+her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was
+only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of
+her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in
+his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme
+conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still
+remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The
+finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever
+known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but
+to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of
+devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she
+knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived _in_
+it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been
+captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps
+had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,
+more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was
+this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself
+in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of _his_ deception.
+It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more.
+She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been
+like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of
+their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that
+she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their
+marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only
+afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had
+really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in
+the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then
+appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to
+have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had
+too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than
+she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she
+_had_ been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas
+for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with
+some one else. One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course
+one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been
+this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She
+had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in
+the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant
+had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she
+judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not
+known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it
+were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at
+life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least
+it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that
+she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so
+different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly
+that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that he had
+no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their
+freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air
+of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth
+and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look
+for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least
+some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;
+but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that
+sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the
+stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had
+contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she
+had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own
+habitation, then, _then_ she had seen where she really was.
+
+She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she
+had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had
+lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.
+It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of
+suffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air;
+Osmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high
+window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering;
+for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come
+and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took
+himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture,
+his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his
+knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank
+of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so
+seriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him
+better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first
+gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and
+that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to
+see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she
+had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every
+one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for
+everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very
+well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for
+he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life,
+opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance
+of mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite
+vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one's self unspotted by
+it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one
+was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one's eye, in order
+not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some
+recognition of one's own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable,
+but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel
+about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to
+her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite
+independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities;
+she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,
+avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her
+fellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing,
+however, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of
+a personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her
+believe it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and
+the thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as
+Osmond cared for it.
+
+He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really
+done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared
+to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to
+have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in
+such different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity
+and propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he
+deemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never
+lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame
+of doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed;
+but they attached such different ideas, such different associations and
+desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was
+simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge
+would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But
+for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated
+attitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted;
+so was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an
+immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing
+in the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not
+to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he
+meant by this that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; though
+from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He
+had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,
+and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in
+accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her.
+Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than
+their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but
+she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march
+to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her
+husband's past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory,
+so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain
+things they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people
+they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about
+her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness
+and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she
+seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of
+course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the
+situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had
+pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for
+the aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts
+and longings, of quite another ideal.
+
+Then it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never had
+been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were
+answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed
+of her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble?
+He at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his
+prevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments
+were worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real
+offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her
+own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small
+garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the
+flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay.
+It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already
+far-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was
+because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her
+intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from
+desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would
+be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for
+him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and
+Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the
+part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so
+tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To
+begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the
+Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and
+even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything
+of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did
+all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their
+price? Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands?
+When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for
+the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in
+a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
+husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,
+and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was
+enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions--it was
+enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn
+of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He
+had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well
+furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon
+his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.
+He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to
+it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his
+discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one
+that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.
+
+She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
+had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and
+comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he
+had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If
+to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a
+kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might
+it not be expected to have had upon _him_? It was very simple; he
+despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a
+Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand
+Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for
+a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before
+them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought _she_
+to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate
+him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate
+wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt
+afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she
+had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all
+events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely
+spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out
+fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph
+Touchett's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her
+cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to
+him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid
+state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had
+to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this
+as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly
+aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's
+rage as if Osmond had locked her into her room--which she was sure was
+what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she
+was not defiant, but she certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to
+Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see
+him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never
+known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be
+a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There
+was an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on
+everything. But Ralph's little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the
+hour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache
+for _him_. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never
+had a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying,
+he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of
+her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make Gilbert look better to
+sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that they talked of him--it
+was not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It
+was simply that Ralph was generous and that her husband was not. There
+was something in Ralph's talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his
+being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more
+spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what
+might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond--quite apart
+from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion
+to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she
+was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her
+again--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that
+morning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond.
+She had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to
+feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,
+what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more
+intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert had never
+been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he
+should never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking
+care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation,
+religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange
+exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin,
+had an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a
+kindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was,
+the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had
+once wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but
+that, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge
+and even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face.
+Ralph smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary
+form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She
+didn't wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was
+the great thing, and it didn't matter that such knowledge would rather
+have righted him.
+
+For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire
+had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in
+a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but
+her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a
+state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to
+her there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a
+mockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and
+what could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there
+half the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why
+Pansy shouldn't be married as you would put a letter in the post-office?
+When the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for
+the lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their
+sockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room
+and stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and
+Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which
+Osmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as
+ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had
+not extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on
+those of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her
+father she must have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought this
+unlikely; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply determined to
+be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper
+esteem for chances. She carried herself no less attentively than usual
+and kept no less anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her
+bouquet very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time.
+She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in a
+flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never in want
+of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave Isabel, who was
+not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had rendered her this service
+for some minutes when she became aware of the near presence of Edward
+Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his affable smile and wore a
+look of almost military resolution. The change in his appearance would
+have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom
+a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of
+gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify
+her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After
+he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: "It's all
+pansies; it must be hers!"
+
+Isabel smiled kindly. "Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to hold."
+
+"May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?" the poor young man asked.
+
+"No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back."
+
+"I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
+But may I not at least have a single flower?"
+
+Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the
+bouquet. "Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for you."
+
+"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!" Rosier exclaimed with
+his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+
+"Don't put it into your button-hole," she said. "Don't for the world!"
+
+"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I
+wish to show her that I believe in her still."
+
+"It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show it to
+others. Her father has told her not to dance with you."
+
+"And is that all _you_ can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.
+Osmond," said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. "You
+know our acquaintance goes back very far--quite into the days of our
+innocent childhood."
+
+"Don't make me out too old," Isabel patiently answered. "You come back
+to that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must tell you that,
+old friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry
+you I should have refused you on the spot."
+
+"Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere
+Parisian trifler!"
+
+"I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I mean by
+that, of course, is that I'm not in love with you for Pansy."
+
+"Very good; I see. You pity me--that's all." And Edward Rosier looked
+all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to
+him that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he was at least too proud
+to show that the deficiency struck him as general.
+
+Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the
+dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things,
+was against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness,
+after all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more
+than before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form,
+was the most affecting thing in the world--young love struggling with
+adversity. "Would you really be very kind to her?" she finally asked in
+a low tone.
+
+He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held
+in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. "You pity me; but
+don't you pity _her_ a little?"
+
+"I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life."
+
+"It will depend on what you call life!" Mr. Rosier effectively said.
+"She won't enjoy being tortured."
+
+"There'll be nothing of that."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see."
+
+"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming
+back to me," Isabel added, "and I must beg you to go away."
+
+Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her
+cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he
+walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved
+this sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
+
+Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh
+and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her
+bouquet. Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers;
+whereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at
+play than she had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she
+said nothing to Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after
+he had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare
+misfortune of having already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however,
+she had discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this
+knowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with which she
+responded to the appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under
+acute constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth
+by a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and she had
+not been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord Warburton advancing
+through the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her good-evening;
+she had not seen him since the day before. He looked about him, and then
+"Where's the little maid?" he asked. It was in this manner that he had
+formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.
+
+"She's dancing," said Isabel. "You'll see her somewhere."
+
+He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. "She sees
+me, but she won't notice me," he then remarked. "Are you not dancing?"
+
+"As you see, I'm a wall-flower."
+
+"Won't you dance with me?"
+
+"Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid."
+
+"One needn't prevent the other--especially as she's engaged."
+
+"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She
+dances very hard, and you'll be the fresher."
+
+"She dances beautifully," said Lord Warburton, following her with his
+eyes. "Ah, at last," he added, "she has given me a smile." He stood
+there with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel
+observed him it came over her, as it had done before, that it was
+strange a man of his mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It
+struck her as a great incongruity; neither Pansy's small fascinations,
+nor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement,
+which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it. "I
+should like to dance with you," he went on in a moment, turning back to
+Isabel; "but I think I like even better to talk with you."
+
+"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen
+oughtn't to waltz."
+
+"Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss
+Osmond?"
+
+"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like
+a piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you
+dance with me you'll look as if you were doing it for your own."
+
+"And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?"
+
+"No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands."
+
+"The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it."
+
+"Amuse yourself with talking to me," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've always
+to be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous
+to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?"
+
+"I can't leave my place. Pansy must find me here."
+
+He was silent a little. "You're wonderfully good to her," he said
+suddenly.
+
+Isabel stared a little and smiled. "Can you imagine one's not being?"
+
+"No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a
+great deal for her."
+
+"I've taken her out with me," said Isabel, smiling still. "And I've seen
+that she has proper clothes."
+
+"Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've talked to
+her, advised her, helped her to develop."
+
+"Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it."
+
+She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain
+visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete
+hilarity. "We all try to live as near it as we can," he said after a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she
+welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she
+thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there
+was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case
+of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She
+felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in
+his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of
+nature. Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near
+her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was
+afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn't. She
+felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to
+flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with
+another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the
+first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were
+too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which
+were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent
+that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself
+to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the
+injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her
+attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were
+in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way
+connected--a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be
+trying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it
+was others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was
+what she thought about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were
+so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken
+account of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious,
+made the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back
+into right relations with things the better. He immediately began
+to talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he
+dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a
+little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good
+deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his
+robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always
+seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful
+character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she
+knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a little and
+wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till
+the music of the following dance began, for which she knew Pansy to be
+also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered
+flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's
+complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan,
+to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own
+imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's extreme
+adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond
+had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter's
+duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and
+contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think
+she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was
+because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+
+After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her
+again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound
+his thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. "She has promised
+to dance with me later," he said.
+
+"I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion."
+
+At this he looked a little awkward. "No, I didn't ask her for that. It's
+a quadrille."
+
+"Ah, you're not clever!" said Isabel almost angrily. "I told her to keep
+the cotillion in case you should ask for it."
+
+"Poor little maid, fancy that!" And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. "Of
+course I will if you like."
+
+"If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!"
+
+"I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her
+book."
+
+Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there
+looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined
+to ask him to remove them. She didn't do so, however; she only said to
+him, after a minute, with her own raised: "Please let me understand."
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my stepdaughter.
+You've not forgotten it!"
+
+"Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "he didn't mention to me that he had heard from you."
+
+Lord Warburton stammered a little. "I--I didn't send my letter."
+
+"Perhaps you forgot _that_."
+
+"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to
+write, you know. But I shall send it to-night."
+
+"At three o'clock in the morning?"
+
+"I mean later, in the course of the day."
+
+"Very good. You still wish then to marry her?"
+
+"Very much indeed."
+
+"Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?" And as her companion stared at
+this enquiry Isabel added: "If she can't dance with you for half an hour
+how will she be able to dance with you for life?"
+
+"Ah," said Lord Warburton readily, "I'll let her dance with other
+people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--that you--"
+
+"That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing."
+
+"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner
+where we may sit down and talk."
+
+"Oh," said Isabel gravely, "you're much too considerate of me."
+
+When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself,
+thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions.
+Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that
+he would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite
+of the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the
+ground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to
+make an exception in Lord Warburton's favour.
+
+"After all I don't care to dance," he said; "it's a barbarous amusement:
+I'd much rather talk." And he intimated that he had discovered exactly
+the corner he had been looking for--a quiet nook in one of the smaller
+rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere
+with conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she
+wished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him,
+though she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his
+daughter. It was with his daughter's _pretendant_, however; that would
+make it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon
+Edward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking
+at the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She
+stopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.
+
+"Certainly not, if I can't dance with _her_!" he answered.
+
+"You had better go away then," said Isabel with the manner of good
+counsel.
+
+"I shall not go till she does!" And he let Lord Warburton pass without
+giving him a look.
+
+This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he
+asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him
+somewhere before.
+
+"It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with Pansy."
+
+"Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad."
+
+"He has reason. My husband won't listen to him."
+
+"What's the matter with him?" Lord Warburton enquired. "He seems very
+harmless."
+
+"He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever."
+
+Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this
+account of Edward Rosier. "Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young
+fellow."
+
+"So he is, but my husband's very particular."
+
+"Oh, I see." And Lord Warburton paused a moment. "How much money has he
+got?" he then ventured to ask.
+
+"Some forty thousand francs a year."
+
+"Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know."
+
+"So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas."
+
+"Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really
+an idiot, the young man?"
+
+"An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old
+I myself was in love with him."
+
+"He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day," Lord Warburton rejoined
+vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, "Don't you think we
+might sit here?" he asked.
+
+"Wherever you please." The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a
+subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as
+our friends came in. "It's very kind of you to take such an interest in
+Mr. Rosier," Isabel said.
+
+"He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I
+wondered what ailed him."
+
+"You're a just man," said Isabel. "You've a kind thought even for a
+rival."
+
+Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. "A rival! Do you call him
+my rival?"
+
+"Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person."
+
+"Yes--but since he has no chance!"
+
+"I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It
+shows imagination."
+
+"You like me for it?" And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain
+eye. "I think you mean you're laughing at me for it."
+
+"Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh
+at."
+
+"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do
+you suppose one could do for him?"
+
+"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine
+that yourself," Isabel said. "Pansy too would like you for that."
+
+"Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already."
+
+"Very much, I think."
+
+He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. "Well then, I
+don't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?"
+
+A quick blush sprang to his brow. "You told me she would have no wish
+apart from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would favour
+me--!" He paused a little and then suggested "Don't you see?" through
+his blush.
+
+"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that
+it would probably take her very far."
+
+"That seems to me a very proper feeling," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"Certainly; it's a very proper feeling." Isabel remained silent for some
+moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them
+with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last
+she said: "But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a
+man would wish to be indebted for a wife."
+
+"I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!"
+
+"Yes, of course you must think that."
+
+"I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course."
+
+"No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you,
+and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in
+love."
+
+"Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!"
+
+Isabel shook her head. "You like to think you are while you sit here
+with me. But that's not how you strike me."
+
+"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
+it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
+Osmond?"
+
+"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons."
+
+"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons."
+
+"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw
+for them."
+
+"Ah, really in love--really in love!" Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding
+his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. "You
+must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I
+once was."
+
+"Well, if you're sure," said Isabel, "it's all right."
+
+He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before
+him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to
+his friend. "Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?" She met his eyes,
+and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to
+be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his
+expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own
+account--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a
+hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an
+instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying
+her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or
+of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely
+personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they
+were conscious of at the moment.
+
+"My dear Lord Warburton," she said, smiling, "you may do, so far as I'm
+concerned, whatever comes into your head."
+
+And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
+within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
+gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they
+had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
+regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the
+more as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however,
+and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
+when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
+planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. "You did
+right not to go away. I've some comfort for you."
+
+"I need it," the young man softly wailed, "when I see you so awfully
+thick with him!"
+
+"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be
+much, but what I can I'll do."
+
+He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. "What has suddenly brought you
+round?"
+
+"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!" she answered,
+smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with
+Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many
+other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it
+approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to
+reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if
+she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a
+little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by
+a movement of her finger, murmured gently: "Don't forget to send your
+letter to her father!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase,
+to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
+struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
+unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
+where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
+talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
+obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who
+won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in
+Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without
+currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very
+dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared
+to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness
+needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her
+eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she
+had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had
+been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that
+there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been
+there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.
+Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much
+more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated
+Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They
+are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually
+summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City
+and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The
+Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with
+her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more
+interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening
+parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one
+had heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly
+increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than
+herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual
+enough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and the catacombs, not
+even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the
+scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about
+her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful
+time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which
+she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a
+week there during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she
+had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want
+her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the
+same, for after all she didn't care two straws about Osmond. It was
+her husband who wouldn't let her, and the money question was always
+a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her
+sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel's
+personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with
+clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could
+never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really
+clever ones--always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that,
+different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she
+had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet
+upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should
+both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,
+with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was
+constantly expecting that Isabel would "look down" on her, and she as
+constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would
+begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she
+cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law
+regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor
+Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as
+soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a
+grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband's sister, however;
+she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought
+her very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she
+was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably
+pink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle
+was apparently the Countess's spiritual principle, a little loose nut
+that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too
+anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there
+was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage,
+had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst
+species--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said
+at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she
+had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake.
+The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to
+the Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this
+history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend
+several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond
+himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very
+quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had
+put into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any
+terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her
+former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the
+marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious
+thoughts--if any of the Countess's thoughts were serious--of putting
+her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was
+reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an
+easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements, but it
+seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the
+taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether
+Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see
+Osmond overtopped.
+
+Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the
+card of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription "Henrietta C.
+Stackpole." The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she
+didn't remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant
+then remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the
+Countess should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on
+seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact
+reminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett's;
+the only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the only
+modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She
+recognised Miss Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole
+seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly
+good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that
+sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account
+of her mother--whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother
+was not at all like Isabel's friend; the Countess could see at a
+glance that this lady was much more contemporary; and she received
+an impression of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in
+distant countries--in the character (the professional character) of
+literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown
+over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet
+(oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of
+glossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of
+her "Creole" ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal
+and was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see,
+was always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something
+brisk and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost
+conscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever
+vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its address. The
+Countess could not but feel that the correspondent of the _Interviewer_
+was much more in the movement than the American Corinne. She explained
+that she had called on the Countess because she was the only person she
+knew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to
+see something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett,
+but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and even if she had been in Florence
+Henrietta would not have put herself out for her, since Mrs. Touchett
+was not one of her admirations.
+
+"Do you mean by that that I am?" the Countess graciously asked.
+
+"Well, I like you better than I do her," said Miss Stackpole. "I seem to
+remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don't
+know whether it was an accident or whether it's your usual style. At
+any rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it
+afterwards in print."
+
+"Dear me!" cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; "I had no idea
+I ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time."
+
+"It was about the position of woman in this city," Miss Stackpole
+remarked. "You threw a good deal of light upon it."
+
+"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And
+you wrote it down and published it?" the Countess went on. "Ah, do let
+me see it!"
+
+"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like," Henrietta said.
+"I didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I
+quoted your views."
+
+The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped
+hands. "Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention my name? I
+should have rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my
+views were; I have so many! But I'm not ashamed of them. I'm not at all
+like my brother--I suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of
+scandal to be put in the papers; if you were to quote him he'd never
+forgive you."
+
+"He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him," said Miss Stackpole
+with bland dryness. "That's another reason," she added, "why I wanted to
+come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend."
+
+"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think what I
+knew about you."
+
+"I'm quite willing to be known by that," Henrietta declared. "But that
+isn't what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my
+relations with Isabel."
+
+"Don't permit it," said the Countess.
+
+"That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome."
+
+"So am I!" the Countess cried. "We'll go together."
+
+"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you
+by name as my companion."
+
+The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside
+her visitor. "Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won't like it,
+but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know how to read."
+
+Henrietta's large eyes became immense. "Doesn't know how to read? May I
+put that into my letter?"
+
+"Into your letter?"
+
+"In the _Interviewer_. That's my paper."
+
+"Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?"
+
+Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
+"She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered
+that she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason."
+
+The Countess listened with extreme interest. "The reason's Osmond," she
+pregnantly remarked.
+
+"Isabel ought to make a stand," said Miss Stackpole. "I'm afraid she has
+changed a great deal. I told her she would."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't
+my brother like you?" the Countess ingenuously added.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me;
+I don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
+people did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a
+good deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's
+just the same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Isabel."
+
+"Do you mean that she hates you?" the Countess enquired.
+
+"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for."
+
+"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!" the Countess exclaimed.
+
+"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a
+difference. If you know anything," Miss Stackpole went on, "I should
+like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take."
+
+The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. "I know
+very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn't like me
+any better than he appears to like you."
+
+"Yet you're not a lady correspondent," said Henrietta pensively.
+
+"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--I'm
+to stay in the house!" And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
+exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's
+disappointment.
+
+This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. "I shouldn't have gone if
+she _had_ asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't
+to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
+shouldn't have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have
+been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's
+not all."
+
+"Rome's very good just now," said the Countess; "there are all sorts of
+brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?"
+Henrietta enquired.
+
+"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur. He's
+making love to Isabel."
+
+"Making love to her?"
+
+"So I'm told; I don't know the details," said the Countess lightly. "But
+Isabel's pretty safe."
+
+Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said
+nothing. "When do you go to Rome?" she enquired abruptly.
+
+"Not for a week, I'm afraid."
+
+"I shall go to-morrow," Henrietta said. "I think I had better not wait."
+
+"Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told Isabel
+receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you
+at your pension." Henrietta sat still--she was lost in thought; and
+suddenly the Countess cried: "Ah, but if you don't go with me you can't
+describe our journey!"
+
+Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking
+of something else and presently expressed it. "I'm not sure that I
+understand you about Lord Warburton."
+
+"Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all."
+
+"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?" Henrietta
+enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+
+The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: "It's certain
+all the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!" she added.
+
+"That idea would be enough to prevent me," said Miss Stackpole. "I
+should want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's. Do you mean
+that Isabel's guilty--guilty--?" And she paused a little, choosing her
+expression.
+
+"Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that
+Osmond's very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great
+deal at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised."
+
+"No, I'm just anxious," Henrietta said.
+
+"Ah, you're not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more
+confidence. I'll tell you," the Countess added quickly: "if it will be a
+comfort to you I engage to draw him off."
+
+Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her
+gaze. "You don't understand me," she said after a while. "I haven't the
+idea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for Isabel--in that way. I'm
+only afraid she's unhappy--that's what I want to get at."
+
+The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and
+sarcastic. "That may very well be; for my part I should like to know
+whether Osmond is." Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
+
+"If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it," Henrietta
+went on.
+
+"You'll see; she'll tell you," said the Countess.
+
+"Ah, she may _not_ tell me--that's what I'm afraid of!"
+
+"Well, if Osmond isn't amusing himself--in his own old way--I flatter
+myself I shall discover it," the Countess rejoined.
+
+"I don't care for that," said Henrietta.
+
+"I do immensely! If Isabel's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but I can't
+help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I
+can't tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and
+marry him for? If she had listened to me she'd have got rid of him. I'll
+forgive her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she
+has simply allowed him to trample upon her I don't know that I shall
+even pity her. But I don't think that's very likely. I count upon
+finding that if she's miserable she has at least made _him_ so."
+
+Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond
+unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of
+fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose
+mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a
+capacity for coarseness even there. "It will be better if they love each
+other," she said for edification.
+
+"They can't. He can't love any one."
+
+"I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for
+Isabel. I shall positively start to-morrow."
+
+"Isabel certainly has devotees," said the Countess, smiling very
+vividly. "I declare I don't pity her."
+
+"It may be I can't assist her," Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were
+well not to have illusions.
+
+"You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I believe that's
+what you came from America for," the Countess suddenly added.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to look after her," Henrietta said serenely.
+
+Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an
+eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come.
+"Ah, that's very pretty _c'est bien gentil_! Isn't it what they call
+friendship?"
+
+"I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come."
+
+"She's very happy--she's very fortunate," the Countess went on. "She
+has others besides." And then she broke out passionately. "She's more
+fortunate than I! I'm as unhappy as she--I've a very bad husband; he's a
+great deal worse than Osmond. And I've no friends. I thought I had, but
+they're gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you've done for
+her."
+
+Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She
+gazed at her companion a moment, and then: "Look here, Countess, I'll do
+anything for you that you like. I'll wait over and travel with you."
+
+"Never mind," the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: "only
+describe me in the newspaper!"
+
+Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her
+understand that she could give no fictitious representation of her
+journey to Rome. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On
+quitting her she took the way to the Lung' Arno, the sunny quay beside
+the yellow river where the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand
+all in a row. She had learned her way before this through the streets of
+Florence (she was very quick in such matters), and was therefore able
+to turn with great decision of step out of the little square which forms
+the approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the
+left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of the
+hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew forth
+a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after
+meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over
+her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: "Could
+I see you this evening for a few moments on a very important matter?"
+Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with
+this little document she approached the porter, who now had taken up
+his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home.
+The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about
+twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and begged
+it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her
+course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which
+she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings.
+Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the
+upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with
+antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an
+empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble
+floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but
+scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of
+artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had
+after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the
+little Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the
+sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands
+to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special
+devotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the most beautiful
+picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she
+was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that
+they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite
+work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it
+involved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn
+into the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a
+little exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+
+"I've just been at your hotel," she said. "I left a card for you."
+
+"I'm very much honoured," Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant
+it.
+
+"It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and I know
+you don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about something."
+
+He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. "I shall be very glad
+to hear what you wish to say."
+
+"You don't like to talk with me," said Henrietta. "But I don't care for
+that; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come
+and see me; but since I've met you here this will do as well."
+
+"I was just going away," Goodwood stated; "but of course I'll stop." He
+was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+
+Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was
+so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on
+any terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the
+pictures.
+
+"All I want to. I've been here an hour."
+
+"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio," said Henrietta. "I came up on
+purpose to have a look at it." She went into the Tribune and he slowly
+accompanied her.
+
+"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't
+remember pictures--especially that sort." She had pointed out her
+favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to
+talk with him.
+
+"No," said Henrietta, "it's about something less harmonious!" They
+had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to
+themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus.
+"I want you to do me a favour," Miss Stackpole went on.
+
+Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at
+the sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man
+than our earlier friend. "I'm sure it's something I shan't like," he
+said rather loudly.
+
+"No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no favour."
+
+"Well, let's hear it," he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious
+of his patience.
+
+"You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a favour.
+Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me I'd gladly do
+you one." Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect,
+had an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather
+a hard surface, couldn't help being touched by it. When he was touched
+he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed,
+nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more
+directly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued
+therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. "I may say
+now, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I've ever annoyed you (and
+I think sometimes I have) it's because I knew I was willing to suffer
+annoyance for you. I've troubled you--doubtless. But I'd _take_ trouble
+for you."
+
+Goodwood hesitated. "You're taking trouble now."
+
+"Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it's better on the
+whole that you should go to Rome."
+
+"I thought you were going to say that!" he answered rather artlessly.
+
+"You _have_ considered it then?"
+
+"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise
+I shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I stayed in Paris two
+months for. I was thinking it over."
+
+"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because
+you were so much attracted."
+
+"Best for whom, do you mean?" Goodwood demanded.
+
+"Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next."
+
+"Oh, it won't do _her_ any good! I don't flatter myself that."
+
+"Won't it do her some harm?--that's the question."
+
+"I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But
+if you want to know, I do want to see her myself."
+
+"Yes, and that's why you go."
+
+"Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?"
+
+"How will it help you?--that's what I want to know," said Miss
+Stackpole.
+
+"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about
+in Paris."
+
+"It will make you more discontented."
+
+"Why do you say 'more' so?" Goodwood asked rather sternly. "How do you
+know I'm discontented?"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta, hesitating a little, "you seem never to have
+cared for another."
+
+"How do you know what I care for?" he cried with a big blush. "Just now
+I care to go to Rome."
+
+Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.
+"Well," she observed at last, "I only wanted to tell you what I think;
+I had it on my mind. Of course you think it's none of my business. But
+nothing is any one's business, on that principle."
+
+"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest,"
+said Caspar Goodwood. "I shall go to Rome and I shan't hurt Mrs.
+Osmond."
+
+"You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that's the real
+issue."
+
+"Is she in need of help?" he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
+
+"Most women always are," said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness
+and generalising less hopefully than usual. "If you go to Rome," she
+added, "I hope you'll be a true friend--not a selfish one!" And she
+turned off and began to look at the pictures.
+
+Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered
+round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. "You've heard
+something about her here," he then resumed. "I should like to know what
+you've heard."
+
+Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this
+occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after
+thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. "Yes, I've
+heard," she answered; "but as I don't want you to go to Rome I won't
+tell you."
+
+"Just as you please. I shall see for myself," he said. Then
+inconsistently, for him, "You've heard she's unhappy!" he added.
+
+"Oh, you won't see that!" Henrietta exclaimed.
+
+"I hope not. When do you start?"
+
+"To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?"
+
+Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss
+Stackpole's company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the
+same character as Gilbert Osmond's, but it had at this moment an equal
+distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole's virtues than a
+reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,
+and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.
+Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of
+things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters
+he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But
+it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss
+Stackpole didn't take so much for granted. She took for granted that he
+was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when
+they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had
+repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no
+wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was _not_ always thinking of
+her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least
+colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing
+her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn't
+care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him,
+that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now
+made other reflections--which show how widely different, in effect, his
+ill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond's. He desired to go immediately to
+Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the
+European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee
+to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found
+one's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's wish to have
+the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at
+least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But
+he couldn't take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the
+morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected
+woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait
+longer than he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day.
+She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in
+a European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of
+irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to
+put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that;
+it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some
+moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a
+tone of extreme distinctness, "Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll
+go too, as I may be of assistance to you."
+
+"Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!" Henrietta returned
+imperturbably.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be
+displeased by the continuance of Ralph's visit to Rome. That knowledge
+was very present to her as she went to her cousin's hotel the day
+after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his
+sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient
+perception of the sources of Osmond's opposition. He wished her to have
+no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle
+of freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself,
+that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that
+she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband's aversion to
+it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had
+not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was
+her appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort
+of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination,
+however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary
+decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled
+her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had
+lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband's
+intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the
+less, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back
+something she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and
+monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do
+nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her
+to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph;
+but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this
+prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet
+made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband's wish
+for the event; she didn't, to be just, see how he _could_ like her to be
+with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond's
+sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively
+interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to
+decide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and
+her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her
+wish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Ralph would
+start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself
+in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward.
+It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed
+preferable to repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred
+act--of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous.
+To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open
+acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that
+their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be
+no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal
+readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was
+to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there
+was no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel
+went to the H�tel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure
+of propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn't have been
+a better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest
+appreciation. Isabel's application of that measure had been particularly
+free to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't
+leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This
+indeed was Gilbert's business as well as her own.
+
+She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. "I want you to answer
+me a question. It's about Lord Warburton."
+
+"I think I guess your question," Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out
+of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
+
+"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it."
+
+"Oh, I don't say I can do that."
+
+"You're intimate with him," she said; "you've a great deal of
+observation of him."
+
+"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!"
+
+"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature."
+
+"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar," said Ralph
+with an air of private amusement.
+
+"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?"
+
+"Very much, I think. I can make that out."
+
+"Ah!" said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+
+Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+mystification. "You say that as if you were disappointed."
+
+Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.
+"It's after all no business of mine."
+
+"You're very philosophic," said her cousin. And then in a moment: "May I
+enquire what you're talking about?"
+
+Isabel stared. "I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants,
+of all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I've told you that before,
+without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I
+think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?"
+
+"Ah, for Pansy, no!" cried Ralph very positively.
+
+"But you said just now he did."
+
+Ralph waited a moment. "That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "That's nonsense, you know."
+
+"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine."
+
+"That would be very tiresome." She spoke, as she flattered herself, with
+much subtlety.
+
+"I ought to tell you indeed," Ralph went on, "that to me he has denied
+it."
+
+"It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you
+that he's in love with Pansy?"
+
+"He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me know, of
+course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh."
+
+"Does he really think it?"
+
+"Ah, what Warburton really thinks--!" said Ralph.
+
+Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves
+on which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked
+up, and then, "Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!" she cried abruptly and
+passionately.
+
+It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the
+words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of
+relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf
+between them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a
+moment: "How unhappy you must be!"
+
+He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the
+first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. "When I
+talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense," she said with a quick
+smile. "The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments!
+The matter's very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can't
+undertake to see him through."
+
+"He ought to succeed easily," said Ralph.
+
+Isabel debated. "Yes--but he has not always succeeded."
+
+"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss
+Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?"
+
+"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he'll let
+the matter drop."
+
+"He'll do nothing dishonourable," said Ralph.
+
+"I'm very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to
+leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it's cruel
+to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up."
+
+"Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But Warburton
+isn't obliged to mind that."
+
+"No, cruel to her," said Isabel. "She would be very unhappy if she were
+to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea
+seems to amuse you; of course you're not in love with him. He has the
+merit--for Pansy--of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance
+that Lord Warburton isn't."
+
+"He'd be very good to her," said Ralph.
+
+"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said
+a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with
+perfect propriety."
+
+"How would your husband like that?"
+
+"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain
+satisfaction himself."
+
+"Has he commissioned you to obtain it?" Ralph ventured to ask.
+
+"It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton's--an older
+friend, that is, than Gilbert--I should take an interest in his
+intentions."
+
+"Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. "Let me understand. Are you
+pleading his cause?"
+
+"Not in the least. I'm very glad he shouldn't become your stepdaughter's
+husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!" said Ralph,
+smiling. "But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you
+haven't pushed him enough."
+
+Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. "He knows me well
+enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention
+of pushing, I presume. I'm not afraid I shall not be able to justify
+myself!" she said lightly.
+
+Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to
+Ralph's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural
+face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage
+desire to hear her complain of her husband--hear her say that she should
+be held accountable for Lord Warburton's defection. Ralph was certain
+that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form
+that in such an event Osmond's displeasure would take. It could only
+take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of
+it--to let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It
+little mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not
+deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt
+cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely
+mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did
+she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention?
+Why did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her?
+How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her
+humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
+mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
+bound to consider. "You'll be decidedly at variance, all the same," he
+said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
+understood, "You'll find yourselves thinking very differently," he
+continued.
+
+"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!" She took up her
+parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. "It's a
+matter we can hardly quarrel about, however," she added; "for almost all
+the interest is on his side. That's very natural. Pansy's after all his
+daughter--not mine." And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+
+Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him without
+his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
+opportunity to lose. "Do you know what his interest will make him say?"
+he asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not
+discouragingly--and he went on. "It will make him say that your want
+of zeal is owing to jealousy." He stopped a moment; her face made him
+afraid.
+
+"To jealousy?"
+
+"To jealousy of his daughter."
+
+She blushed red and threw back her head. "You're not kind," she said in
+a voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+
+"Be frank with me and you'll see," he answered.
+
+But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
+tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
+mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going
+to the girl's room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was
+always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty
+patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.
+At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room
+fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in
+accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up
+and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that
+the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo
+Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal
+bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.
+Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of
+humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel,
+the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel
+had a difficult task--the only thing was to perform it as simply as
+possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against
+betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at
+least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But Pansy seemed to
+have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she
+had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the
+fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a
+cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her
+stepmother's knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own
+lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she
+desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke
+it. The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and
+indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of
+a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her
+tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+Pansy's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel
+had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the
+effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with
+her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half
+in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness
+of the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked
+out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When
+Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might
+have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her
+silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire
+to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer
+and nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep
+longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she
+begged her to advise her now.
+
+"It's difficult for me to advise you," Isabel returned. "I don't know
+how I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must get his
+advice and, above all, you must act on it."
+
+At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. "I think
+I should like your advice better than papa's," she presently remarked.
+
+"That's not as it should be," said Isabel coldly. "I love you very much,
+but your father loves you better."
+
+"It isn't because you love me--it's because you're a lady," Pansy
+answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. "A lady can
+advise a young girl better than a man."
+
+"I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes."
+
+"Ah yes," said the child eagerly, "I must do that."
+
+"But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not for your
+own sake, it's for mine," Isabel went on. "If I try to learn from you
+what you expect, what you desire, it's only that I may act accordingly."
+
+Pansy stared, and then very quickly, "Will you do everything I want?"
+she asked.
+
+"Before I say yes I must know what such things are."
+
+Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to
+marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so
+if her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn't allow it.
+
+"Very well then, it's impossible," Isabel pronounced.
+
+"Yes, it's impossible," said Pansy without a sigh and with the same
+extreme attention in her clear little face.
+
+"You must think of something else then," Isabel went on; but Pansy,
+sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the
+least success.
+
+"You think of those who think of you," she said with a faint smile. "I
+know Mr. Rosier thinks of me."
+
+"He ought not to," said Isabel loftily. "Your father has expressly
+requested he shouldn't."
+
+"He can't help it, because he knows I think of _him_."
+
+"You shouldn't think of him. There's some excuse for him, perhaps; but
+there's none for you."
+
+"I wish you would try to find one," the girl exclaimed as if she were
+praying to the Madonna.
+
+"I should be very sorry to attempt it," said the Madonna with unusual
+frigidity. "If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you
+think of him?"
+
+"No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right."
+
+"Ah, but I don't admit Mr. Rosier's right!" Isabel hypocritically cried.
+
+Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking
+advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of
+disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that
+she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And
+she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might
+never marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She
+appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of
+course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning.
+She was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This
+might seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy,
+evidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness
+toward her father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only
+the sweetness of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite
+intimation that she could prove it better by remaining single than even
+by marrying him.
+
+"Your father would like you to make a better marriage," said Isabel.
+"Mr. Rosier's fortune is not at all large."
+
+"How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have myself
+so little money; why should I look for a fortune?"
+
+"Your having so little is a reason for looking for more." With which
+Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face
+were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was
+what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy's solemn eyes, fixed on her own,
+almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light
+of the girl's preference.
+
+"What should you like me to do?" her companion softly demanded.
+
+The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous
+vagueness. "To remember all the pleasure it's in your power to give your
+father."
+
+"To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?"
+
+For a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she
+heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy's attention seemed to
+make. "Yes--to marry some one else."
+
+The child's eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting
+her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting
+up from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands
+unclasped and then quavered out: "Well, I hope no one will ask me!"
+
+"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready
+to ask you."
+
+"I don't think he can have been ready," said Pansy.
+
+"It would appear so if he had been sure he'd succeed."
+
+"If he had been sure? Then he wasn't ready!"
+
+Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment
+looking into the fire. "Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,"
+she resumed; "of course you know it's of him I speak." She found
+herself, against her expectation, almost placed in the position of
+justifying herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more
+crudely than she had intended.
+
+"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean
+that he'll propose for me I think you're mistaken."
+
+"Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely."
+
+Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. "Lord Warburton won't
+propose simply to please papa."
+
+"Your father would like you to encourage him," Isabel went on
+mechanically.
+
+"How can I encourage him?"
+
+"I don't know. Your father must tell you that."
+
+Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if
+she were in possession of a bright assurance. "There's no danger--no
+danger!" she declared at last.
+
+There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her
+believing it, which conduced to Isabel's awkwardness. She felt accused
+of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect
+she was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that
+there was a danger. But she didn't; she only said--in her embarrassment
+rather wide of the mark--that he surely had been most kind, most
+friendly.
+
+"Yes, he has been very kind," Pansy answered. "That's what I like him
+for."
+
+"Why then is the difficulty so great?"
+
+"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't want--what did you
+say I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don't want to marry,
+and he wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble me. That's the
+meaning of his kindness. It's as if he said to me: 'I like you very
+much, but if it doesn't please you I'll never say it again.' I
+think that's very kind, very noble," Pansy went on with deepening
+positiveness. "That is all we've said to each other. And he doesn't care
+for me either. Ah no, there's no danger."
+
+Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which
+this submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy's
+wisdom--began almost to retreat before it. "You must tell your father
+that," she remarked reservedly.
+
+"I think I'd rather not," Pansy unreservedly answered.
+
+"You oughtn't to let him have false hopes."
+
+"Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he
+believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa
+won't propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me," said
+the child very lucidly.
+
+There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion
+draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.
+Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that
+she herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock.
+Nevertheless it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond,
+that she was on her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the
+influence of this sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she
+retired--a suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have
+done her utmost.
+
+"Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a
+nobleman."
+
+Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for
+Isabel to pass. "I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!" she remarked very
+gravely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond's drawing-room for several
+days, and Isabel couldn't fail to observe that her husband said nothing
+to her about having received a letter from him. She couldn't fail to
+observe, either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that,
+though it was not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their
+distinguished friend kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four
+days he alluded to his absence.
+
+"What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a
+tradesman with a bill?"
+
+"I know nothing about him," Isabel said. "I saw him last Friday at the
+German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you."
+
+"He has never written to me."
+
+"So I supposed, from your not having told me."
+
+"He's an odd fish," said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel's making
+no rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five
+days to indite a letter. "Does he form his words with such difficulty?"
+
+"I don't know," Isabel was reduced to replying. "I've never had a letter
+from him."
+
+"Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate
+correspondence."
+
+She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation
+drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the
+afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+
+"When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you
+say to him?" he asked.
+
+She just faltered. "I think I told him not to forget it.
+
+"Did you believe there was a danger of that?"
+
+"As you say, he's an odd fish."
+
+"Apparently he has forgotten it," said Osmond. "Be so good as to remind
+him."
+
+"Should you like me to write to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I've no objection whatever."
+
+"You expect too much of me."
+
+"Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you."
+
+"I'm afraid I shall disappoint you," said Isabel.
+
+"My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment."
+
+"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself!
+If you really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them
+yourself."
+
+For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: "That
+won't be easy, with you working against me."
+
+Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of
+looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of
+her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully
+cruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable
+necessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence.
+That effect had never been so marked as now. "I think you accuse me of
+something very base," she returned.
+
+"I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all come
+forward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know that it's
+base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I've no
+doubt you've the finest ideas about it."
+
+"I told you I would do what I could," she went on.
+
+"Yes, that gained you time."
+
+It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him
+beautiful. "How much you must want to make sure of him!" she exclaimed
+in a moment.
+
+She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her
+words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made
+a comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had
+once held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich
+enough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her--a
+horrible delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her
+that none of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing
+otherwise, however; he only said quickly: "Yes, I want it immensely."
+
+At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed
+the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing
+Osmond. He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress;
+a movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a
+perception of ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English
+address, in which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element
+of good-breeding; in which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving
+transitions. Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel
+remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking
+about their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn't known
+what was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away. "No,"
+he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; "I'm only on the point of
+going." And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled
+to England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. "I'm awfully
+sorry to leave poor Touchett!" he ended by exclaiming.
+
+For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back
+in his chair, listening. Isabel didn't look at him; she could only fancy
+how he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were
+the more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them.
+Yet Isabel was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it
+expressive. "You had better take poor Touchett with you," she heard her
+husband say, lightly enough, in a moment.
+
+"He had better wait for warmer weather," Lord Warburton answered. "I
+shouldn't advise him to travel just now."
+
+He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon
+see them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a course
+he strongly recommended. Why shouldn't they come to England in the
+autumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such
+pleasure to do what he could for them--to have them come and spend a
+month with him. Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but
+once; which was an absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and
+intelligence. It was just the country for him--he would be sure to get
+on well there. Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what
+a good time she had had there and if she didn't want to try it again.
+Didn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really
+very good. Touchett didn't take proper care of it, but it was the sort
+of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. Why didn't they
+come and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must have asked them. Hadn't
+asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!--and Lord Warburton promised to
+give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a
+mere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with
+Touchett and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the
+people they must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. Lord
+Warburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told
+him that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a
+country she deserved to see. Of course she didn't need to go to England
+to be admired--that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense
+success there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked
+if she were not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked
+good-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other day he
+hadn't said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind
+to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What
+could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things
+one wanted--one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other
+hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense
+that one had to say something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled
+one's wits. He had it at present, and that was the effect it produced
+on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn't think he spoke as he ought she must set
+it down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond.
+He was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her
+instead of calling--but he would write to her at any rate, to tell her a
+lot of things that would be sure to occur to him as soon as he had left
+the house. They must think seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+
+If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the
+announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord
+Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other
+manner, and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was
+capable of executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked
+him quite well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He
+would do that on any occasion--not from impudence but simply from the
+habit of success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband's power to
+frustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on
+in her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor; said what was
+proper to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said
+himself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had found her
+alone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness of Osmond's emotion.
+She felt almost sorry for him; he was condemned to the sharp pain of
+loss without the relief of cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as
+he saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl
+his thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he
+treated their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so
+clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond's
+cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present
+appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was
+simply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive
+exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on
+this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to
+irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he
+treated every one--with an air of being interested in him only for his
+own advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so
+perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign now of an
+inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain--not
+the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any
+satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction;
+she wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the same
+time she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton.
+Osmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the
+advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it
+was something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned back
+in his place, listening but vaguely to the other's friendly offers and
+suppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to assume that they
+were addressed essentially to his wife--he had at least (since so little
+else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he personally had
+kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he was now able
+to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was something to be
+able to look as if the leave-taker's movements had no relation to his
+own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond's performance was
+in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton's position was after
+all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't leave
+Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had stopped short
+of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour was safe.
+Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal that
+they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success
+Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but
+left Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration.
+Isabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista
+which had suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Pansy's little
+figure marching up the middle of it.
+
+Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither
+Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of
+giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if
+it were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed
+and stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it
+was not to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would
+rather not see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone--he had
+something to say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she
+was afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense
+with explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good
+taste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish
+to say just the last word of all to the ladies. "I've a letter to write
+before dinner," he said; "you must excuse me. I'll see if my daughter's
+disengaged, and if she is she shall know you're here. Of course when
+you come to Rome you'll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you
+about the English expedition: she decides all those things."
+
+The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little
+speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole
+it was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he
+left the room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, "Your
+husband's very angry"; which would have been extremely disagreeable to
+her. Nevertheless, if he had done so, she would have said: "Oh, don't be
+anxious. He doesn't hate you: it's me that he hates!"
+
+It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend
+showed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in another chair,
+handling two or three of the objects that were near him. "I hope he'll
+make Miss Osmond come," he presently remarked. "I want very much to see
+her."
+
+"I'm glad it's the last time," said Isabel.
+
+"So am I. She doesn't care for me."
+
+"No, she doesn't care for you."
+
+"I don't wonder at it," he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
+"You'll come to England, won't you?"
+
+"I think we had better not."
+
+"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come
+to Lockleigh once, and you never did?"
+
+"Everything's changed since then," said Isabel.
+
+"Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we're concerned. To see
+you under my roof"--and he hung fire but an instant--"would be a great
+satisfaction."
+
+She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.
+They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,
+already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek.
+She shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his
+face with a fixed smile--a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship
+probably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
+
+"I'm going away," he said. "I want to bid you good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Lord Warburton." Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+
+"And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy."
+
+"Thank you, Lord Warburton," Pansy answered.
+
+He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. "You ought to be very
+happy--you've got a guardian angel."
+
+"I'm sure I shall be happy," said Pansy in the tone of a person whose
+certainties were always cheerful.
+
+"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should
+ever fail you, remember--remember--" And her interlocutor stammered a
+little. "Think of me sometimes, you know!" he said with a vague laugh.
+Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.
+
+When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her
+stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
+
+"I think you _are_ my guardian angel!" she exclaimed very sweetly.
+
+Isabel shook her head. "I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most
+your good friend."
+
+"You're a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle with
+me."
+
+"I've asked your father nothing," said Isabel, wondering.
+
+"He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a
+very kind kiss."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "that was quite his own idea!"
+
+She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she
+was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn't put
+himself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after
+their dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till
+late in the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him
+before going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his
+usual munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his
+daughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was
+a partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his
+wife. She was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she
+would remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the
+drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+
+"I don't understand what you wish to do," he said in a moment. "I should
+like to know--so that I may know how to act."
+
+"Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired."
+
+"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a
+comfortable place." And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were
+scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,
+however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair.
+The fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew
+her cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. "I think you're trying to
+humiliate me," Osmond went on. "It's a most absurd undertaking."
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean," she returned.
+
+"You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully."
+
+"What is it that I've managed?"
+
+"You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again." And he
+stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
+her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know
+that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of
+thought.
+
+"If you mean that Lord Warburton's under an obligation to come back
+you're wrong," Isabel said. "He's under none whatever."
+
+"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't
+mean he'll come from a sense of duty."
+
+"There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome."
+
+"Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible." And Osmond
+began to walk about again. "However, about that perhaps there's no
+hurry," he added. "It's rather a good idea of his that we should go
+to England. If it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I
+think I should try to persuade you."
+
+"It may be that you'll not find my cousin," said Isabel.
+
+"I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as
+possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told
+me so much about at one time: what do you call it?--Gardencourt. It must
+be a charming thing. And then, you know, I've a devotion to the memory
+of your uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to
+see where he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was
+right. Pansy ought to see England."
+
+"I've no doubt she would enjoy it," said Isabel.
+
+"But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off," Osmond continued;
+"and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you
+think me so very proud?" he suddenly asked.
+
+"I think you very strange."
+
+"You don't understand me."
+
+"No, not even when you insult me."
+
+"I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of certain
+facts, and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's not mine.
+It's surely a fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own
+hands."
+
+"Are you going back to Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked. "I'm very tired of
+his name."
+
+"You shall hear it again before we've done with it."
+
+She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that
+this ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the vision of such a
+fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,
+too different; he didn't touch her. Still, the working of his morbid
+passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in
+what light he saw himself justified. "I might say to you that I judge
+you've nothing to say to me that's worth hearing," she returned in a
+moment. "But I should perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be
+worth my hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse
+me."
+
+"Of having prevented Pansy's marriage to Warburton. Are those words
+plain enough?"
+
+"On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when
+you told me that you counted on me--that I think was what you said--I
+accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it."
+
+"You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me
+more willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get
+him out of the way."
+
+"I think I see what you mean," said Isabel.
+
+"Where's the letter you told me he had written me?" her husband
+demanded.
+
+"I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him."
+
+"You stopped it on the way," said Osmond.
+
+Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered
+her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first
+cousin to that of pity. "Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine--!" she
+exclaimed in a long murmur.
+
+"I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted. You've
+got him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you've placed
+me in the position in which you wished to see me--that of a man who has
+tried to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed."
+
+"Pansy doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone," Isabel said.
+
+"That has nothing to do with the matter."
+
+"And he doesn't care for Pansy."
+
+"That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted this
+particular satisfaction," Osmond continued; "you might have taken some
+other. It doesn't seem to me that I've been presumptuous--that I have
+taken too much for granted. I've been very modest about it, very quiet.
+The idea didn't originate with me. He began to show that he liked her
+before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you."
+
+"Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend
+to such things yourself."
+
+He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. "I thought you were very
+fond of my daughter."
+
+"I've never been more so than to-day."
+
+"Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that
+perhaps is natural."
+
+"Is this all you wished to say to me?" Isabel asked, taking a candle
+that stood on one of the tables.
+
+"Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?"
+
+"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another
+opportunity to try to stupefy me."
+
+"It's not that. It's proved that Pansy can aim high."
+
+"Poor little Pansy!" said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had
+come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton's
+departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some
+importance to Isabel--the temporary absence, once again, of Madame
+Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor
+of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's
+happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of
+women might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at
+night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her
+friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to
+her that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.
+Isabel's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but
+every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when
+the charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness
+of respite. She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar
+Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to
+her immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to
+Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he
+might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage,
+had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered
+rightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since then
+he had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the only
+one in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left her
+that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like
+a collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist,
+no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer
+wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the
+tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel a
+strain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It
+had been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm
+that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only
+person with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she
+couldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried
+with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried to
+think it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her with
+his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best
+to darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent,
+and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a
+violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her
+own fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted
+three or four days.
+
+The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the
+first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a
+thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think
+of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do
+nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to
+doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord
+Warburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,
+uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could
+never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as
+she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith
+in Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory
+was not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failed
+to marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what
+he had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic
+enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If
+he extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the
+only form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an
+enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because
+he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of
+bareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory
+or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social
+drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of
+human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never
+heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this
+impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from
+time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was
+all bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had
+thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more
+than once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband
+about him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a
+reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence
+in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man's
+disappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her,
+she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Goodwood's affairs
+could have, after all, little interest for Gilbert. When it had come
+to the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that,
+considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.
+Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.
+It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him;
+even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her
+that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had
+the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble he
+had become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to
+set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel
+that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.
+She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace
+with the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to
+her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled
+with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day
+on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was
+coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for
+him than for any one else to make out--since he _would_ make it out, as
+over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimate
+disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had
+invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only
+a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her
+stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he
+spent several days without coming to see her.
+
+Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and
+Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw
+herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping
+her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been
+superficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather
+enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously
+criticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still
+marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as
+keen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her
+remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had
+put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her
+opinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quite
+unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old she had
+never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had
+managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason for
+everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, when
+she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having
+already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend
+that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to do
+with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her
+independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to
+it. "It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to Isabel; "it doesn't
+seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay
+at home; this is much more important." It was not therefore with a sense
+of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
+pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully
+inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her
+knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to
+be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a
+perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after
+all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so
+little. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the
+other's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because
+she had guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but
+she had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions just
+now were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still
+have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified
+in having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large
+concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all
+abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however,
+that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this
+confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not
+in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached this point
+with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of
+being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph,
+nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
+
+"Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say
+it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+
+"What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were
+enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+
+"He does nothing. But he doesn't like me."
+
+"He's very hard to please!" cried Miss Stackpole. "Why don't you leave
+him?"
+
+"I can't change that way," Isabel said.
+
+"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a
+mistake. You're too proud."
+
+"I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I
+don't think that's decent. I'd much rather die."
+
+"You won't think so always," said Henrietta.
+
+"I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to
+me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I married
+him before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do
+anything more deliberate. One can't change that way," Isabel repeated.
+
+"You _have_ changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't mean
+to say you like him."
+
+Isabel debated. "No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm weary
+of my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops."
+
+Henrietta gave a laugh. "Don't you think you're rather too considerate?"
+
+"It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!" Isabel answered.
+
+It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in
+Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a
+young lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal
+roof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she
+would leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered
+that he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta
+that as Osmond didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but
+they could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss
+Stackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to
+drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward, on the
+opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with a
+respectful attention which Henrietta occasionally found irritating. She
+complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond had a little look as if she should
+remember everything one said. "I don't want to be remembered that way,"
+Miss Stackpole declared; "I consider that my conversation refers only
+to the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits
+there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring
+them out some day against me." She could not teach herself to think
+favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of
+personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even
+uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a
+little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her,
+so that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate
+acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in
+effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot
+enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held
+to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were
+elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that
+Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,
+so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
+might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the
+moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was
+nothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself
+off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife's
+friends; he took occasion to call Isabel's attention to it.
+
+"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make
+a new collection," he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
+visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived
+the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the
+trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common
+with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his
+being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably
+tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of
+his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him
+privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's
+only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can't
+say much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,
+the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and
+looks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries
+the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and
+almost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a
+lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he
+doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a
+_piano nobile_. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in the
+poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your most
+wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't
+a nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never
+have admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of
+a new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel
+pen writes; aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks
+and moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that
+she doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but I
+hear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't get
+rid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone
+in which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they give
+you great comfort. I don't like at all to think she talks about me--I
+feel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat."
+
+Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather
+less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of
+which the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let
+her friend know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that
+she was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what
+comfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling
+on her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance of
+seeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straight
+in front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.
+Isabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must
+have been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.
+Touchett's door at the close of their last interview. He was dressed
+just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered the colour
+of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a
+strangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh
+to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and
+more overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached
+high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back
+after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like
+a February sky.
+
+Miss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the
+latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States
+the year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him
+considerable attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, but
+she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn't the same man
+when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and
+shown him that England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked in
+most places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the English
+were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+affected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity was an
+affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all
+the chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all the farmers' daughters
+were chambermaids--she couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemed
+able to grasp the great school system; it had been really too much
+for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of
+everything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had
+chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed
+really fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one
+he had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest;
+he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled
+together from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting
+cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wanted
+to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of
+geography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was
+perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never
+to have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was
+unprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to
+confess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent
+some pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream
+from the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that you
+could get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn't, nor fans,
+nor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quite
+overwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it was
+the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England,
+hunting--"hunting round" Henrietta called it. These amusements were
+those of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the
+pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England
+that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in
+keeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join
+her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come
+over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of
+the ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was what she
+liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been
+swept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered
+on the contrary one day when there were five American families, walking
+all round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the
+subject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it
+now; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was
+determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight.
+The mystery about that other one had never been explained.
+
+Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel
+a note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be
+at home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what
+he was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presented
+himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who
+would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality,
+however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in
+appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at
+least that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had
+been misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not
+disappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he had
+not come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he
+had come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be none but the
+very simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had come
+for his amusement. Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal of
+eagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the
+ghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome
+for his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared
+for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over his
+heartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities were
+at an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, but
+he had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believe
+he was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence,
+though he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-light
+upon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on general
+topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,
+"Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk." He spoke a good
+deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is,
+how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculated
+to simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn't
+like her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save as
+having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say
+of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis
+exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert;
+it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday
+evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband
+still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not
+inviting them.
+
+To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early;
+he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every
+now and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about
+him; she thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him.
+But she couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was
+only extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very
+different from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with
+_him_. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering
+herself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of
+women. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any
+personal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed
+probable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case
+he had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of
+this principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy
+to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat
+with coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry
+her, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would
+have been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which
+would strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.
+He declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn't easy at
+first, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the
+top of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt a
+little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and
+he gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that
+Mr. Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had ever wished
+to; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of being
+inaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to
+dinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even
+desired to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was
+very original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English
+portmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear
+out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the
+Campagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly
+in the evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying to
+him one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. And
+then she added smiling:
+
+"I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you."
+
+"You're the person in the world who has most right," he answered. "I've
+given you assurances that I've never given any one else."
+
+The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill
+at the H�tel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr.
+Goodwood had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow
+was; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt.
+Caspar remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not
+supposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the
+place of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the
+H�tel de Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of
+Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular
+change had in fact occurred in this lady's relations with Ralph
+Touchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and see him, but on
+hearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of her
+own motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always under
+the conviction that they were great enemies. "Oh yes, we're intimate
+enemies," Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as the
+humour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In reality
+they became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she should
+never have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had
+always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellent
+fellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about
+everything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to which Ralph always had
+a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Bantling on the other hand proved
+a great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling with
+Henrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their
+inevitable difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with taking
+the ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.
+Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but after
+he had been left alone with his host he found there were various other
+matters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had
+just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole's
+merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither,
+after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--a
+theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very
+sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant
+man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done.
+There was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he did it in
+this case by repeating several times his visit to the H�tel de Paris.
+It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had artfully
+disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an occupation; she
+had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making
+him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather
+should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.
+Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,
+and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a
+constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the
+occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely
+entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in
+one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would
+cluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel
+in these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past
+was more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had
+spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I
+say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster;
+for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The
+Countess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, her
+dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the
+unholy legend of the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been
+away somewhere,--no one, not even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Rome
+and began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame
+Merle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: "What
+on earth did you do with Lord Warburton?" As if it were any business of
+hers!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to
+return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which
+he was not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he
+mentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She
+forbore to express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she
+sat by his sofa: "I suppose you know you can't go alone?"
+
+"I've no idea of doing that," Ralph answered. "I shall have people with
+me."
+
+"What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?"
+
+"Ah," said Ralph jocosely, "after all, they're human beings."
+
+"Are there any women among them?" Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+
+"You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a _soubrette_ in
+my employment."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta calmly, "you can't go to England that way. You
+must have a woman's care."
+
+"I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a
+good while."
+
+"You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you," said
+Henrietta.
+
+"Go with me?" Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+
+"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It
+would be better for your health to lie down again."
+
+Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. "I like you very
+much," he said in a moment.
+
+Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. "You needn't think
+that by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you, and what is
+more I'll take care of you."
+
+"You're a very good woman," said Ralph.
+
+"Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be easy.
+But you had better go, all the same."
+
+Before she left him, Ralph said to her: "Do you really mean to take care
+of me?"
+
+"Well, I mean to try."
+
+"I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!" And it was perhaps a
+sign of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he
+burst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent,
+such a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and
+renounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe
+under the supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that
+the prospect pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He
+felt even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to
+see his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed
+to him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to
+die at home; it was the only wish he had left--to extend himself in the
+large quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his
+eyes upon the summer dawn.
+
+That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his
+visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back
+to England. "Ah then," said Caspar, "I'm afraid I shall be a fifth wheel
+to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you."
+
+"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind."
+
+"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you."
+
+"Granting that, _she's_ kind," smiled Ralph.
+
+"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness," Goodwood
+answered without lending himself to the joke. "For myself, however," he
+added, "I'll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with
+you and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone."
+
+"And you'd rather stay here than do either," said Ralph. "There's really
+no need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily efficient."
+
+"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"You can easily get her to let you off."
+
+"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,
+but that isn't the principal thing. The principal thing is that she
+wants me to leave Rome."
+
+"Ah, you see too much in it," Ralph suggested.
+
+"I bore her," Goodwood went on; "she has nothing to say to me, so she
+invented that."
+
+"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you with
+me. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience," Ralph added in a
+moment.
+
+"Well," said Caspar Goodwood simply, "she thinks I'm watching her."
+
+"Watching her?"
+
+"Trying to make out if she's happy."
+
+"That's easy to make out," said Ralph. "She's the most visibly happy
+woman I know."
+
+"Exactly so; I'm satisfied," Goodwood answered dryly. For all his
+dryness, however, he had more to say. "I've been watching her; I was
+an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be
+happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to
+see for myself what it amounts to. I've seen," he continued with a harsh
+ring in his voice, "and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite
+ready to go."
+
+"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph rejoined.
+And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel
+Osmond.
+
+Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found
+it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at
+Miss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in
+Florence.
+
+"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the
+Countess. "I think it right you should know that."
+
+"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house
+three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!" the Countess
+cried.
+
+"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house."
+
+The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: "Is that the
+story that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes
+to marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy
+the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone."
+
+"No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him."
+
+"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't
+know she carried it so far."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that
+the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. "I really must stick to my
+point--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton."
+
+"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
+brother's capable of everything."
+
+"I don't know what your brother's capable of," said Henrietta with
+dignity.
+
+"It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending
+him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought
+I would make him faithless?" the Countess continued with audacious
+insistence. "However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The
+house is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left
+traces; I'm sure I shall see him yet."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
+which had made the fortune of her letters to the _Interviewer_, "perhaps
+he'll be more successful with you than with Isabel!"
+
+When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
+that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It
+had always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were
+made to understand each other. "I don't care whether he understands me
+or not," Henrietta declared. "The great thing is that he shouldn't die
+in the cars."
+
+"He won't do that," Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of
+faith.
+
+"He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't know
+what you want to do."
+
+"I want to be alone," said Isabel.
+
+"You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home."
+
+"Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators."
+
+"Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?" Henrietta rather grimly asked.
+
+"The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes me
+uncomfortable."
+
+Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. "You're like the stricken
+deer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of
+helplessness!" she broke out.
+
+"I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do."
+
+"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come
+on purpose, to leave you just as I find you."
+
+"You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed," Isabel said.
+
+"Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+something."
+
+"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a
+solemn one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping it."
+
+"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the
+greatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what I want
+you to promise."
+
+"The worst? What do you call the worst?"
+
+"Before your character gets spoiled."
+
+"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled," Isabel answered,
+smiling. "I'm taking very good care of it. I'm extremely struck," she
+added, turning away, "with the off-hand way in which you speak of a
+woman's leaving her husband. It's easy to see you've never had one!"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, "nothing is
+more common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we
+must look in the future." Her argument, however, does not concern this
+history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to
+Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might
+designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.
+Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that
+Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+rid of them all.
+
+For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a
+low tone, with a quick smile: "My dear Ralph--!"
+
+It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the
+same way, jocosely, ingenuously: "I've seen less of you than I might,
+but it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a great deal about
+you."
+
+"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done."
+
+"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other
+people speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and that's so
+flat."
+
+"I might have seen more of you certainly," Isabel said. "But when one's
+married one has so much occupation."
+
+"Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England I
+shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor." He
+continued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded
+in making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to
+his term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the
+summer. If he preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality
+was sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in
+conversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though
+about this, as about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic.
+Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should
+divide it, of the precautions he should take. "Henrietta's my greatest
+precaution," he went on. "The conscience of that woman's sublime."
+
+"Certainly she'll be very conscientious."
+
+"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that
+she goes with me. There's a conception of duty for you."
+
+"Yes, it's a generous one," said Isabel, "and it makes me deeply
+ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know."
+
+"Your husband wouldn't like that."
+
+"No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same."
+
+"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a
+cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!"
+
+"That's why I don't go," said Isabel simply--yet not very lucidly.
+
+Ralph understood well enough, however. "I should think so, with all
+those occupations you speak of."
+
+"It isn't that. I'm afraid," said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as
+if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: "I'm afraid."
+
+Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+deliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public
+penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her
+words simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this
+might be, Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. "Afraid of your
+husband?"
+
+"Afraid of myself!" she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and
+then added: "If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my
+duty. That's what women are expected to be."
+
+"Ah yes," laughed Ralph; "but to make up for it there's always some man
+awfully afraid of some woman!"
+
+She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different
+turn. "With Henrietta at the head of your little band," she exclaimed
+abruptly, "there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!"
+
+"Ah, my dear Isabel," Ralph answered, "he's used to that. There is
+nothing left for Mr. Goodwood."
+
+She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They
+stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. "You've
+been my best friend," she said.
+
+"It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I'm of no use
+to you."
+
+Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.
+She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. "If you
+should send for me I'd come," she said at last.
+
+"Your husband won't consent to that."
+
+"Oh yes, I can arrange it."
+
+"I shall keep that for my last pleasure!" said Ralph.
+
+In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that
+evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the
+first to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert
+Osmond, who almost always was present when his wife received. They sat
+down together, and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed
+possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his
+legs crossed, lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but
+not at all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the
+little sofa creak beneath him. Osmond's face wore a sharp, aggressive
+smile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good
+news. He remarked to Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him;
+he himself should particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent
+men--they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come
+back; there was something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like
+himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.
+
+"I'm very fond of Rome, you know," Osmond said; "but there's nothing
+I like better than to meet people who haven't that superstition. The
+modern world's after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet
+are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor
+stuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young.
+Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like
+everything that's really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's
+nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty
+of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of
+light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity
+which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything
+like it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the
+present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the
+last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things
+are literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you--!" With which
+he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and
+smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. "I'm going to say
+something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me
+have the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because--because you've
+reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
+number of people like you--_� la bonne heure_! I'm talking for my wife as
+well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't
+I speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the
+snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood
+from you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There's a
+danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that
+strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
+fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have
+been--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was
+in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about
+you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern
+man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."
+
+I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
+ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
+usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
+closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
+odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what
+he was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a
+grossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade.
+Goodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he
+scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew
+what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and
+that idea spoke louder to him than her husband's perfectly-pitched
+voice. He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she
+would be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the
+other rooms. His humour was not, like Osmond's, of the best; there was
+an element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this time
+he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very
+well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person
+whom Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open
+field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense
+of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account. He
+had not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of
+sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came
+nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was
+quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the
+amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused
+him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half
+trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish
+refinements of any sort upon _him_. It made him suspect that he found some
+private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression
+that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity.
+He knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him evil; he
+had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and
+could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true
+that Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have
+liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for practice
+had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible
+to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order to
+deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated
+it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no
+better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his
+soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife's feelings as if he were
+commissioned to answer for them.
+
+That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this
+evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even
+than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo
+Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his
+wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each
+of them to say "we" as to say "I". In all this there was an air of
+intention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could
+only reflect for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond's relations with her
+husband were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her
+husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of
+things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had never given
+him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that
+she had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss
+Stackpole sensational. She was too fond of early news. Moreover, since
+her arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well
+ceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, it may be said for
+her, would have been quite against her conscience. She had now seen
+the reality of Isabel's situation, and it had inspired her with a just
+reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of
+assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her
+wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the state
+of Mr. Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present only by sending
+him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American journals, of
+which she received several by every post and which she always perused
+with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed
+in an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own
+hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't
+he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the
+least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of
+authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness
+with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now
+recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing
+more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth;
+apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she _were_
+unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character
+she had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him
+leave Rome. He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for
+her cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to think that of all the
+services she might have asked of him this was the one she had been eager
+to select. There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have
+kept him in Rome.
+
+To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her
+to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge
+that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no
+knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the
+old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his
+throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
+Osmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching
+again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible
+that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what
+did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether
+she loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without
+one's gaining a straw one's self. "You travel, by the by, with Ralph
+Touchett," Osmond said. "I suppose that means you'll move slowly?"
+
+"I don't know. I shall do just as he likes."
+
+"You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you must
+really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we
+feel. Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than
+once as if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it's
+worse than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it's a kind
+of indelicacy. I wouldn't for the world be under such an obligation to
+Touchett as he has been to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably
+have to look after him, and every one isn't so generous as you."
+
+"I've nothing else to do," Caspar said dryly.
+
+Osmond looked at him a moment askance. "You ought to marry, and then
+you'd have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you wouldn't be
+quite so available for deeds of mercy."
+
+"Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?" the young
+man mechanically asked.
+
+"Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't always
+active; it's often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my
+wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,
+we walk, we drive--we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I
+delight, to this hour, in my wife's conversation. If you're ever bored
+take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that
+case; but you'll never bore yourself. You'll always have something to
+say to yourself--always have a subject of reflection."
+
+"I'm not bored," said Goodwood. "I've plenty to think about and to say
+to myself."
+
+"More than to say to others!" Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh.
+"Where shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned Touchett to his
+natural caretakers--I believe his mother's at last coming back to look
+after him. That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a
+finish--! Perhaps you'll spend the summer in England?"
+
+"I don't know. I've no plans."
+
+"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free."
+
+"Oh yes, I'm very free."
+
+"Free to come back to Rome I hope," said Osmond as he saw a group of
+new visitors enter the room. "Remember that when you do come we count on
+you!"
+
+Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without
+his having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several
+associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy
+with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
+intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was
+absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear
+hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help
+her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he
+opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked
+to the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather
+self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he
+often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera,
+and it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to
+contain himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to
+go, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might
+not speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured
+himself was empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found
+her self absolutely prevented. "I'm afraid it's impossible. People are
+saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me."
+
+"I shall wait till they are all gone then."
+
+She hesitated a moment. "Ah, that will be delightful!" she exclaimed.
+
+And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several
+people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess
+Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no
+consciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little
+circle of gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke
+into a united laugh. Osmond had disappeared--he never bade good-bye to
+people; and as the Countess was extending her range, according to her
+custom at this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed.
+Isabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law
+would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+
+"May I not say a word to you now?" Goodwood presently asked her. She
+got up immediately, smiling. "Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you
+like." They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle,
+and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them
+spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room
+slowly fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She
+seemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the
+passion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his
+eyes and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and
+blurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with
+gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would
+have perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was
+frightened at what she saw in his own face. "I suppose you wish to bid
+me goodbye?" she said.
+
+"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome," he answered with
+almost plaintive honesty.
+
+"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how
+kind I think you."
+
+For a moment more he said nothing. "With a few words like that you make
+me go."
+
+"You must come back some day," she brightly returned.
+
+"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible."
+
+"Oh no; I don't mean all that."
+
+"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go,"
+Goodwood added.
+
+"Come back whenever you like," said Isabel with attempted lightness.
+
+"I don't care a straw for your cousin!" Caspar broke out.
+
+"Is that what you wished to tell me?"
+
+"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--" he
+paused a moment, and then--"what have you really made of your life?" he
+said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but
+she said nothing, and he went on: "I can't understand, I can't penetrate
+you! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?" Still she said
+nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to
+ease. "I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
+That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and
+you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed.
+You conceal everything; I haven't really come near you."
+
+"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
+
+"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done
+well?"
+
+"You ask a great deal."
+
+"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I
+shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business."
+He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
+considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that
+it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she
+would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a
+lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. "You're perfectly
+inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I
+tell you I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I
+don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away
+with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If
+you should ask me I'd go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to
+leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as
+contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the
+truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing.
+That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I
+wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't
+thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away.
+But if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single
+moment, is there? If you're really hurt--if _he_ hurts you--nothing I say
+will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. I
+thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't
+say it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last
+time--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say that, I know;
+and you've no right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen,
+you're always thinking of something else. After this I must go, of
+course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason,
+not a real one. I can't judge by your husband," he went on irrelevantly,
+almost incoherently; "I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each
+other. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine? When I say
+that to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you've
+something to hide. It's none of my business--very true. But I love you,"
+said Caspar Goodwood.
+
+As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which
+they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+
+"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it," she uttered softly.
+
+"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I
+love you as I've never loved you."
+
+"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go."
+
+"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but
+you can't, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask
+nothing--nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole
+satisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!"
+
+"That I tell you what?"
+
+"Whether I may pity you."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+
+"To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something.
+I'd give my life to it."
+
+She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes.
+They rested a moment on his. "Don't give your life to it; but give a
+thought to it every now and then." And with that she went back to the
+Countess Gemini.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the
+evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,
+and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.
+Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability,
+and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been
+mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord
+Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel
+(whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first
+utterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman,
+for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.
+
+"Please don't talk of him," said Isabel for answer; "we've heard so much
+of him of late."
+
+Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and
+smiled at the left corner of her mouth. "You've heard, yes. But you must
+remember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be
+able to congratulate Pansy."
+
+"You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton."
+
+"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?" Madame
+Merle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation
+of good-humour.
+
+Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.
+"You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to
+watch the affair."
+
+"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?"
+
+"You had better ask Pansy," said Isabel.
+
+"I shall ask her what you've said to her."
+
+These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused
+on Isabel's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a
+critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto;
+she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling.
+But apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since
+she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation
+which even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had
+suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel's surprise--our heroine
+having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy's marriage; and
+she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond's alarm. More
+clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from
+she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare
+that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of
+the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her
+destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her
+nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The
+sense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened
+to be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own
+husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet
+taken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a
+different eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention
+in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes,
+there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to
+herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was
+it that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not been
+good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which
+married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's
+challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge
+which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless
+vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's
+professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to
+interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere
+with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in
+casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several
+years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle's interest was
+identical with Osmond's: that was enough. "I think Pansy will tell
+you nothing that will make you more angry," she said in answer to her
+companion's last remark.
+
+"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the
+situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?"
+
+"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it
+rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I've nothing
+more to say or to hear. I've no doubt," Isabel added, "that he'll be
+very happy to discuss the subject with you."
+
+"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening."
+
+"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't
+apply to me for information."
+
+"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my
+heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied
+the imagination."
+
+"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned."
+
+"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not
+directly. But when one's such an old friend one can't help having
+something at stake. You forget how long I've known Pansy. You mean,
+of course," Madame Merle added, "that _you_ are one of the persons
+concerned."
+
+"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated a little. "Ah yes, your work's done."
+
+"Take care what you say," said Isabel very gravely.
+
+"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your
+husband judges you severely."
+
+Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle's informing her
+that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife
+that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was
+meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only
+when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not
+right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an
+open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as
+well as in his thoughts. "Should you like to know how I judge _him_?" she
+asked at last.
+
+"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to
+know."
+
+There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel
+thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.
+"Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't despair," she said
+abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.
+
+But Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only
+gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the
+air a faint, agreeable fragrance. "I don't despair; I feel encouraged.
+And I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I
+know you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that
+one can count upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in
+it."
+
+"What truth do you speak of?" Isabel asked, wondering.
+
+"Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own
+movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to
+please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite
+of having lost a little of it," Madame Merle continued with a smile, "to
+ask such a question as that!" She sat looking at her friend, to judge
+the effect of her words, and then went on: "Now don't be heroic, don't
+be unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour
+in speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I
+haven't the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And
+don't you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's
+true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to
+extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't
+alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his
+daughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord
+Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's
+a pity. If he gave her up to please you it's another. That's a pity too,
+but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign
+yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter
+married. Let him off--let us have him!"
+
+Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and
+apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew
+pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her
+visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this
+was not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. "Who
+are you--what are you?" Isabel murmured. "What have you to do with my
+husband?" It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as
+if she had loved him.
+
+"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however,
+that I shall do so."
+
+"What have you to do with me?" Isabel went on.
+
+Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes
+from Isabel's face. "Everything!" she answered.
+
+Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost
+a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's eyes seemed
+only a darkness. "Oh misery!" she murmured at last; and she fell
+back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a
+high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married
+her. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.
+
+Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away,
+under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread
+upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her
+confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a
+less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that
+had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her
+secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern
+quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a
+sun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which
+no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.
+Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the
+continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the
+greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it
+interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it
+chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to
+her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from
+pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the
+musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was
+no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of
+worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could
+not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor
+have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy,
+as we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess
+Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage;
+but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her
+mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several
+resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low
+parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front
+of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,
+between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After
+the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than
+usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the
+other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she felt the touch
+of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind,
+rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to
+tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where
+the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the
+flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and
+gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness
+of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft
+confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the
+hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.
+
+On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution
+not to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this
+lady's image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an
+almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate
+friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were
+to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary
+works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance
+with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,
+and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with
+some success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it
+was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that
+was what Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt
+Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her
+niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she had a much
+richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own
+career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor
+stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted;
+she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which
+could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much
+have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making
+passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great
+artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of
+marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage
+but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain,
+and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her
+naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was
+imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed
+to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly
+affectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that her
+young friend had been subject to the good old man's charity. She had
+found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in
+the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young
+woman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her
+closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert
+occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with
+the conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the
+least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money.
+Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought
+a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular
+injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying
+to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman
+for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least
+he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her
+money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let
+her go. Ah, if Mr. Touchett's great charity would but help her to-day it
+would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame
+Merle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the
+boon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in
+regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they
+have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but
+a characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive
+she had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: "Poor, poor Madame
+Merle!"
+
+Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same
+afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of
+time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the
+lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which
+we once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that
+apartment, towards six o'clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his
+hostess stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion
+commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to
+its apparent as to its real importance.
+
+"I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it," said Madame
+Merle.
+
+"Did I say I was unhappy?" Osmond asked with a face grave enough to
+suggest that he might have been.
+
+"No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude."
+
+"Don't talk about gratitude," he returned dryly. "And don't aggravate
+me," he added in a moment.
+
+Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white
+hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were,
+to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. "On
+your side, don't try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my
+thoughts."
+
+"I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite enough of my
+own."
+
+"That's because they're so delightful."
+
+Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at
+his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an
+expression of fatigue. "You do aggravate me," he remarked in a moment.
+"I'm very tired."
+
+"_Eh moi donc!_" cried Madame Merle.
+
+"With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my own
+fault."
+
+"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's
+a great gift."
+
+"Do you call it an interest?" Osmond enquired with detachment.
+
+"Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time."
+
+"The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter."
+
+"You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so
+brilliant."
+
+"Damn my brilliancy!" he thoughtfully murmured. "How little, after all,
+you know me!"
+
+"If I don't know you I know nothing," smiled Madame Merle. "You've the
+feeling of complete success."
+
+"No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me."
+
+"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express
+yourself more too."
+
+Osmond just hung fire. "I wish you'd express yourself less!"
+
+"You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never been a
+chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to
+say to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself," she
+went on with a change of tone.
+
+"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means
+to carry out her ideas."
+
+"Her ideas to-day must be remarkable."
+
+"Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever."
+
+"She was unable to show me any this morning," said Madame Merle. "She
+seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was
+completely bewildered."
+
+"You had better say at once that she was pathetic."
+
+"Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much."
+
+He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one
+foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. "I should like to
+know what's the matter with you," he said at last.
+
+"The matter--the matter--!" And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went
+on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a
+clear sky: "The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to
+weep, and that I can't!"
+
+"What good would it do you to weep?"
+
+"It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you."
+
+"If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you shed
+them."
+
+"Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a
+wolf. I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile this
+morning; I was horrid," she said.
+
+"If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably
+didn't perceive it," Osmond answered.
+
+"It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I
+was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know.
+You've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul."
+
+"It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition," Osmond
+said. "It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your
+influence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle?
+How can it suffer alteration?"
+
+"I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it
+can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which
+was a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it.
+You're _very_ bad," she added with gravity in her emphasis.
+
+"Is this the way we're to end?" Osmond asked with the same studied
+coldness.
+
+"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did--How do bad people
+end?--especially as to their _common_ crimes. You have made me as bad as
+yourself."
+
+"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough," said Osmond,
+his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
+
+Madame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and
+she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the
+pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile
+betrayed a painful effort. "Good enough for anything that I've done with
+myself? I suppose that's what you mean."
+
+"Good enough to be always charming!" Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
+
+"Oh God!" his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on
+Isabel's part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her
+hands.
+
+"Are you going to weep after all?" Osmond asked; and on her remaining
+motionless he went on: "Have I ever complained to you?"
+
+She dropped her hands quickly. "No, you've taken your revenge
+otherwise--you have taken it on _her_."
+
+Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling
+and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the
+heavenly powers. "Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at
+bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist."
+
+"Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph too
+much."
+
+"I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph."
+
+"You've made your wife afraid of you."
+
+Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on
+his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at
+his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation
+of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a
+peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse
+with. "Isabel's not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish," he said
+at last. "To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as
+that?"
+
+"I've thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle answered.
+"Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you
+she feared."
+
+"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not
+responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at
+all: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of
+me that I can see," he went on; "how then should I have made her? You're
+at least as brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish;
+one might suppose you knew me by this time." He got up as he spoke and
+walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if
+he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare
+porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it
+in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,
+he pursued: "You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you
+lose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you think."
+
+"I think you're very simple." And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
+"I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's
+only since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what
+you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please
+be very careful of that precious object."
+
+"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack," said Osmond dryly as he put
+it down. "If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly
+rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box
+myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I
+only asked that she should like me."
+
+"That she should like you so much!"
+
+"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she
+should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that."
+
+"I never adored you," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Ah, but you pretended to!"
+
+"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit," Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort," said
+Osmond. "If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's
+hardly for her."
+
+"The tragedy's for me!" Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long
+low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her
+mantel-shelf.
+
+"It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false
+position."
+
+"You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for
+our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least
+my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I
+haven't a fault to find with her."
+
+"Ah," she said softly, "if I had a child--!"
+
+Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, "The children of
+others may be a great interest!" he announced.
+
+"You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all that
+holds us together."
+
+"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?" Osmond asked.
+
+"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that," Madame
+Merle pursued, "that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be
+_my_ work," she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter,
+relaxing to its habit of smoothness.
+
+Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the
+former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, "On the whole, I
+think," he said, "you had better leave it to me."
+
+After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the
+mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the
+existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. "Have I
+been so vile all for nothing?" she vaguely wailed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments
+Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics
+and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who
+professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made
+an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if
+they had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense,
+though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself
+the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only
+desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour
+every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a
+condition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was
+not a severe cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they
+offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs
+of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary
+of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the
+Countess forbade herself every form of active research; her preference
+was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most
+interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the
+Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--with all the respect
+that she owed her--could not see why she should not descend from the
+vehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble
+that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be
+divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents' guest
+might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when
+the Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild
+afternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional
+puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together,
+but Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often
+ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to
+bellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed)
+bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed
+to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the
+Countess often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return;
+and Isabel believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the
+dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so
+remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt
+to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks
+the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the
+western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of
+travertine--the latent colour that is the only living element in the
+immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking
+up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a multitude of
+swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became aware
+that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had
+turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with
+a certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before
+perceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose.
+Such an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and
+this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of
+speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied
+he drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters
+she would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She
+replied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only
+give him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon
+a broken block.
+
+"It's very soon told," said Edward Rosier. "I've sold all my bibelots!"
+Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had
+told her he had had all his teeth drawn. "I've sold them by auction at
+the H�tel Drouot," he went on. "The sale took place three days ago, and
+they've telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things."
+
+"I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think
+me rich enough now?"
+
+"Is it for that you did it?" Isabel asked gently.
+
+"For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I think
+of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the
+sale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed
+me. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I
+should tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my
+pocket, and he can't say I'm poor!" the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+
+"He'll say now that you're not wise," said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond
+had never said this before.
+
+Rosier gave her a sharp look. "Do you mean that without my bibelots I'm
+nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That's what they
+told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn't seen
+<i>her</i>!"
+
+"My dear friend, you deserve to succeed," said Isabel very kindly.
+
+"You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I shouldn't."
+And he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had
+the air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and
+is full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful
+suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons
+still have the perversity to think him diminutive. "I know what happened
+here while I was away," he went on; "What does Mr. Osmond expect after
+she has refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+Isabel debated. "That she'll marry another nobleman."
+
+"What other nobleman?"
+
+"One that he'll pick out."
+
+Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.
+"You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at me."
+
+"I didn't mean to laugh," said Isabel. "I laugh very seldom. Now you had
+better go away."
+
+"I feel very safe!" Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but
+it evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather
+a loud voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and
+looking all round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience.
+Suddenly Isabel saw him change colour; there was more of an audience
+than he had suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions
+had returned from their excursion. "You must really go away," she said
+quickly. "Ah, my dear lady, pity me!" Edward Rosier murmured in a voice
+strangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then
+he added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by
+a happy thought: "Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I've a great desire
+to be presented to her."
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "She has no influence with her brother."
+
+"Ah, what a monster you make him out!" And Rosier faced the Countess,
+who advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps
+to the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in
+conversation with a very pretty young man.
+
+"I'm glad you've kept your enamels!" Isabel called as she left him. She
+went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,
+with lowered eyes. "We'll go back to the carriage," she said gently.
+
+"Yes, it's getting late," Pansy returned more gently still. And she
+went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel,
+however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had
+immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had
+removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced
+himself, while the Countess's expressive back displayed to Isabel's eye
+a gracious inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost
+to sight, for Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage.
+Pansy, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her
+lap; then she raised them and rested them on Isabel's. There shone out
+of each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion which
+touched Isabel to the heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over
+her soul, as she compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal
+of the child with her own dry despair. "Poor little Pansy!" she
+affectionately said.
+
+"Oh never mind!" Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then
+there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. "Did you show
+your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?" Isabel asked at last.
+
+"Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased."
+
+"And you're not tired, I hope."
+
+"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired."
+
+The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman
+to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently
+returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not
+to wait--she would come home in a cab!
+
+About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves
+with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found
+Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her;
+she got up from her low chair. "Pardon my taking the liberty," she said
+in a small voice. "It will be the last--for some time."
+
+Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,
+frightened look. "You're not going away!" Isabel exclaimed.
+
+"I'm going to the convent."
+
+"To the convent?"
+
+Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round
+Isabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment,
+perfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver
+of her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel
+nevertheless pressed her. "Why are you going to the convent?"
+
+"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now
+and then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the
+world, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little
+seclusion--a little reflexion." Pansy spoke in short detached sentences,
+as if she could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph
+of self-control: "I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world
+this winter."
+
+Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a
+larger meaning than the girl herself knew. "When was this decided?" she
+asked. "I've heard nothing of it."
+
+"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be
+too much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a
+quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks. It's only for a few
+weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who
+used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being
+educated. I'm very fond of little girls," said Pansy with an effect
+of diminutive grandeur. "And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I
+shall be very quiet and think a great deal."
+
+Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
+"Think of _me_ sometimes."
+
+"Ah, come and see me soon!" cried Pansy; and the cry was very different
+from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
+
+Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how
+little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,
+tender kiss.
+
+Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had
+arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to
+the drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and
+this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful
+toss of the head, "_En voil�, ma ch�re, une pose!_" But if it was an
+affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She
+could only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed.
+It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him
+that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after
+he had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden departure: she
+spoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden
+herself ever to ask Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a
+declaration, and there was one that came very naturally. "I shall miss
+Pansy very much."
+
+He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of
+flowers in the middle of the table. "Ah yes," he said at last, "I had
+thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I
+dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I
+can make you understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about
+it. That's why I had not spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter
+into it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part
+of the education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and
+fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present
+time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy's a little
+dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This
+bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society--one should take her
+out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very
+salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under
+the arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are
+gentlewomen born; several of them are noble. She will have her books
+and her drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal
+arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be a
+certain little sense of sequestration. She'll have time to think, and
+there's something I want her to think about." Osmond spoke deliberately,
+reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at
+the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so
+much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words--almost into
+pictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the
+picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he
+went on: "The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great
+institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an essential need
+in families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school
+of repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world," he
+added; "I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This
+one's very well, as _she_ should take it, and she may think of it as much
+as she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way."
+
+Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found
+it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her
+husband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point of
+playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She
+could not understand his purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it
+better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced
+that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to
+herself and destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do
+something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to
+mark the difference between his sympathies and her own, and show that
+if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural
+he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he
+wished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill
+into Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood and
+had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were
+very fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite
+hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the
+impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough.
+The old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination,
+and as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of
+her husband's genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of
+flowers--poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond
+wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it
+hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief presently,
+in hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess
+too, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a
+different conclusion from Isabel.
+
+"It's very absurd, my dear Osmond," she said, "to invent so many pretty
+reasons for poor Pansy's banishment. Why don't you say at once that you
+want to get her out of my way? Haven't you discovered that I think very
+well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me _simpaticissimo_. He has
+made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've
+made up your mind that with those convictions I'm dreadful company for
+Pansy."
+
+Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.
+"My dear Amy," he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece
+of gallantry, "I don't know anything about your convictions, but if
+I suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to
+banish _you_."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure
+of her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received
+a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of
+Mrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph cannot last many days," it ran, "and
+if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come
+only if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk
+a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious
+to see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there's
+no other company." Isabel was prepared for this news, having received
+from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England
+with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,
+but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to
+his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave
+again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands
+instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly
+use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.
+Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to
+Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given
+her to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.
+Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting
+her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should
+lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an
+acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel
+received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.
+
+Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it
+into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband's study.
+Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and
+went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio
+volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open
+at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he
+had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of
+water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already
+transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted
+disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife
+without looking round.
+
+"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said.
+
+"When I come to your room I always knock," he answered, going on with
+his work.
+
+"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying."
+
+"Ah, I don't believe that," said Osmond, looking at his drawing through
+a magnifying glass. "He was dying when we married; he'll outlive us
+all."
+
+Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful
+cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of
+her own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to
+Gardencourt."
+
+"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial
+curiosity.
+
+"To see Ralph before he dies."
+
+To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his
+chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no
+negligence. "I don't see the need of it," he said at last. "He came to
+see you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great
+mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you
+should see him. Now you tell me it's not to have been the last. Ah,
+you're not grateful!"
+
+"What am I to be grateful for?"
+
+Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust
+from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his
+wife. "For my not having interfered while he was here."
+
+"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you
+didn't like it. I was very glad when he went away."
+
+"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him."
+
+Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little
+drawing. "I must go to England," she said, with a full consciousness
+that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly
+obstinate.
+
+"I shall not like it if you do," Osmond remarked.
+
+"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing
+I do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie."
+
+Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why you must
+go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me."
+
+"I know nothing about revenge."
+
+"I do," said Osmond. "Don't give me an occasion."
+
+"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would
+commit some folly."
+
+"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me."
+
+"If I disobeyed you?" said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of
+mildness.
+
+"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the
+most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition."
+
+"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three
+minutes ago."
+
+"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we
+should prolong our discussion; you know my wish." And he stood there as
+if he expected to see her withdraw.
+
+But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she
+still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary
+degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her
+imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. "You've no
+reason for such a wish," said Isabel, "and I've every reason for going.
+I can't tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It's
+your own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant."
+
+She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the
+sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no
+surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed
+his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious
+endeavour to draw her out. "It's all the more intense then," he
+answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly
+counsel: "This is a very important matter." She recognised that; she
+was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between
+them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she
+said nothing, and he went on. "You say I've no reason? I have the very
+best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It's
+dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your cousin is nothing
+whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions to him.
+I've already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he
+was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from
+week to week I expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has never
+liked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me," said Osmond
+with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. "I've an ideal of what
+my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe
+alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other
+men. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile most
+expressively when I talk about _us_, but I assure you that _we_, _we_, Mrs.
+Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to
+have found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced or
+separated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than
+any human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable
+proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You
+don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing,
+because--because--" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had
+something to say which would be very much to the point. "Because I think
+we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most
+in life is the honour of a thing!"
+
+He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped
+out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick
+emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself
+caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,
+they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any
+expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,
+they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign
+of the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name of
+something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.
+They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers
+had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not
+changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in
+the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it
+began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It
+came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after
+all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes
+before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which
+she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
+slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she
+must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather
+than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of mockery," she said.
+"How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of
+your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?
+Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in
+your heart?"
+
+"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks."
+
+"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
+
+"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
+
+"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."
+
+He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived
+long enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've come to
+threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table, where
+he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood
+studying it.
+
+"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said Isabel.
+
+He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was
+not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of your
+mind?" he enquired.
+
+"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially if all
+you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
+rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
+
+He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on the
+hypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one of his
+little brushes again.
+
+She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye
+his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after
+which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,
+were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly
+encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of
+eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the
+Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in
+which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.
+The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been
+glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the
+sound of Isabel's step she raised her head.
+
+"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me some
+amusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you think
+this would do me any good?"
+
+Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without
+reading or understanding it. "I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had
+bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying."
+
+The Countess threw down her book. "Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully
+sorry for you."
+
+"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
+
+"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added. "You
+must have been with Osmond."
+
+Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of
+her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
+embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's
+fluttering attention. "I've been with Osmond," she said, while the
+Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
+
+"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say he
+was glad poor Mr. Touchett's dying?"
+
+"He said it's impossible I should go to England."
+
+The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she
+already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to
+Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then
+there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for
+a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,
+picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment.
+After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had
+already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for
+Isabel's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's trouble
+was deep.
+
+It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had
+no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression
+of her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous
+expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the
+conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to
+England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing
+would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt
+an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. "Nothing's
+impossible for you, my dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are you
+rich and clever and good?"
+
+"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak."
+
+"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a tone
+which sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.
+
+From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew
+back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately
+taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. "Because
+we're so happy together that we can't separate even for a fortnight."
+
+"Ah," cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, "when I want to make
+a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!"
+
+Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It
+may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is
+certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily
+to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the
+great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as
+this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's
+husband. "I'm afraid--yes, I'm afraid," she said to herself more than
+once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her
+husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her
+own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held
+her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when
+Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between
+them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was
+a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with
+which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what
+he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for
+all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with
+whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank
+down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.
+
+When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her.
+She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin
+lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She
+lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now
+she was leaning far out. "I knocked," she began, "but you didn't
+answer me. So I ventured in. I've been looking at you for the past five
+minutes. You're very unhappy."
+
+"Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me."
+
+"Will you give me leave to try?" And the Countess sat down on the
+sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something
+communicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have
+a deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that her
+sister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her
+glittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. "After
+all," she soon resumed, "I must tell you, to begin with, that I don't
+understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so
+many reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my
+husband's dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply
+let me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel,
+you're not simple enough."
+
+"No, I'm not simple enough," said Isabel.
+
+"There's something I want you to know," the Countess declared--"because
+I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you've guessed it.
+But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you
+shouldn't do as you like."
+
+"What do you wish me to know?" Isabel felt a foreboding that made her
+heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this
+alone was portentous.
+
+But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject.
+"In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really
+suspected?"
+
+"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know what
+you mean."
+
+"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman
+with such a pure mind!" cried the Countess.
+
+Isabel slowly got up. "You're going to tell me something horrible."
+
+"You can call it by whatever name you will!" And the Countess rose
+also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood
+a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even
+then, of ugliness; after which she said: "My first sister-in-law had no
+children."
+
+Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. "Your
+first sister-in-law?"
+
+"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has
+been married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it
+mightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must
+have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died
+childless. It wasn't till after her death that Pansy arrived."
+
+Isabel's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,
+vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to
+follow than she could see. "Pansy's not my husband's child then?"
+
+"Your husband's--in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one
+else's wife's. Ah, my good Isabel," cried the Countess, "with you one
+must dot one's i's!"
+
+"I don't understand. Whose wife's?" Isabel asked.
+
+"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more
+than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing
+what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no
+reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to
+fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in
+childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little
+girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from
+nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and
+in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had
+gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but
+where she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,
+sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody
+heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without
+researches," the Countess lucidly proceeded; "as also, you'll
+understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond and
+me. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle
+it?--that is to settle _me_ if I should say anything. I said nothing,
+right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of
+me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all
+this time, as I've never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me,
+from the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was
+my brother's daughter. As for her veritable mother--!" But with this
+Pansy's wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression
+of her sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to
+look at her than she had ever had to meet.
+
+She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an
+echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.
+"Why have you told me this?" she asked in a voice the Countess hardly
+recognised.
+
+"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been bored,
+frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this
+time I couldn't have managed! _�a me depasse_, if you don't mind my saying
+so, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not
+knowing. It's a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that
+I've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that
+of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally
+found itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know," the
+Countess inimitably added. "The facts are exactly what I tell you."
+
+"I had no idea," said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner
+that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
+
+"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to
+you that he was for six or seven years her lover?"
+
+"I don't know. Things _have_ occurred to me, and perhaps that was what
+they all meant."
+
+"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about
+Pansy!" the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+
+"Oh, no idea, for me," Isabel went on, "ever _definitely_ took that form."
+She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn't.
+"And as it is--I don't understand."
+
+She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to
+have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She
+had expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a
+spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have
+been, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister
+passage of public history. "Don't you recognise how the child could
+never pass for _her_ husband's?--that is with M. Merle himself," her
+companion resumed. "They had been separated too long for that, and he
+had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever
+had children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions
+happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a
+pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was
+dead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain
+accommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean,
+that suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had to take care of.
+What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and
+for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,
+_poverina_, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life?
+With the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been living with her
+at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course
+left it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor
+sister-in-law, in her grave, couldn't help herself, and the real mother,
+to save _her_ skin, renounced all visible property in the child."
+
+"Ah, poor, poor woman!" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It
+was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction
+from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the
+Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture.
+
+"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed. "Yes
+indeed, you have a way of your own--!"
+
+"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!" said Isabel
+with a sudden check.
+
+"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!" the
+Countess went on. "I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too
+soon."
+
+"But to me, to me--?" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as
+if her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all
+for herself.
+
+"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you
+call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another
+woman--_such_ a lover as he had been, _cara mia_, between their risks and
+their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had
+passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her
+own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances
+so intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may
+therefore imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on conveniently
+to _any_ of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them."
+
+"Yes," Isabel mechanically echoed, "the whole past is between them."
+
+"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,
+they had kept it up."
+
+She was silent a little. "Why then did she want him to marry me?"
+
+"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because
+she believed you would be good to Pansy."
+
+"Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn't like her!" cried Isabel.
+
+"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows
+it; she knows everything."
+
+"Will she know that you've told me this?"
+
+"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for it, and
+do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that
+I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it.
+Only, as it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little
+idiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but myself."
+
+Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantastic
+wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her
+feet. "Why did Osmond never marry her?" she finally asked.
+
+"Because she had no money." The Countess had an answer for everything,
+and if she lied she lied well. "No one knows, no one has ever known,
+what she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I
+don't believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have married
+him."
+
+"How can she have loved him then?"
+
+"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I
+suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was
+living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won't say his ancestors,
+because he never had any--her relations with Osmond had changed, and she
+had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,"
+the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically
+afterwards--"she _had_ never had, what you might call any illusions of
+_intelligence_. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always
+been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but
+she has never succeeded. I don't call Madame Merle a success, you know.
+I don't know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very
+little to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,
+of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of
+expense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did
+that, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've watched
+them for years; I know everything--everything. I'm thought a great
+scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up those
+two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for
+ever defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she looks
+horrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She
+has been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the
+vile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd
+expose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his
+court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that
+afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She
+let me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that
+game. She pretends there's a good deal more to tell about me than about
+her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don't care a fig what she
+may say, simply because I know _you_ don't care a fig. You can't trouble
+your head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge
+as she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great
+idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown
+lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god.
+There should be no scandal about Caesar's wife, you know; and, as I say,
+she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn't
+marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would put
+things together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror
+lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the
+mother has never done so."
+
+"Yes, yes, the mother has done so," said Isabel, who had listened to
+all this with a face more and more wan. "She betrayed herself to me the
+other day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a
+chance of Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at
+its not coming off she almost dropped the mask."
+
+"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She has
+failed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it
+up."
+
+Isabel started at the words "her daughter," which her guest threw off
+so familiarly. "It seems very wonderful," she murmured; and in this
+bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
+touched by the story.
+
+"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!" the Countess
+went on. "She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself
+have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she
+had become yours."
+
+"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
+seeing me--!" Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
+
+"I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.
+Osmond's marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before
+that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That
+you might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something for
+her. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really
+extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,"
+cried the Countess, "why did you ever inherit money?" She stopped a
+moment as if she saw something singular in Isabel's face. "Don't tell
+me now that you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would
+refuse to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and
+natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in
+your life!"
+
+"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry," Isabel
+said. "I'm much obliged to you."
+
+"Yes, you seem to be!" cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.
+"Perhaps you are--perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I should have
+thought."
+
+"How should I take it?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of." Isabel made
+no answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. "They've
+always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke
+off--or _he_ did. But he has always been more for her than she has been
+for him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that
+each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also
+do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know
+such a thing as that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how
+much better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but
+Osmond has never lifted a little finger for _her_. She has worked for him,
+plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found
+money for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her. She's an old
+habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn't
+miss her if she were removed. And, what's more, to-day she knows it. So
+you needn't be jealous!" the Countess added humorously.
+
+Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath;
+her head was humming with new knowledge. "I'm much obliged to you," she
+repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: "How
+do you know all this?"
+
+This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel's
+expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold
+stare, with which, "Let us assume that I've invented it!" she cried. She
+too, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel's
+arm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: "Now will you
+give up your journey?"
+
+Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a
+moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a
+minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed
+eyes and pale lips.
+
+"I've done wrong to speak--I've made you ill!" the Countess cried.
+
+"Ah, I must see Ralph!" Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in
+the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of
+far-reaching, infinite sadness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the
+Countess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with
+her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought
+(except of her journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy;
+from her she couldn't turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had
+given her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five
+o'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza
+Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and
+obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had
+come with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women,
+and she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that
+the well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she
+disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her; not for
+the world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more
+than before the impression of a well-appointed prison; for it was not
+possible to pretend Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature
+had been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary
+effect of the revelation was to make her reach out a hand.
+
+The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she
+went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady.
+The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a
+large clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax
+flowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures
+on the walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome
+than like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment
+only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned
+at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got
+up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her
+extreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect
+was strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision
+that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully,
+seeing a painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her
+falsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these
+dark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the
+room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of
+handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It
+made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot
+she would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to
+her; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to
+Madame Merle. In one's relations with this lady, however, there were
+never any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off
+not only her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was
+different from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and
+Isabel instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her
+habitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she
+had undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a
+peculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw
+that she was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the
+whole the wonderful woman had never been so natural. She looked at her
+young friend from head to foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a
+cold gentleness rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their
+last meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She had
+been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+
+"You can leave us alone," she said to the portress; "in five minutes
+this lady will ring for you." And then she turned to Isabel, who, after
+noting what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let
+her eyes wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished
+never to look at Madame Merle again. "You're surprised to find me here,
+and I'm afraid you're not pleased," this lady went on. "You don't see
+why I should have come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've
+been rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission." There
+was none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply
+and mildly; but Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could
+not have told herself with what intention it was uttered. "But I've not
+been sitting long," Madame Merle continued; "that is I've not been long
+with Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon
+that she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable.
+It may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I
+can't tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the
+chance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well;
+still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good
+woman--what's her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection whatever. I
+stayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not
+in the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has arranged
+it delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it's all none of my
+business, but I feel happier since I've seen her. She may even have a
+maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears
+a little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see
+Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't
+find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most
+coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly
+like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says
+it's a great happiness for them to have her. She's a little saint of
+heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame
+Catherine the portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the
+signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me
+go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I must tell you
+that--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother Superior; it was
+of such high importance that you should be treated with respect. I
+requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her how she
+supposed I would treat you!"
+
+So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had
+long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases
+and gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel's
+ear, though her eyes were absent from her companion's face. She had not
+proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse
+in her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle
+modulation marked a momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely
+new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in
+the space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in
+the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person
+who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a
+very different person--a person who knew her secret. This discovery was
+tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of
+women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the
+conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed
+on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had
+the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been touched with
+a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the alertness of her
+will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her not betraying
+herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her voice
+refused to improve--she couldn't help it--while she heard herself say
+she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able
+only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+
+Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large
+clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might
+have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and
+saw before her the phantom of exposure--this in itself was a revenge,
+this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a
+moment during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with
+her back half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side
+of the window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she
+saw; she saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon.
+She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become
+a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in
+which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry
+staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool,
+as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron. All the
+bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it was as if
+she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment during
+which, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something that
+would hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous
+vision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world
+standing there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to
+think as the meanest. Isabel's only revenge was to be silent still--to
+leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. She left her there
+for a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who at last
+seated herself with a movement which was in itself a confession of
+helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down at her. Madame
+Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel's face. She might see
+what she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never accuse
+her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her the
+opportunity to defend herself.
+
+"I'm come to bid Pansy good-bye," our young woman said at last. "I go to
+England to-night."
+
+"Go to England to-night!" Madame Merle repeated sitting there and
+looking up at her.
+
+"I'm going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett's dying."
+
+"Ah, you'll feel that." Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance
+to express sympathy. "Do you go alone?"
+
+"Yes; without my husband."
+
+Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the
+general sadness of things. "Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I'm sorry
+he's dying. Shall you see his mother?"
+
+"Yes; she has returned from America."
+
+"She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have
+changed," said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a
+moment, then added: "And you'll see dear old Gardencourt again!"
+
+"I shall not enjoy it much," Isabel answered.
+
+"Naturally--in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the houses I
+know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I
+don't venture to send a message to the people," Madame Merle added; "but
+I should like to give my love to the place."
+
+Isabel turned away. "I had better go to Pansy. I've not much time."
+
+While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and
+admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet
+smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump
+white hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she
+had already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss
+Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly
+and said: "It will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her
+myself." Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+
+"Will you let me remain a little?" this lady asked. "It's so good to be
+here."
+
+"You may remain always if you like!" And the good sister gave a knowing
+laugh.
+
+She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long
+staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean;
+so, thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine
+gently pushed open the door of Pansy's room and ushered in the visitor;
+then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and
+embraced.
+
+"She's glad to see you," she repeated; "it will do her good." And she
+placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement
+to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. "How does this dear child
+look?" she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+
+"She looks pale," Isabel answered.
+
+"That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. _Elle �claire la
+maison_," said the good sister.
+
+Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was
+perhaps this that made her look pale. "They're very good to me--they
+think of everything!" she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to
+accommodate.
+
+"We think of you always--you're a precious charge," Madame Catherine
+remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and
+whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with
+a leaden weight on Isabel's ears; it seemed to represent the surrender
+of a personality, the authority of the Church.
+
+When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid
+her head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some moments, while
+Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and
+looking about the room. "Don't you think I've arranged it well? I've
+everything I have at home."
+
+"It's very pretty; you're very comfortable." Isabel scarcely knew what
+she could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her think she had
+come to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend
+to rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: "I've come to
+bid you good-bye. I'm going to England."
+
+Pansy's white little face turned red. "To England! Not to come back?"
+
+"I don't know when I shall come back."
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry," Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had
+no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
+
+"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see
+him," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa
+go?"
+
+"No; I shall go alone."
+
+For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she
+thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never
+by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed
+them deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel
+was sure; and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands
+and wives who were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet
+even in thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle
+stepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have
+stood almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the
+saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted
+heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would
+(for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon,
+so she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her
+own. "You'll be very far away," she presently went on.
+
+"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter," Isabel
+explained; "since so long as you're here I can't be called near you."
+
+"Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very often."
+
+"I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing
+with me. I can't amuse you."
+
+"I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes."
+
+"Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England."
+
+"You're not happy, Mrs. Osmond," said Pansy.
+
+"Not very. But it doesn't matter."
+
+"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to
+come out."
+
+"I wish indeed you might."
+
+"Don't leave me here," Pansy went on gently.
+
+Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. "Will you come
+away with me now?" she asked.
+
+Pansy looked at her pleadingly. "Did papa tell you to bring me?"
+
+"No; it's my own proposal."
+
+"I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?"
+
+"I don't think he knew I was coming."
+
+"He thinks I've not had enough," said Pansy. "But I have. The ladies are
+very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some
+very little ones--such charming children. Then my room--you can see for
+yourself. All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished
+me to think a little--and I've thought a great deal."
+
+"What have you thought?"
+
+"Well, that I must never displease papa."
+
+"You knew that before."
+
+"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything--I'll do anything," said
+Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into
+her face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been
+vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!
+Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated
+easily. She laid her hand on Pansy's as if to let her know that her
+look conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl's
+momentary resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only
+her tribute to the truth of things. She didn't presume to judge others,
+but she had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no
+vocation for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of
+sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her
+pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful.
+Yes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few articles!
+
+Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. "Good-bye then. I leave
+Rome to-night."
+
+Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's
+face. "You look strange, you frighten me."
+
+"Oh, I'm very harmless," said Isabel.
+
+"Perhaps you won't come back?"
+
+"Perhaps not. I can't tell."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won't leave me!"
+
+Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. "My dear child, what can I do
+for you?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--but I'm happier when I think of you."
+
+"You can always think of me."
+
+"Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid," said Pansy.
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+"Of papa--a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see me."
+
+"You must not say that," Isabel observed.
+
+"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it
+more easily."
+
+Isabel considered. "I won't desert you," she said at last. "Good-bye, my
+child."
+
+Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two
+sisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor
+to the top of the staircase. "Madame Merle has been here," she remarked
+as they went; and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: "I
+don't like Madame Merle!"
+
+Isabel hesitated, then stopped. "You must never say that--that you don't
+like Madame Merle."
+
+Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a
+reason for non-compliance. "I never will again," she said with exquisite
+gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it
+appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which
+Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she
+reached the bottom the girl was standing above. "You'll come back?" she
+called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+
+"Yes--I'll come back."
+
+Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of
+the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. "I won't
+go in," said the good sister. "Madame Merle's waiting for you."
+
+At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking
+if there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment's reflexion
+assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her
+desire to avoid Pansy's other friend. Her companion grasped her arm
+very gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said
+in French and almost familiarly: "_Eh bien, ch�re Madame, qu'en
+pensez-vous?_"
+
+"About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you."
+
+"We think it's enough," Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she
+pushed open the door of the parlour.
+
+Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so
+absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame
+Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been
+thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full
+possession of her resources. "I found I wished to wait for you," she
+said urbanely. "But it's not to talk about Pansy."
+
+Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame
+Merle's declaration she answered after a moment: "Madame Catherine says
+it's enough."
+
+"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about
+poor Mr. Touchett," Madame Merle added. "Have you reason to believe that
+he's really at his last?"
+
+"I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a
+probability."
+
+"I'm going to ask you a strange question," said Madame Merle. "Are
+you very fond of your cousin?" And she gave a smile as strange as her
+utterance.
+
+"Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you."
+
+She just hung fire. "It's rather hard to explain. Something has occurred
+to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit
+of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never
+guessed it?"
+
+"He has done me many services."
+
+"Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman."
+
+"_He_ made me--?"
+
+Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more
+triumphantly: "He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required
+to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him you've to thank." She
+stopped; there was something in Isabel's eyes.
+
+"I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money."
+
+"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He
+brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!"
+
+Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by
+lurid flashes. "I don't know why you say such things. I don't know what
+you know."
+
+"I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that."
+
+Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment
+with her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only revenge: "I
+believed it was you I had to thank!"
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud
+penance. "You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so."
+
+"Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again."
+
+Madame Merle raised her eyes. "I shall go to America," she quietly
+remarked while Isabel passed out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel
+descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the
+arms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of Henrietta Stackpole.
+She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not
+definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt
+her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from
+Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question
+the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took
+little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they
+were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their
+course through other countries--strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless
+lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed,
+a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but
+it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of
+memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their
+will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a
+logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now
+that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much
+concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt
+to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things,
+their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their
+horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She
+remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity
+of a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that
+they had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after
+all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of
+use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all
+desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge.
+Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers
+it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in
+her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had
+been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph
+his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect
+of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything
+more--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble
+tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
+
+She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as
+good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive,
+simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and
+regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures
+couched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret
+now--that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of
+her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle
+had been so--well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped,
+from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been.
+Whatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and
+doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was
+going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression that she
+should never again see Madame Merle. This impression carried her into
+the future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She
+saw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who
+had her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of
+the present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away,
+further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was
+evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any appetite
+for renunciation--was the sense that life would be her business for a
+long time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost
+enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength--it was a
+proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn't be she was to live
+only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things
+might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury
+of life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable,
+too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid
+to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be
+valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things?
+Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It
+involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but
+Isabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow
+of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.
+Then the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of
+her indifference closed her in.
+
+Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid
+she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,
+looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she
+wished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped.
+She rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an
+arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station,
+the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her
+with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend's. She
+remembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty
+spectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered
+how she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded
+streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the
+incident came before her as the deed of another person.
+
+"It's too beautiful that you should have come," said Henrietta, looking
+at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the
+proposition. "If you hadn't--if you hadn't; well, I don't know,"
+remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
+
+Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another
+figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment
+she recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little
+apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about
+him to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken--that of
+abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their
+embraces.
+
+"There's Mr. Bantling," said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely
+caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+
+"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!" Henrietta
+exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile--a smile
+tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. "Isn't it lovely she
+has come?" Henrietta asked. "He knows all about it," she added; "we had
+quite a discussion. He said you wouldn't, I said you would."
+
+"I thought you always agreed," Isabel smiled in return. She felt she
+could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling's brave
+eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to
+remember he was an old friend of her cousin--that he understood, that
+it was all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him,
+extravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.
+
+"Oh, I always agree," said Mr. Bantling. "But she doesn't, you know."
+
+"Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?" Henrietta enquired.
+"Your young lady has probably remained at Calais."
+
+"I don't care," said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never
+found so interesting.
+
+"Stay with her while I go and see," Henrietta commanded, leaving the two
+for a moment together.
+
+They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel
+how it had been on the Channel.
+
+"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough," she said, to her
+companion's obvious surprise. After which she added: "You've been to
+Gardencourt, I know."
+
+"Now how do you know that?"
+
+"I can't tell you--except that you look like a person who has been to
+Gardencourt."
+
+"Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you know."
+
+"I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,"
+said Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she
+should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
+
+Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed
+a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue,
+and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. "You can ask Miss
+Stackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago."
+
+"Did you see my cousin?"
+
+"Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been
+there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he
+was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can't speak,"
+Mr. Bantling pursued. "He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He
+was just as clever as ever. It's awfully wretched."
+
+Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. "Was
+that late in the day?"
+
+"Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know."
+
+"I'm greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?"
+
+"Ah, I don't think _she'll_ let you go," said Mr. Bantling. "She wants you
+to stop with her. I made Touchett's man promise to telegraph me to-day,
+and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. 'Quiet and easy,'
+that's what it says, and it's dated two o'clock. So you see you can wait
+till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired."
+
+"Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Bantling, "We were certain you would like the last news."
+On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to
+agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel's maid, whom she had caught
+in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of
+losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress's
+luggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station.
+"You know you're not to think of going to the country to-night,"
+Henrietta remarked to her. "It doesn't matter whether there's a train
+or not. You're to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a
+corner to be had in London, but I've got you one all the same. It isn't
+a Roman palace, but it will do for a night."
+
+"I'll do whatever you wish," Isabel said.
+
+"You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish."
+
+"She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?" Mr.
+Bantling enquired jocosely.
+
+Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. "I see you're
+in a great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the Paddington Station
+to-morrow morning at ten."
+
+"Don't come for my sake, Mr. Bantling," said Isabel.
+
+"He'll come for mine," Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into
+a cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street--to do her
+justice there had been dinner enough--she asked those questions to which
+she had alluded at the station. "Did your husband make you a scene about
+your coming?" That was Miss Stackpole's first enquiry.
+
+"No; I can't say he made a scene."
+
+"He didn't object then?"
+
+"Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a scene."
+
+"What was it then?"
+
+"It was a very quiet conversation."
+
+Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. "It must have been hellish,"
+she then remarked. And Isabel didn't deny that it had been hellish. But
+she confined herself to answering Henrietta's questions, which was easy,
+as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no
+new information. "Well," said Miss Stackpole at last, "I've only one
+criticism to make. I don't see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go
+back."
+
+"I'm not sure I myself see now," Isabel replied. "But I did then."
+
+"If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return."
+
+Isabel waited a moment. "Perhaps I shall find another."
+
+"You'll certainly never find a good one."
+
+"In default of a better my having promised will do," Isabel suggested.
+
+"Yes; that's why I hate it."
+
+"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a
+complication, but what will going back be?"
+
+"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!" said
+Henrietta with much intention.
+
+"He will, though," Isabel answered gravely. "It won't be the scene of a
+moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life."
+
+For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and
+then Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested,
+announced abruptly: "I've been to stay with Lady Pensil!"
+
+"Ah, the invitation came at last!"
+
+"Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me."
+
+"Naturally enough."
+
+"It was more natural than I think you know," said Henrietta, who fixed
+her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly:
+"Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I
+criticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at
+least, was born on the other side!"
+
+It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so
+modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel's mind was not
+possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with
+a quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately
+recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,
+"Henrietta Stackpole," she asked, "are you going to give up your
+country?"
+
+"Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact
+in the face. I'm going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in
+London."
+
+"It seems very strange," said Isabel, smiling now.
+
+"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think
+I know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain."
+
+"One can't explain one's marriage," Isabel answered. "And yours doesn't
+need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn't a riddle."
+
+"No, he isn't a bad pun--or even a high flight of American humour. He
+has a beautiful nature," Henrietta went on. "I've studied him for many
+years and I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good
+prospectus. He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the
+other hand he doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in
+the United States."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever
+heard you say anything against your native land."
+
+"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after
+all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I _am_ changed; a woman has to change a
+good deal to marry."
+
+"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see something
+of the inner life."
+
+Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. "That's the key to the
+mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good
+a right as any one!" she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly
+diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta,
+after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she
+had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was
+a disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was
+subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had
+not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+marrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to
+Isabel's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A
+little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was
+original. But she didn't see how Henrietta could give up her country.
+She herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her
+country as it had been Henrietta's. She presently asked her if she had
+enjoyed her visit to Lady Pensil.
+
+"Oh yes," said Henrietta, "she didn't know what to make of me."
+
+"And was that very enjoyable?"
+
+"Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She thinks
+she knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman of my modern
+type. It would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better
+or a little worse. She's so puzzled; I believe she thinks it's my duty
+to go and do something immoral. She thinks it's immoral that I should
+marry her brother; but, after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll
+never understand my mixture--never!"
+
+"She's not so intelligent as her brother then," said Isabel. "He appears
+to have understood."
+
+"Oh no, he hasn't!" cried Miss Stackpole with decision. "I really
+believe that's what he wants to marry me for--just to find out the
+mystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed idea--a kind of
+fascination."
+
+"It's very good in you to humour it."
+
+"Oh well," said Henrietta, "I've something to find out too!" And Isabel
+saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She
+was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.
+
+Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington
+Station, where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company both
+of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his
+perplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found
+out at least the great point--that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting
+in initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had
+been on his guard against this deficiency.
+
+"Henrietta has told me, and I'm very glad," Isabel said as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+"I dare say you think it awfully odd," Mr. Bantling replied, resting on
+his neat umbrella.
+
+"Yes, I think it awfully odd."
+
+"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked
+striking out a line," said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Isabel's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even
+quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small
+household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that
+instead of being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown
+into the drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to
+her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to
+come to her. She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared--as
+scared as if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious
+things, watching her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark
+and cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The
+house was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it
+had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She
+left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the library and
+along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep
+made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had
+seen years before; it might have been only yesterday she had stood
+there. She envied the security of valuable "pieces" which change by no
+hair's breadth, only grow in value, while their owners lose inch by
+inch youth, happiness, beauty; and she became aware that she was walking
+about as her aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany.
+She was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It
+suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just
+that way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She
+might have had another life and she might have been a woman more blest.
+She stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture--a charming and
+precious Bonington--upon which her eyes rested a long time. But she was
+not looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had
+not come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+
+Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the
+big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her
+eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a
+repository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most
+undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first
+time, if her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the
+matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel's hot cheek.
+
+"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Ralph," Mrs.
+Touchett said. "The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her
+place. He has a man who's supposed to look after him, but the man's good
+for nothing; he's always looking out of the window--as if there were
+anything to see! I didn't wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be
+sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the
+nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house."
+
+"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking
+everywhere," Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.
+
+"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that
+it's always sleep."
+
+"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?"
+
+Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. "You can try him," was the
+limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her
+room. "I thought they had taken you there; but it's not my house, it's
+Ralph's; and I don't know what they do. They must at least have taken
+your luggage; I don't suppose you've brought much. Not that I care,
+however. I believe they've given you the same room you had before; when
+Ralph heard you were coming he said you must have that one."
+
+"Did he say anything else?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!" cried Mrs. Touchett as she
+preceded her niece up the staircase.
+
+It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept
+in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous;
+Mrs. Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. "Is there really
+no hope?" our young woman asked as she stood before her.
+
+"None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful
+life."
+
+"No--it has only been a beautiful one." Isabel found herself already
+contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that; there's no beauty without health.
+That is a very odd dress to travel in."
+
+Isabel glanced at her garment. "I left Rome at an hour's notice; I took
+the first that came."
+
+"Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to
+be their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them--but they seemed
+to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black
+brocade."
+
+"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them the
+truth," said Isabel. "Lily wrote me you had dined with her."
+
+"She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she
+should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been
+expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to
+America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure."
+
+These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece,
+whom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this
+repast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the
+melancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not
+to be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman's
+inexpressiveness, her want of regret, of disappointment, came back to
+her. Unmistakeably she would have found it a blessing to-day to be able
+to feel a defeat, a mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she
+were not even missing those enrichments of consciousness and privately
+trying--reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet;
+the testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other
+hand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all
+it might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had
+come over her dimly that she had failed of something, that she saw
+herself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her little
+sharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Ralph had as yet not
+moved, but that he probably would be able to see her before dinner.
+And then in a moment she added that he had seen Lord Warburton the day
+before; an announcement which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed
+an intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an
+accident might bring them together. Such an accident would not be happy;
+she had not come to England to struggle again with Lord Warburton. She
+none the less presently said to her aunt that he had been very kind to
+Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome.
+
+"He has something else to think of now," Mrs. Touchett returned. And she
+paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+
+Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant.
+But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished
+to gain a moment. "Ah yes--the House of Lords and all that."
+
+"He's not thinking of the Lords; he's thinking of the ladies. At least
+he's thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he's engaged to be married."
+
+"Ah, to be married!" Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+
+"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.
+Poor Ralph can't go to the wedding, though I believe it's to take place
+very soon.
+
+"And who's the young lady?"
+
+"A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--something of
+that sort."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel said. "It must be a sudden decision."
+
+"Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just
+been made public."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her
+aunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed soreness,
+and the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this
+kind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone
+almost of relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that
+ladies, even married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as
+an offence to themselves. Isabel's first care therefore was to show
+that however that might be in general she was not offended now. But
+meanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some
+moments thoughtful--she presently forgot Mrs. Touchett's observation--it
+was not because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed
+half Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in the
+city of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband that Lord
+Warburton was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course
+not aware how extremely wan she must have looked while she made this
+intellectual effort. But at last she collected herself and said to her
+aunt: "He was sure to do it some time or other."
+
+Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the
+head. "Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!" she cried suddenly. They went on
+with their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord
+Warburton's death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was
+all over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A
+servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him
+to leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her
+hands folded on the edge of the table. "I should like to ask you three
+questions," she observed when the servant had gone.
+
+"Three are a great many."
+
+"I can't do with less; I've been thinking. They're all very good ones."
+
+"That's what I'm afraid of. The best questions are the worst," Isabel
+answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left
+the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows,
+she felt herself followed by her eyes.
+
+"Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Lord Warburton?" Mrs.
+Touchett enquired.
+
+Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. "No, dear aunt."
+
+"Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say."
+
+"Your believing me's an immense temptation," she declared, smiling
+still.
+
+"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm
+misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to crow
+over you."
+
+"It's my husband who doesn't get on with me," said Isabel.
+
+"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing over _you_,"
+Mrs. Touchett added. "Do you still like Serena Merle?" she went on.
+
+"Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she's going to America."
+
+"To America? She must have done something very bad."
+
+"Yes--very bad."
+
+"May I ask what it is?"
+
+"She made a convenience of me."
+
+"Ah," cried Mrs. Touchett, "so she did of me! She does of every one."
+
+"She'll make a convenience of America," said Isabel, smiling again and
+glad that her aunt's questions were over.
+
+It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
+dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
+there, but after a while went away--the local doctor, who had attended
+his father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day; he
+was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope,
+but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his
+mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further
+need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew
+that her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel's arrival Ralph gave no
+sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised
+himself and said he knew that she had come.
+
+How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no
+one had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in
+the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room.
+She told the nurse she might go--she herself would sit with him for the
+rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had
+moved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take
+it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained
+perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a
+long time--till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He
+might have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the
+figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome,
+and this was worse; there was but one change possible now. There was a
+strange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box.
+With this he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes to
+greet her it was as if she were looking into immeasurable space. It was
+not till midnight that the nurse came back; but the hours, to Isabel,
+had not seemed long; it was exactly what she had come for. If she had
+come simply to wait she found ample occasion, for he lay three days in
+a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to
+wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as
+if he too were waiting for something--for something that certainly would
+come. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming
+had already arrived; and yet she never lost the sense that they were
+still together. But they were not always together; there were other
+hours that she passed in wandering through the empty house and listening
+for a voice that was not poor Ralph's. She had a constant fear; she
+thought it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained
+silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Countess
+Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the third day.
+
+"I feel better to-night," he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless
+dimness of her vigil; "I think I can say something." She sank upon her
+knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him
+not to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face was of necessity
+serious--it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner
+apparently had not lost a perception of incongruities. "What does it
+matter if I'm tired when I've all eternity to rest? There's no harm in
+making an effort when it's the very last of all. Don't people always
+feel better just before the end? I've often heard of that; it's what I
+was waiting for. Ever since you've been here I thought it would come.
+I tried two or three times; I was afraid you'd get tired of sitting
+there." He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice
+seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his face
+turned to Isabel and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. "It
+was very good of you to come," he went on. "I thought you would; but I
+wasn't sure."
+
+"I was not sure either till I came," said Isabel.
+
+"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the
+angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You've been like that;
+as if you were waiting for me."
+
+"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this. This is
+not death, dear Ralph."
+
+"Not for you--no. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see
+others die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that we remain. I've
+had it--even I. But now I'm of no use but to give it to others. With me
+it's all over." And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till
+it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She couldn't
+see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. "Isabel," he
+went on suddenly, "I wish it were over for you." She answered nothing;
+she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay
+silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. "Ah, what
+is it you have done for me?"
+
+"What is it you did for me?" she cried, her now extreme agitation half
+smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
+things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them
+supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. "You did
+something once--you know it. O Ralph, you've been everything! What have
+I done for you--what can I do to-day? I would die if you could live.
+But I don't wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you." Her
+voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+
+"You won't lose me--you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be
+nearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in
+life there's love. Death is good--but there's no love."
+
+"I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should be!"
+Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse
+herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the
+moment, became single and melted together into this present pain. "What
+must you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I
+only know to-day because there are people less stupid than I."
+
+"Don't mind people," said Ralph. "I think I'm glad to leave people."
+
+She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to
+pray to him. "Is it true--is it true?" she asked.
+
+"True that you've been stupid? Oh no," said Ralph with a sensible
+intention of wit.
+
+"That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?"
+
+He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:
+"Ah, don't speak of that--that was not happy." Slowly he moved his face
+toward her again, and they once more saw each other. "But for that--but
+for that--!" And he paused. "I believe I ruined you," he wailed.
+
+She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he
+seemed already so little of this world. But even if she had not had
+it she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only
+knowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge that they were
+looking at the truth together.
+
+"He married me for the money," she said. She wished to say everything;
+she was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a
+little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he
+raised them in a moment, and then, "He was greatly in love with you," he
+answered.
+
+"Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn't have married me if I had
+been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you
+to understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that's
+all over."
+
+"I always understood," said Ralph.
+
+"I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it."
+
+"You don't hurt me--you make me very happy." And as Ralph said this
+there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her
+head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. "I always
+understood," he continued, "though it was so strange--so pitiful. You
+wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you
+were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the
+conventional!"
+
+"Oh yes, I've been punished," Isabel sobbed.
+
+He listened to her a little, and then continued: "Was he very bad about
+your coming?"
+
+"He made it very hard for me. But I don't care."
+
+"It is all over then between you?"
+
+"Oh no; I don't think anything's over."
+
+"Are you going back to him?" Ralph gasped.
+
+"I don't know--I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't
+want to think--I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and
+that's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my
+knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I have been for a
+long time. And I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad;
+only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be
+pain--? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not
+the deepest thing; there's something deeper."
+
+Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared
+to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then
+he murmured simply: "You must stay here."
+
+"I should like to stay--as long as seems right."
+
+"As seems right--as seems right?" He repeated her words. "Yes, you think
+a great deal about that."
+
+"Of course one must. You're very tired," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest thing.
+No--no. But it's very deep. If I could stay--"
+
+"For me you'll always be here," she softly interrupted. It was easy to
+interrupt him.
+
+But he went on, after a moment: "It passes, after all; it's passing now.
+But love remains. I don't know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I
+shall find out. There are many things in life. You're very young."
+
+"I feel very old," said Isabel.
+
+"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe--I don't
+believe--" But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+
+She begged him to be quiet now. "We needn't speak to understand each
+other," she said.
+
+"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for
+more than a little."
+
+"Oh Ralph, I'm very happy now," she cried through her tears.
+
+"And remember this," he continued, "that if you've been hated
+you've also been loved. Ah but, Isabel--_adored_!" he just audibly and
+lingeringly breathed.
+
+"Oh my brother!" she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that
+if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost
+with which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled
+the necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint
+dawn, she knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down
+without undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast
+the night. She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such
+waiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the
+night wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock,
+but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up
+from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed
+to her for an instant that he was standing there--a vague, hovering
+figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his
+white face--his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not
+afraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty
+passed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that
+shone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside Ralph's door she
+stopped a moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that
+filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she were
+lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting
+motionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his
+hands in her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ralph's
+further wrist resting in his professional fingers. The two nurses were
+at the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but
+the doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Ralph's hand
+in a proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very
+hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only looked at what she had
+come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been in life, and there
+was a strange resemblance to the face of his father, which, six years
+before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt
+and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a general thing
+neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this
+one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed;
+her acute white face was terrible.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lydia," Isabel murmured.
+
+"Go and thank God you've no child," said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging
+herself.
+
+Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the
+height of the London "season," to take a morning train down to a quiet
+station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which
+stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this
+edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself
+at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton
+himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs.
+Touchett. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one;
+there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather
+had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous
+May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the
+hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it
+was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been
+dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and
+prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears
+that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the
+splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the
+bowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group
+of gentlemen all unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards
+learned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she
+knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling
+beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the
+rest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was
+conscious of Mr. Goodwood's gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than
+he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon
+the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she
+thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found
+she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt
+he had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that
+pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and
+something in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex
+intention. She wouldn't meet his eyes, though there was doubtless
+sympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the
+little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to
+her--though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett--was Henrietta Stackpole.
+Henrietta had been crying.
+
+Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,
+and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself
+that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was
+fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been
+greatly in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had
+left her husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting
+the hours of her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive.
+He was not one of the best husbands, but that didn't alter the case.
+Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were
+quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel
+thought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a
+distance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder
+of Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew
+back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day,
+postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must
+decide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a
+decision. On that occasion she had simply started. Osmond gave no sound
+and now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From
+Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had told
+her not to write.
+
+Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel's company, but offered her no assistance;
+she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but
+with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs.
+Touchett was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she
+managed to extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion
+that, after all, such things happened to other people and not to
+herself. Death was disagreeable, but in this case it was her son's
+death, not her own; she had never flattered herself that her own would
+be disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than
+poor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind him,
+and indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was, to Mrs.
+Touchett's mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage of. For
+herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so good as that. She
+made known to Isabel very punctually--it was the evening her son was
+buried--several of Ralph's testamentary arrangements. He had told her
+everything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money;
+of course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of
+Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books and the use of the
+place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by
+the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons
+suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the
+will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property,
+which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various
+bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his
+father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small
+legacies.
+
+"Some of them are extremely peculiar," said Mrs. Touchett; "he has left
+considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I
+asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at
+various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't
+like him, for he hasn't left you a penny. It was his opinion that you
+had been handsomely treated by his father, which I'm bound to say I
+think you were--though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of
+it. The pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one
+by one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to
+Lord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library?
+It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss
+Stackpole--'in recognition of her services to literature.' Does he mean
+her following him up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It
+contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can't carry
+it about the world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction.
+She will sell it of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she'll
+set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?"
+
+This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her
+arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than
+to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one
+of the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She
+was quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her
+command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony
+in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes
+often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which
+looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest
+vehicle approach the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in
+rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had
+a high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under
+the circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come down
+from London to call on Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett
+he had come to see, and not Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the
+validity of this thesis Isabel presently stepped out of the house and
+wandered away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she
+had been but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for
+visiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first it
+struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory I have just
+mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her little rest, and
+if you had seen her pacing about you would have said she had a bad
+conscience. She was not pacified when at the end of a quarter of an
+hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge
+from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently
+proposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search of her. She
+was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have
+drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen
+and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt
+was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that,
+as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather
+stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently
+were silent; but Mrs. Touchett's thin little glance, as she directed it
+toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say
+with cutting sharpness: "Here's the eminently amenable nobleman you
+might have married!" When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,
+that was not what they said. They only said "This is rather awkward, you
+know, and I depend upon you to help me." He was very grave, very proper
+and, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without
+a smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile.
+He looked extremely selfconscious.
+
+"Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me," said Mrs.
+Touchett. "He tells me he didn't know you were still here. I know he's
+an old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I
+brought him out to see for himself."
+
+"Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back
+in time for dinner," Mrs. Touchett's companion rather irrelevantly
+explained. "I'm so glad to find you've not gone."
+
+"I'm not here for long, you know," Isabel said with a certain eagerness.
+
+"I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England
+sooner than--a--than you thought?"
+
+"Yes, I came very suddenly."
+
+Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the
+grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton
+hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking
+about her husband--rather confusedly--and then had checked himself. He
+continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a
+place over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If
+he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had
+the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Isabel
+thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was
+another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+
+"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were
+still here--if they had thought you would see them," Lord Warburton went
+on. "Do kindly let them see you before you leave England."
+
+"It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of
+them."
+
+"I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two?
+You know there's always that old promise." And his lordship coloured a
+little as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more
+familiar air. "Perhaps I'm not right in saying that just now; of course
+you're not thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a
+visit. My sisters are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days;
+and if you could come then--as you say you're not to be very long in
+England--I would see that there should be literally no one else."
+
+Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be
+there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+
+"Thank you extremely," she contented herself with saying; "I'm afraid I
+hardly know about Whitsuntide."
+
+"But I have your promise--haven't I?--for some other time."
+
+There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked
+at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was
+that--as had happened before--she felt sorry for him. "Take care you
+don't miss your train," she said. And then she added: "I wish you every
+happiness."
+
+He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. "Ah yes,
+6.40; I haven't much time, but I've a fly at the door. Thank you very
+much." It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having
+reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. "Good-bye,
+Mrs. Osmond; good-bye." He shook hands with her, without meeting her
+eyes, and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to
+them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two
+ladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn.
+
+"Are you very sure he's to be married?" Isabel asked of her aunt.
+
+"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and
+he accepted it."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "I give it up!"--while her aunt returned to the house
+and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.
+
+She gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while she
+strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the
+acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a
+rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as
+an object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before,
+nor even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something
+important had happened to her--that the place had an air of association.
+Then she remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before,
+when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar
+Goodwood informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when
+she had read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing
+that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an
+interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have
+something to say to her. She wouldn't sit down on it now--she felt
+rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood the
+past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which
+persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this
+agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence
+of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have
+said that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or
+no, if you had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the
+former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment
+she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular
+absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in
+the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her.
+There was nothing to recall her to the house; the two ladies, in their
+seclusion, dined early and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she
+had sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight
+had grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She
+quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had
+become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood,
+who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on the
+unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her
+in the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised
+her of old.
+
+She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started
+forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked
+like violence, but felt like--she knew not what, he grasped her by the
+wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had
+not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was
+something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he
+had looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present
+it was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to
+her--beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost
+seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that.
+All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had
+disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. "You've
+frightened me," she said.
+
+"I didn't mean to," he answered, "but if I did a little, no matter.
+I came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn't come here
+directly. There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took
+a fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I
+don't know who he was, but I didn't want to come with him; I wanted to
+see you alone. So I've been waiting and walking about. I've walked all
+over, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was
+a keeper, or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I
+had made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that
+gentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you." Goodwood
+spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had parted in Rome.
+Isabel had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into
+herself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out
+sail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was
+a feeling of danger. There was indeed something really formidable in his
+resolution. She gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee,
+leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed
+to darken round them. "I want to speak to you," he repeated; "I've
+something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you--as I did
+the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I
+couldn't help it; I knew I was wrong. But I'm not wrong now; please
+don't think I am," he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment
+into entreaty. "I came here to-day for a purpose. It's very different.
+It was vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you."
+
+She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or
+because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she
+listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep
+into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and
+it was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. "How can you
+help me?" she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had
+said seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+
+"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you remember
+what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I
+know on good authority; everything's clear to me to-day. It was a good
+thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,
+a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He
+explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of
+your family and he left you--so long as you should be in England--to my
+care," said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. "Do you know
+what he said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he
+died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let
+you.'"
+
+Isabel suddenly got up. "You had no business to talk about me!"
+
+"Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded, following
+her fast. "And he was dying--when a man's dying it's different." She
+checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more
+than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That
+had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea,
+which she scented in all her being. "But it doesn't matter!" he
+exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem
+of her garment. "If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have
+known all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral
+to see what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for
+God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you. You're the
+most unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of fiends."
+
+She turned on him as if he had struck her. "Are you mad?" she cried.
+
+"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's
+necessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against him; I'll
+speak only of you," Goodwood added quickly. "How can you pretend you're
+not heart-broken? You don't know what to do--you don't know where to
+turn. It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you
+in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too--what it
+would cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it
+will"--and he flared almost into anger: "give me one word of truth! When
+I know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save
+you? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you
+go back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for
+it!'--that's what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn't I? He
+was such a near relation!" cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point
+again. "I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things
+to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was
+after he got home--when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too.
+I understand all about it: you're afraid to go back. You're perfectly
+alone; you don't know where to turn. You can't turn anywhere; you know
+that perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of _me_."
+
+"To think of 'you'?" Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The
+idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed
+large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had
+been a comet in the sky.
+
+"You don't know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade
+you to trust me," Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining
+eyes. "Why should you go back--why should you go through that ghastly
+form?"
+
+"To get away from you!" she answered. But this expressed only a little
+of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She
+had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the
+desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere
+sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her
+feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and
+strange, forced open her set teeth.
+
+At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that
+he would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was
+perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it
+all out. "I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you'll only for
+once listen to me. It's too monstrous of you to think of sinking back
+into that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It's
+you that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+shouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I'm
+yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock.
+What have you to care about? You've no children; that perhaps would be
+an obstacle. As it is you've nothing to consider. You must save what you
+can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a
+part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look
+of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the
+world. We've nothing to do with all that; we're quite out of it; we look
+at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next
+is nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman
+deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life--in going
+down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and
+that's why I'm here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under
+the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that
+has the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+question is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it! Were we
+born to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I never knew _you_
+afraid! If you'll only trust me, how little you will be disappointed!
+The world's all before us--and the world's very big. I know something
+about that."
+
+Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were
+pressing something that hurt her.
+
+"The world's very small," she said at random; she had an immense
+desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say
+something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never
+seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form
+of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted
+help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not
+whether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then
+that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her
+dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she
+felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her
+feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
+
+"Ah, be mine as I'm yours!" she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly
+given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,
+through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+
+This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the
+metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest
+of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of
+this. "Do me the greatest kindness of all," she panted. "I beseech you
+to go away!"
+
+"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!" he cried.
+
+She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. "As you love
+me, as you pity me, leave me alone!"
+
+He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she
+felt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like
+white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and
+it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in
+his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his
+face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and
+made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked
+and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when
+darkness returned she was free. She never looked about her; she only
+darted from the spot. There were lights in the windows of the house;
+they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time--for
+the distance was considerable--she had moved through the darkness (for
+she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked
+all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the
+latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a
+very straight path.
+
+Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in
+Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.
+He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened
+and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and
+jacket; she was on the point of going out. "Oh, good-morning," he said,
+"I was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good
+deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. "Pray
+what led you to suppose she was here?"
+
+"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she
+had come to London. He believed she was to come to you."
+
+Again Miss Stackpole held him--with an intention of perfect kindness--in
+suspense. "She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this
+morning she started for Rome."
+
+Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the
+doorstep. "Oh, she started--?" he stammered. And without finishing
+his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn't
+otherwise move.
+
+Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out
+her hand and grasped his arm. "Look here, Mr. Goodwood," she said; "just
+you wait!"
+
+On which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face, with a
+revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him
+with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his
+life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now
+the key to patience.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
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+      The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 2 (of 2) by Henry James
+    </title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portrait of a Lady
+       Volume 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2834]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      VOLUME II (of II)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry James
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <table summary="" border="3" cellpadding="4">
+      <tbody>
+        <tr>
+          <td>
+            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+            href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2833/2833-h/2833-h.htm">Previous
+            Volume</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+          </td>
+        </tr>
+      </tbody>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XXXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XXXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XLI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XLII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XLIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XLIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XLV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XLVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XLVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XLVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XLIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER L </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER LI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER LII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER LIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER LIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER LV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his
+      friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had
+      gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a
+      visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had
+      obtained his admittance&mdash;it was one of the secondary theatres&mdash;looked
+      about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act had just terminated and
+      he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After scanning two or three tiers
+      of boxes he perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady
+      whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage and
+      partly screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her, leaning back in
+      his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They appeared to have the place to
+      themselves, and Warburton supposed their companions had taken advantage of
+      the recess to enjoy the relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while
+      with his eyes on the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up
+      and interrupt the harmony. At last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and
+      this accident determined him. There should be no marked holding off. He
+      took his way to the upper regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett
+      slowly descending, his hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where
+      they usually were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely
+      and want company,&rdquo; was Ralph&rsquo;s greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve some that&rsquo;s very good which you&rsquo;ve yet deserted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn&rsquo;t want me. Then
+      Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice&mdash;Miss
+      Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn&rsquo;t think they wanted me either. The
+      opera&rsquo;s very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks.
+      I feel very low.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better go home,&rdquo; Lord Warburton said without affectation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to have plenty of friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s why I must watch,&rdquo; said Ralph with the same large
+      mock-melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t want you it&rsquo;s probable she doesn&rsquo;t want me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;re different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel&rsquo;s welcome was as to a friend
+      so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer temporal
+      province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr. Osmond, to whom
+      he had been introduced the day before and who, after he came in, sat
+      blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in the subjects of
+      allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor that Miss Archer had,
+      in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was,
+      however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely
+      animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk
+      with him moreover pointed to presence of mind; it expressed a kindness so
+      ingenious and deliberate as to indicate that she was in undisturbed
+      possession of her faculties. Poor Lord Warburton had moments of
+      bewilderment. She had discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could;
+      what business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above all
+      with such tones of reparation&mdash;preparation? Her voice had tricks of
+      sweetness, but why play them on <i>him</i>? The others came back; the
+      bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was large, and there
+      was room for him to remain if he would sit a little behind and in the
+      dark. He did so for half an hour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front,
+      leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord
+      Warburton heard nothing, and from his gloomy corner saw nothing but the
+      clear profile of this young lady defined against the dim illumination of
+      the house. When there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked
+      to Isabel, and Lord Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short
+      time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies.
+      Isabel said nothing to detain him, but it didn&rsquo;t prevent his being puzzled
+      again. Why should she mark so one of his values&mdash;quite the wrong one&mdash;when
+      she would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He
+      was angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+      Verdi&rsquo;s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and
+      walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic
+      streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the
+      stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the character of that gentleman?&rdquo; Osmond asked of Isabel after he
+      had retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Irreproachable&mdash;don&rsquo;t you see it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He owns about half England; that&rsquo;s his character,&rdquo; Henrietta remarked.
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they call a free country!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he&rsquo;s a great proprietor? Happy man!&rdquo; said Gilbert Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call that happiness&mdash;the ownership of wretched human beings?&rdquo;
+       cried Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;He owns his tenants and has thousands of them. It&rsquo;s
+      pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I
+      don&rsquo;t insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me you own a human being or two,&rdquo; Mr. Bantling suggested
+      jocosely. &ldquo;I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Warburton&rsquo;s a great radical,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;He has very advanced
+      opinions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has very advanced stone walls. His park&rsquo;s enclosed by a gigantic iron
+      fence, some thirty miles round,&rdquo; Henrietta announced for the information
+      of Mr. Osmond. &ldquo;I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston
+      radicals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they approve of iron fences?&rdquo; asked Mr. Bantling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking
+      to <i>you</i> over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?&rdquo; Osmond went on,
+      questioning Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well enough for all the use I have for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how much of a use is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I like to like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Liking to like&rsquo;&mdash;why, it makes a passion!&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she considered&mdash;&ldquo;keep that for liking to <i>dis</i>like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to provoke me then,&rdquo; Osmond laughed, &ldquo;to a passion for <i>him</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a
+      disproportionate gravity. &ldquo;No, Mr. Osmond; I don&rsquo;t think I should ever
+      dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,&rdquo; she more easily added,
+      &ldquo;is a very nice man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of great ability?&rdquo; her friend enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As good as he&rsquo;s good-looking do you mean? He&rsquo;s very good-looking. How
+      detestably fortunate!&mdash;to be a great English magnate, to be clever
+      and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your
+      high favour! That&rsquo;s a man I could envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel considered him with interest. &ldquo;You seem to me to be always envying
+      some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it&rsquo;s poor Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My envy&rsquo;s not dangerous; it wouldn&rsquo;t hurt a mouse. I don&rsquo;t want to
+      destroy the people&mdash;I only want to <i>be</i> them. You see it would
+      destroy only myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d like to be the Pope?&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should love it&mdash;but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why&rdquo;&mdash;Osmond
+      reverted&mdash;&ldquo;do you speak of your friend as poor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women&mdash;when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after
+      they&rsquo;ve hurt them; that&rsquo;s their great way of showing kindness,&rdquo; said
+      Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism
+      so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as
+      if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It serves him right if you have,&rdquo; said Henrietta while the curtain rose
+      for the ballet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four
+      hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered
+      him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the
+      collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her
+      companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his
+      place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and
+      finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said
+      in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m leaving Rome,&rdquo; he
+      added. &ldquo;I must bid you goodbye.&rdquo; Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now
+      sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of
+      his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the
+      point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him
+      a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      afraid you&rsquo;ll think me very &lsquo;volatile.&rsquo; I told you the other day I wanted
+      so much to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; you could easily change your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bon voyage</i> then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re in a great hurry to get rid of me,&rdquo; said his lordship quite
+      dismally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least. But I hate partings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care what I do,&rdquo; he went on pitifully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at him a moment. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not keeping your
+      promise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He coloured like a boy of fifteen. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m not, then it&rsquo;s because I can&rsquo;t;
+      and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo; He lingered still, however. &ldquo;When shall I see you again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: &ldquo;Some
+      day after you&rsquo;re married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will never be. It will be after you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do as well,&rdquo; she smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the
+      shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these
+      presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful
+      blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is
+      impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek
+      sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as
+      with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the
+      large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman
+      air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine
+      mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it
+      is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon
+      them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a
+      clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more mildly human.
+      Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace,
+      wondering to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and
+      how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red walls of the
+      room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their
+      beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself,
+      and it was all the greater because she was glad again, for the time, to be
+      alone. At last, however, her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide
+      of life. An occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the
+      Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the
+      smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared,
+      apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly,
+      with his hands behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing
+      smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have&mdash;the best.&rdquo; And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call them better company than an English peer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.&rdquo; She got up, speaking with
+      intention a little dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest of
+      his question. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid that what I heard the other evening is true:
+      you&rsquo;re rather cruel to that nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not true. I&rsquo;m
+      scrupulously kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I mean!&rdquo; Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such happy
+      hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was fond of
+      originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he
+      had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race
+      and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself
+      a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of
+      choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high
+      appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its
+      distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its solid
+      actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing him to an
+      English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of such conduct
+      as Isabel&rsquo;s. It would be proper that the woman he might marry should have
+      done something of that sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly
+      qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s personal
+      merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of
+      that gentleman&rsquo;s conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond
+      spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended by
+      affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn&rsquo;t have seen
+      that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?&mdash;which
+      perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+      sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel&rsquo;s invidious kinsman was obliged
+      to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His good humour was
+      imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his production of the
+      right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of a match for your
+      cigarette. Clearly he was amused&mdash;as amused as a man could be who was
+      so little ever surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not
+      that his spirits were visibly high&mdash;he would never, in the concert of
+      pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a mortal
+      dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random ravings. He
+      thought Miss Archer sometimes of too precipitate a readiness. It was pity
+      she had that fault, because if she had not had it she would really have
+      had none; she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as
+      handled ivory to the palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was
+      deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency
+      that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa
+      Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He
+      was pleased with everything; he had never before been pleased with so many
+      things at once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one
+      evening, going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet
+      to which he prefixed the title of &ldquo;Rome Revisited.&rdquo; A day or two later he
+      showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to
+      her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by
+      a tribute to the muse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often&mdash;he would
+      have admitted that&mdash;too sorely aware of something wrong, something
+      ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended
+      on his spirit. But at present he was happy&mdash;happier than he had
+      perhaps ever been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation.
+      This was simply the sense of success&mdash;the most agreeable emotion of
+      the human heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he
+      had the irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often
+      reminded himself. &ldquo;Ah no, I&rsquo;ve not been spoiled; certainly I&rsquo;ve not been
+      spoiled,&rdquo; he used inwardly to repeat. &ldquo;If I do succeed before I die I
+      shall thoroughly have earned it.&rdquo; He was too apt to reason as if &ldquo;earning&rdquo;
+       this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and might be
+      confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not
+      been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he
+      was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them, now too
+      old; others had been too easy. The present one had been less arduous than
+      might have been expected, but had been easy&mdash;that is had been rapid&mdash;only
+      because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort
+      than he had believed it in him to make. The desire to have something or
+      other to show for his &ldquo;parts&rdquo;&mdash;to show somehow or other&mdash;had
+      been the dream of his youth; but as the years went on the conditions
+      attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as
+      gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise
+      what one could &ldquo;stand.&rdquo; If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall had been
+      conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar pleasure of being
+      at last and all of a sudden identified&mdash;as from the hand of a great
+      master&mdash;by the so high and so unnoticed fact of style. His &ldquo;style&rdquo;
+       was what the girl had discovered with a little help; and now, beside
+      herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world without his having
+      any of the trouble. She should do the thing <i>for</i> him, and he would
+      not have waited in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady
+      received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: &ldquo;Leave Florence
+      4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But
+      can&rsquo;t wait if you dawdle in Rome.&rdquo; The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant,
+      but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would
+      immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he
+      replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in
+      Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow of Saint
+      Peter&rsquo;s. He would not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that
+      time she would have started for Bellaggio. It might be months in this case
+      before he should see her again. This exchange took place in the large
+      decorated sitting-room occupied by our friends at the hotel; it was late
+      in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence
+      on the morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had
+      contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the fourth
+      floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay them a visit.
+      Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and
+      had formed in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued
+      ties. Ralph was making arrangements for the morrow&rsquo;s journey, and Isabel
+      sat alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were
+      orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors,
+      the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted
+      and painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was
+      ugly to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,
+      bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,
+      presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in
+      her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to
+      pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink tissue-paper
+      burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale rosiness over
+      the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you&rsquo;ll come back; but who knows?&rdquo; Gilbert Osmond said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re much more likely to start on your voyage round the world.
+      You&rsquo;re under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what you
+      choose; you can roam through space.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Italy&rsquo;s a part of space,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;I can take it on the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the way round the world? No, don&rsquo;t do that. Don&rsquo;t put us in a
+      parenthesis&mdash;give us a chapter to ourselves. I don&rsquo;t want to see you
+      on your travels. I&rsquo;d rather see you when they&rsquo;re over. I should like to
+      see you when you&rsquo;re tired and satiated,&rdquo; Osmond added in a moment. &ldquo;I
+      shall prefer you in that state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. &ldquo;You turn
+      things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,
+      without intending it. You&rsquo;ve no respect for my travels&mdash;you think
+      them ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you find that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the
+      paper-knife. &ldquo;You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about as
+      if the world belonged to me, simply because&mdash;because it has been put
+      into my power to do so. You don&rsquo;t think a woman ought to do that. You
+      think it bold and ungraceful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it beautiful,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;You know my opinions&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      treated you to enough of them. Don&rsquo;t you remember my telling you that one
+      ought to make one&rsquo;s life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at
+      first; but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be
+      trying to do with your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up from her book. &ldquo;What you despise most in the world is bad,
+      is stupid art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond gave a smile&mdash;a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of
+      their conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he
+      had seen it before. &ldquo;You have one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it&rsquo;s one of the countries I
+      want most to see. Can&rsquo;t you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve a better excuse&mdash;the means of going. You&rsquo;re quite wrong in
+      your theory that I laugh at you. I don&rsquo;t know what has put it into your
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should
+      have the means to travel when you&rsquo;ve not; for you know everything and I
+      know nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more reason why you should travel and learn,&rdquo; smiled Osmond.
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; he added as if it were a point to be made, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was
+      thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life&mdash;so it pleased her
+      to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have
+      likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress
+      overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages
+      or historians to hold up&mdash;that this felicity was coming to an end.
+      That most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a
+      reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the
+      point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were a
+      danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be as
+      well. Happy things don&rsquo;t repeat themselves, and her adventure wore already
+      the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from which, after
+      feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the breeze rose. She
+      might come back to Italy and find him different&mdash;this strange man who
+      pleased her just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run
+      the risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity that the
+      chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that touched the source
+      of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent
+      too; he was looking at her. &ldquo;Go everywhere,&rdquo; he said at last, in a low,
+      kind voice; &ldquo;do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy,&mdash;be
+      triumphant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by being triumphant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, doing what you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things
+      one likes is often very tiresome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Osmond with his quiet quickness. &ldquo;As I intimated just now,
+      you&rsquo;ll be tired some day.&rdquo; He paused a moment and then he went on: &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know whether I had better not wait till then for something I want to
+      say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I can&rsquo;t advise you without knowing what it is. But I&rsquo;m horrid when
+      I&rsquo;m tired,&rdquo; Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that. You&rsquo;re angry, sometimes&mdash;that I can believe,
+      though I&rsquo;ve never seen it. But I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re never &lsquo;cross.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even when I lose my temper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t lose it&mdash;you find it, and that must be beautiful.&rdquo; Osmond
+      spoke with a noble earnestness. &ldquo;They must be great moments to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could only find it now!&rdquo; Isabel nervously cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I&rsquo;m speaking very
+      seriously.&rdquo; He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
+      bent his eyes on the floor. &ldquo;What I wish to say to you,&rdquo; he went on at
+      last, looking up, &ldquo;is that I find I&rsquo;m in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly rose. &ldquo;Ah, keep that till I am tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired of hearing it from others?&rdquo; He sat there raising his eyes to her.
+      &ldquo;No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must say
+      it now.&rdquo; She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped herself
+      and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this situation,
+      exchanging a long look&mdash;the large, conscious look of the critical
+      hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if
+      he were afraid he had been too familiar. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m absolutely in love with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+      discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for
+      his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed
+      the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a
+      fine bolt&mdash;backward, forward, she couldn&rsquo;t have said which. The words
+      he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful and generous,
+      invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but, morally
+      speaking, she retreated before them&mdash;facing him still&mdash;as she
+      had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. &ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t say
+      that, please,&rdquo; she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of
+      having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great
+      was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have banished
+      all dread&mdash;the sense of something within herself, deep down, that she
+      supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there like a large
+      sum stored in a bank&mdash;which there was a terror in having to begin to
+      spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the idea that it will matter much to you,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      too little to offer you. What I have&mdash;it&rsquo;s enough for me; but it&rsquo;s
+      not enough for you. I&rsquo;ve neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic
+      advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I
+      think it can&rsquo;t offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure.
+      It gives me pleasure, I assure you,&rdquo; he went on, standing there before
+      her, considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken
+      up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+      awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,
+      refined, slightly ravaged face. &ldquo;It gives me no pain, because it&rsquo;s
+      perfectly simple. For me you&rsquo;ll always be the most important woman in the
+      world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at herself in this character&mdash;looked intently, thinking
+      she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an
+      expression of any such complacency. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t offend me; but you ought to
+      remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded, troubled.&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Incommoded,&rdquo; she heard herself saying that, and it struck her as a
+      ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember perfectly. Of course you&rsquo;re surprised and startled. But if
+      it&rsquo;s nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave
+      something that I may not be ashamed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it may leave. You see at all events that I&rsquo;m not
+      overwhelmed,&rdquo; said Isabel with rather a pale smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not too troubled
+      to think. And I think that I&rsquo;m glad I leave Rome to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t agree with you there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t at all <i>know</i> you,&rdquo; she added abruptly; and then she
+      coloured as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year
+      before to Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were not going away you&rsquo;d know me better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do that some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so. I&rsquo;m very easy to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she emphatically answered&mdash;&ldquo;there you&rsquo;re not sincere.
+      You&rsquo;re not easy to know; no one could be less so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast,
+      but I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely; but you&rsquo;re very wise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are you, Miss Archer!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel so just now. Still, I&rsquo;m wise enough to think you had better
+      go. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed to
+      surrender. After which he added: &ldquo;If we meet again you&rsquo;ll find me as you
+      leave me. If we don&rsquo;t I shall be so all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something quietly firm about Isabel&rsquo;s visitor; he might go of
+      his own movement, but wouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing more. I
+      haven&rsquo;t asked anything of you&mdash;not even a thought in the future; you
+      must do me that justice. But there&rsquo;s a little service I should like to
+      ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome&rsquo;s delightful, and it&rsquo;s
+      a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you&rsquo;re sorry to
+      leave it; but you&rsquo;re right to do what your aunt wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t even wish it!&rdquo; Isabel broke out strangely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match
+      these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: &ldquo;Ah well, it&rsquo;s
+      proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that&rsquo;s proper; I
+      go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don&rsquo;t know me,
+      but when you do you&rsquo;ll discover what a worship I have for propriety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not conventional?&rdquo; Isabel gravely asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the way you utter that word! No, I&rsquo;m not conventional: I&rsquo;m
+      convention itself. You don&rsquo;t understand that?&rdquo; And he paused a moment,
+      smiling. &ldquo;I should like to explain it.&rdquo; Then with a sudden, quick, bright
+      naturalness, &ldquo;Do come back again,&rdquo; he pleaded. &ldquo;There are so many things
+      we might talk about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood there with lowered eyes. &ldquo;What service did you speak of just
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She&rsquo;s alone at
+      the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn&rsquo;t at all my
+      ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,&rdquo; said Gilbert
+      Osmond gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a great pleasure to me to go,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell her
+      what you say. Once more good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a
+      moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of
+      deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded
+      hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation&mdash;for it had not
+      diminished&mdash;was very still, very deep. What had happened was
+      something that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to
+      meet; but here, when it came, she stopped&mdash;that sublime principle
+      somehow broke down. The working of this young lady&rsquo;s spirit was strange,
+      and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem
+      altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a
+      last vague space it couldn&rsquo;t cross&mdash;a dusky, uncertain tract which
+      looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in
+      the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin&rsquo;s escort, and
+      Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought
+      very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried his
+      companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s
+      preference&mdash;hours that were to form the first stage in a larger
+      scheme of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a
+      little trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling&rsquo;s aid. Isabel
+      was to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of
+      Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s departure, and she determined to devote the last of these
+      to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for a
+      moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame Merle&rsquo;s.
+      This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the point of
+      leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle in the
+      mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that country,
+      whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, &ldquo;forever&rdquo;) seemed to
+      Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense crenellated
+      dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious privilege. She
+      mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had asked her to take a
+      look at his daughter, but didn&rsquo;t mention that he had also made her a
+      declaration of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ah, comme cela se trouve!</i>&rdquo; Madame Merle exclaimed. &ldquo;I myself have
+      been thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit
+      before I go off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can go together then,&rdquo; Isabel reasonably said: &ldquo;reasonably&rdquo; because
+      the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had
+      prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like it
+      better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic
+      sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage finely meditated. &ldquo;After all, why should we both go;
+      having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I can easily go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about your going alone&mdash;to the house of a handsome
+      bachelor. He has been married&mdash;but so long ago!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared. &ldquo;When Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s away what does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know he&rsquo;s away, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They? Whom do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one. But perhaps it doesn&rsquo;t signify.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were going why shouldn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m an old frump and you&rsquo;re a beautiful young woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting all that, you&rsquo;ve not promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much you think of your promises!&rdquo; said the elder woman in mild
+      mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; Madame Merle audibly reflected. &ldquo;I really think you wish
+      to be kind to the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish very much to be kind to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I&rsquo;d have come
+      if you hadn&rsquo;t. Or rather,&rdquo; Madame Merle added, &ldquo;<i>Don&rsquo;t</i> tell her. She
+      won&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
+      way which led to Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
+      meant by no one&rsquo;s being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
+      this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
+      the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
+      quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
+      the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose that
+      she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly done?
+      Of course not: she must have meant something else&mdash;something which in
+      the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had time to
+      explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts of things
+      as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming at the piano
+      in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s
+      drawing-room; the little girl was &ldquo;practising,&rdquo; and Isabel was pleased to
+      think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately came in,
+      smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father&rsquo;s house with a
+      wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an hour, and
+      Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the pantomime
+      soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire&mdash;not chattering, but
+      conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel&rsquo;s affairs
+      that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her; she had
+      never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower of cultivated
+      sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our admiring young
+      woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned; and yet how
+      simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel was fond,
+      ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding, as who should
+      say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her, up to this time,
+      to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not really all-knowing.
+      Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness?
+      Was it put on to please her father&rsquo;s visitor, or was it the direct
+      expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Isabel spent in Mr.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful empty, dusky rooms&mdash;the windows had been
+      half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through an easy
+      crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a gleam of faded
+      colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom&mdash;her interview with the
+      daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Pansy was
+      really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept so; she had
+      neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent&mdash;only two or three
+      small exquisite instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake,
+      for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender was to
+      be touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy victim of fate. She
+      would have no will, no power to resist, no sense of her own importance;
+      she would easily be mystified, easily crushed: her force would be all in
+      knowing when and where to cling. She moved about the place with her
+      visitor, who had asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where
+      Pansy gave her judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her
+      prospects, her occupations, her father&rsquo;s intentions; she was not
+      egotistical, but felt the propriety of supplying the information so
+      distinguished a guest would naturally expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+      Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.
+      Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education; it
+      isn&rsquo;t finished yet, you know. I don&rsquo;t know what they can do with me more;
+      but it appears it&rsquo;s far from finished. Papa told me one day he thought he
+      would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the convent, the
+      masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa&rsquo;s not rich, and I
+      should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for me, because I don&rsquo;t
+      think I&rsquo;m worth it. I don&rsquo;t learn quickly enough, and I have no memory.
+      For what I&rsquo;m told, yes&mdash;especially when it&rsquo;s pleasant; but not for
+      what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who was my best friend, and
+      they took her away from the convent, when she was fourteen, to make&mdash;how
+      do you say it in English?&mdash;to make a dot. You don&rsquo;t say it in
+      English? I hope it isn&rsquo;t wrong; I only mean they wished to keep the money
+      to marry her. I don&rsquo;t know whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep
+      the money&mdash;to marry me. It costs so much to marry!&rdquo; Pansy went on
+      with a sigh; &ldquo;I think papa might make that economy. At any rate I&rsquo;m too
+      young to think about it yet, and I don&rsquo;t care for any gentleman; I mean
+      for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like to marry him; I
+      would rather be his daughter than the wife of&mdash;of some strange
+      person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might think, for I&rsquo;ve
+      been so much away from him. Papa has always been principally for holidays.
+      I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you must not tell him that. You
+      shall not see him again? I&rsquo;m very sorry, and he&rsquo;ll be sorry too. Of
+      everyone who comes here I like you the best. That&rsquo;s not a great
+      compliment, for there are not many people. It was very kind of you to come
+      to-day&mdash;so far from your house; for I&rsquo;m really as yet only a child.
+      Oh, yes, I&rsquo;ve only the occupations of a child. When did <i>you</i> give
+      them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know how old you
+      are, but I don&rsquo;t know whether it&rsquo;s right to ask. At the convent they told
+      us that we must never ask the age. I don&rsquo;t like to do anything that&rsquo;s not
+      expected; it looks as if one had not been properly taught. I myself&mdash;I
+      should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left directions for
+      everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off that side I go
+      into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I
+      always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful. In Rome, from the
+      convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I practise three hours.
+      I don&rsquo;t play very well. You play yourself? I wish very much you&rsquo;d play
+      something for me; papa has the idea that I should hear good music. Madame
+      Merle has played for me several times; that&rsquo;s what I like best about
+      Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall never have facility. And
+      I&rsquo;ve no voice&mdash;just a small sound like the squeak of a slate-pencil
+      making flourishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down to
+      the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white hands move
+      quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child good-bye,
+      held her close, looked at her long. &ldquo;Be very good,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;give
+      pleasure to your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that&rsquo;s what I live for,&rdquo; Pansy answered. &ldquo;He has not much
+      pleasure; he&rsquo;s rather a sad man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it
+      almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged
+      her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in her
+      head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say to Pansy
+      about her father; there were things it would have given her pleasure to
+      hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner became conscious
+      of these things than her imagination was hushed with horror at the idea of
+      taking advantage of the little girl&mdash;it was of this she would have
+      accused herself&mdash;and of exhaling into that air where he might still
+      have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed state. She had come&mdash;she
+      had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She rose quickly from the
+      music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a moment, still holding her
+      small companion, drawing the child&rsquo;s sweet slimness closer and looking
+      down at her almost in envy. She was obliged to confess it to herself&mdash;she
+      would have taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Gilbert Osmond to
+      this innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said no
+      other word; she only kissed Pansy once again. They went together through
+      the vestibule, to the door that opened on the court; and there her young
+      hostess stopped, looking rather wistfully beyond. &ldquo;I may go no further.
+      I&rsquo;ve promised papa not to pass this door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right to obey him; he&rsquo;ll never ask you anything unreasonable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for a long time, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you can, I hope. I&rsquo;m only a little girl,&rdquo; said Pansy, &ldquo;but I
+      shall always expect you.&rdquo; And the small figure stood in the high, dark
+      doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
+      the brightness beyond the big <i>portone</i>, which gave a wider dazzle as
+      it opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval
+      sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this
+      interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is engaged
+      again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return
+      to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just
+      narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the
+      numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was that
+      in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she was
+      expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green
+      shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had come in
+      through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth and perfume.
+      Our young woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her;
+      she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention
+      she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a
+      glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into the house, since the
+      entrance to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and
+      privacy always reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival by a
+      process of conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her face this
+      attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively
+      more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent
+      in seeing the world. She had ranged, she would have said, through space
+      and surveyed much of mankind, and was therefore now, in her own eyes, a
+      very different person from the frivolous young woman from Albany who had
+      begun to take the measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of
+      years before. She flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a
+      great deal more of life than this light-minded creature had even
+      suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect,
+      instead of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would
+      have evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have
+      been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+      been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been
+      projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for
+      instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine&rsquo;s sister and Edmund Ludlow&rsquo;s
+      wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her
+      relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought her
+      children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and tenderness
+      the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to
+      snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean with
+      extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in Paris before
+      taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from the
+      American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so that while her
+      sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to a narrow circle.
+      Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in the month of July,
+      and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the
+      flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade of great chestnuts made a
+      resting-place for such upward wanderings as might be undertaken by ladies
+      and children on warm afternoons. They had afterwards reached the French
+      capital, which was worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily, but
+      thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel, who in these days made use of her
+      memory of Rome as she might have done, in a hot and crowded room, of a
+      phial of something pungent hidden in her handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and wonderments
+      not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined her found
+      further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these speculations.
+      They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done
+      before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated,
+      at anything his sister-in-law might have done or have failed to do. Mrs.
+      Ludlow&rsquo;s mental motions were sufficiently various. At one moment she
+      thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take
+      a house in New York&mdash;the Rossiters&rsquo;, for instance, which had an
+      elegant conservatory and was just round the corner from her own; at
+      another she couldn&rsquo;t conceal her surprise at the girl&rsquo;s not marrying some
+      member of one of the great aristocracies. On the whole, as I have said,
+      she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities. She had taken
+      more satisfaction in Isabel&rsquo;s accession of fortune than if the money had
+      been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper
+      setting for her sister&rsquo;s slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent
+      figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely&mdash;development,
+      to Lily&rsquo;s understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with
+      morning-calls and evening-parties. Intellectually, doubtless, she had made
+      immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social
+      conquests of which Mrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily&rsquo;s
+      conception of such achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly
+      what she had expected of Isabel&mdash;to give it form and body. Isabel
+      could have done as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow
+      appealed to her husband to know whether there was any privilege she
+      enjoyed in Europe which the society of that city might not offer her. We
+      know ourselves that Isabel had made conquests&mdash;whether inferior or
+      not to those she might have effected in her native land it would be a
+      delicate matter to decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of
+      complacency that I again mention that she had not rendered these
+      honourable victories public. She had not told her sister the history of
+      Lord Warburton, nor had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s state of
+      mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that she
+      didn&rsquo;t wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking
+      deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily&rsquo;s
+      advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily
+      knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her
+      sister&rsquo;s career a strange anti-climax&mdash;an impression confirmed by the
+      fact that Isabel&rsquo;s silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct
+      proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this
+      happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost
+      her courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as
+      inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it
+      added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young lady&rsquo;s courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its
+      height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver things
+      than spending the winter in Paris&mdash;Paris had sides by which it so
+      resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose&mdash;and her close
+      correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She
+      had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and
+      wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the
+      Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of
+      the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to
+      their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very
+      conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good
+      for her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good
+      enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had
+      made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have
+      accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her,
+      as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such
+      impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her
+      hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned
+      dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an
+      occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy
+      London street. The world lay before her&mdash;she could do whatever she
+      chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice
+      was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square
+      to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed
+      in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our
+      heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly.
+      But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers
+      and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so
+      that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right
+      again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed
+      even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets&mdash;the moving
+      crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the
+      dark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at her hotel, she
+      wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a day or two for Rome. She
+      made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence&mdash;having gone
+      first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished
+      this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her
+      natural protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was spending
+      the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had
+      been recalled to America by a telegram from the <i>Interviewer</i>. This
+      journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her genius
+      than the mouldering cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way
+      by a promise from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over to see her.
+      Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not presenting herself just
+      yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough.
+      Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than
+      bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the
+      thing or one didn&rsquo;t, and what one &ldquo;would&rdquo; have done belonged to the sphere
+      of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of
+      things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so
+      frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at
+      Florence, because she took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in
+      question there than formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now
+      find a pretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning
+      that he had not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not
+      been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they
+      should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that
+      her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been
+      consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two
+      ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in
+      Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these
+      countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among the
+      most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose and
+      reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled
+      rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after
+      cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess circulating
+      <i>incognita</i>, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel&rsquo;s
+      invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl&rsquo;s
+      uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have
+      been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+      companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had
+      no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking pair on
+      their travels would not have been able to tell you which was patroness and
+      which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance states
+      meagrely the impression she made on her friend, who had found her from the
+      first so ample and so easy. At the end of an intimacy of three months
+      Isabel felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and
+      the admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her
+      history from her own point of view&mdash;a consummation the more desirable
+      as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others.
+      This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M.
+      Merle, a positive adventurer, she might say, though originally so
+      plausible, who had taken advantage, years before, of her youth and of an
+      inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find it
+      difficult to believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable
+      incidents that her companion wondered a person so <i>eprouvée</i> could
+      have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this
+      freshness of Madame Merle&rsquo;s she obtained a considerable insight; she
+      seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in
+      its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like
+      the &ldquo;favourite&rdquo; of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there
+      was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had
+      remained after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge
+      only in character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a
+      distance, that she belonged to the &ldquo;old, old&rdquo; world, and Isabel never lost
+      the impression that she was the product of a different moral or social
+      clime from her own, that she had grown up under other stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course
+      the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our young
+      woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at the
+      shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth, that a
+      morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this
+      conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an
+      occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had
+      raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the
+      narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might, in
+      certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in
+      decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had not
+      even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain; and
+      there were evidently things in the world of which it was not advantageous
+      to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since it so affected
+      her to have to exclaim, of her friend, &ldquo;Heaven forgive her, she doesn&rsquo;t
+      understand me!&rdquo; Absurd as it may seem this discovery operated as a shock,
+      left her with a vague dismay in which there was even an element of
+      foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the light of some sudden
+      proof of Madame Merle&rsquo;s remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a
+      high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once
+      declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately
+      begins to decline&mdash;there being no point of equilibrium between liking
+      more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was
+      impossible&mdash;it must move one way or the other. However that might be,
+      the girl had in these days a thousand uses for her sense of the romantic,
+      which was more active than it had ever been. I do not allude to the
+      impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an
+      excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the broken columns of the
+      Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to her as the
+      Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions had remained. She
+      came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made another stay
+      in Rome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond descended from
+      Florence and remained three weeks, during which the fact of her being with
+      his old friend Madame Merle, in whose house she had gone to lodge, made it
+      virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the last of
+      April came she wrote to Mrs. Touchett that she should now rejoice to
+      accept an invitation given long before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo
+      Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. She found
+      her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was
+      expected in Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for
+      upwards of a year, was prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at
+      the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any of
+      the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past, but
+      to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, and
+      she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she should say
+      to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What he would say
+      to her&mdash;that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing in the
+      least soothing&mdash;she had warrant for this, and the conviction
+      doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+      clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked in
+      no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older&mdash;ever so much,
+      and as if she were &ldquo;worth more&rdquo; for it, like some curious piece in an
+      antiquary&rsquo;s collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
+      apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
+      tray. &ldquo;Let the gentleman come in,&rdquo; she said, and continued to gaze out of
+      the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard
+      the door close behind the person who presently entered that she looked
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood stood there&mdash;stood and received a moment, from head
+      to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered
+      a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel&rsquo;s we
+      shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to her
+      critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong
+      and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke positively either
+      of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor weakness, so he had no
+      practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same voluntary cast as in earlier
+      days; but a crisis like the present had in it of course something grim. He
+      had the air of a man who had travelled hard; he said nothing at first, as
+      if he had been out of breath. This gave Isabel time to make a reflexion:
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow, what great things he&rsquo;s capable of, and what a pity he should
+      waste so dreadfully his splendid force! What a pity too that one can&rsquo;t
+      satisfy everybody!&rdquo; It gave her time to do more to say at the end of a
+      minute: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you how I hoped you wouldn&rsquo;t come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no doubt of that.&rdquo; And he looked about him for a seat. Not only had
+      he come, but he meant to settle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be very tired,&rdquo; said Isabel, seating herself, and generously, as
+      she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.
+      These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s in keeping&mdash;you must have felt as if you were coming to bury
+      me!&rdquo; And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their
+      situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly clear
+      that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all this she
+      was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was
+      devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at
+      her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such a
+      want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on her
+      as a physical weight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t feel that; I couldn&rsquo;t think of you as dead. I wish I could!&rdquo;
+       he candidly declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very selfish of you!&rdquo; she returned with the ardour of a real
+      conviction. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not happy yourself others have yet a right to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely it&rsquo;s selfish; but I don&rsquo;t in the least mind your saying so. I
+      don&rsquo;t mind anything you can say now&mdash;I don&rsquo;t feel it. The cruellest
+      things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you&rsquo;ve done
+      I shall never feel anything&mdash;I mean anything but that. That I shall
+      feel all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness, in
+      his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over
+      propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than
+      touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her
+      a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of
+      this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. &ldquo;When did you
+      leave New York?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw up his head as if calculating. &ldquo;Seventeen days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came as fast as I could. I&rsquo;d have come five days ago if I had been
+      able.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,&rdquo; she coldly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to you&mdash;no. But to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gain nothing that I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s for me to judge!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.&rdquo; And then, to
+      change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole. He
+      looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of Henrietta
+      Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young lady had
+      been with him just before he left America. &ldquo;She came to see you?&rdquo; Isabel
+      then demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had
+      got your letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell her?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Caspar Goodwood simply; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to do that. She&rsquo;ll
+      hear it quick enough; she hears everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall write to her, and then she&rsquo;ll write to me and scold me,&rdquo; Isabel
+      declared, trying to smile again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. &ldquo;I guess she&rsquo;ll come right out,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On purpose to scold me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you tell me that,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;I must prepare for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,
+      raising them, &ldquo;Does she know Mr. Osmond?&rdquo; he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little. And she doesn&rsquo;t like him. But of course I don&rsquo;t marry to please
+      Henrietta,&rdquo; she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar if she
+      had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn&rsquo;t say so;
+      he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To which she
+      made answer that she didn&rsquo;t know yet. &ldquo;I can only say it will be soon.
+      I&rsquo;ve told no one but yourself and one other person&mdash;an old friend of
+      Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a marriage your friends won&rsquo;t like?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really haven&rsquo;t an idea. As I say, I don&rsquo;t marry for my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,
+      doing it quite without delicacy. &ldquo;Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert
+      Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable man.
+      He&rsquo;s not in business,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not rich; he&rsquo;s not known for
+      anything in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She disliked Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s questions, but she said to herself that she
+      owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor
+      Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at her.
+      &ldquo;Where does he come from? Where does he belong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never been so little pleased with the way he said &ldquo;belawng.&rdquo; &ldquo;He
+      comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said in your letter he was American. Hasn&rsquo;t he a native place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he never gone back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he go back?&rdquo; Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. &ldquo;He has
+      no profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn&rsquo;t he like the United
+      States?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t know them. Then he&rsquo;s very quiet and very simple&mdash;he
+      contents himself with Italy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Italy and with you,&rdquo; said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and no
+      appearance of trying to make an epigram. &ldquo;What has he ever done?&rdquo; he added
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I should marry him? Nothing at all,&rdquo; Isabel replied while her
+      patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. &ldquo;If he had done
+      great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;
+      I&rsquo;m marrying a perfect nonentity. Don&rsquo;t try to take an interest in him.
+      You can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t appreciate him; that&rsquo;s what you mean. And you don&rsquo;t mean in the
+      least that he&rsquo;s a perfect nonentity. You think he&rsquo;s grand, you think he&rsquo;s
+      great, though no one else thinks so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion, and
+      it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render perceptions
+      she had never taken for fine. &ldquo;Why do you always comeback to what others
+      think? I can&rsquo;t discuss Mr. Osmond with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air of
+      stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were nothing
+      else that they might discuss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how little you gain,&rdquo; she accordingly broke out&mdash;&ldquo;how little
+      comfort or satisfaction I can give you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect you to give me much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand then why you came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came because I wanted to see you once more&mdash;even just as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later we
+      should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been pleasanter
+      for each of us than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waited till after you&rsquo;re married? That&rsquo;s just what I didn&rsquo;t want to do.
+      You&rsquo;ll be different then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will make it all the worse,&rdquo; said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re unaccommodating! I can&rsquo;t promise to dislike you in order to
+      help you to resign yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t care if you did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the
+      window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round her
+      visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again and
+      stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just quitted.
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That&rsquo;s better for you perhaps
+      than for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wished to hear the sound of your voice,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It gives me pleasure, all the same.&rdquo; And with this he got up. She had
+      felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in
+      Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She had
+      been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his messenger
+      that he might come when he would. She had not been better pleased when she
+      saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy implications. It
+      implied things she could never assent to&mdash;rights, reproaches,
+      remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change her purpose.
+      These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed; and now our
+      young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor&rsquo;s remarkable
+      self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that irritated her; there
+      was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart beat faster. She felt
+      her agitation rising, and she said to herself that she was angry in the
+      way a woman is angry when she has been in the wrong. She was not in the
+      wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness to swallow; but, all the
+      same, she wished he would denounce her a little. She had wished his visit
+      would be short; it had no purpose, no propriety; yet now that he seemed to
+      be turning away she felt a sudden horror of his leaving her without
+      uttering a word that would give her an opportunity to defend herself more
+      than she had done in writing to him a month before, in a few carefully
+      chosen words, to announce her engagement. If she were not in the wrong,
+      however, why should she desire to defend herself? It was an excess of
+      generosity on Isabel&rsquo;s part to desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry.
+      And if he had not meanwhile held himself hard it might have made him so to
+      hear the tone in which she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him
+      of having accused her: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not deceived you! I was perfectly free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know that,&rdquo; said Caspar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave you full warning that I&rsquo;d do as I chose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you&rsquo;d probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner
+      that I pretty well believed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She considered this an instant. &ldquo;No one can be more surprised than myself
+      at my present intention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe it,&rdquo;
+       Caspar went on. &ldquo;I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I
+      remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and
+      that&rsquo;s partly why I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that&rsquo;s soon done. There&rsquo;s
+      no mistake whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw that as soon as I came into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good would it do you that I shouldn&rsquo;t marry?&rdquo; she asked with a
+      certain fierceness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it better than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very selfish, as I said before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that. I&rsquo;m selfish as iron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even iron sometimes melts! If you&rsquo;ll be reasonable I&rsquo;ll see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you call me reasonable now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to say to you,&rdquo; she answered with sudden humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t trouble you for a long time,&rdquo; the young man went on. He made a
+      step towards the door, but he stopped. &ldquo;Another reason why I came was that
+      I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having changed
+      your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. &ldquo;In explanation? Do you think I&rsquo;m
+      bound to explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her one of his long dumb looks. &ldquo;You were very positive. I did
+      believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I suppose not. Well,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done what I wished. I&rsquo;ve seen
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How little you make of these terrible journeys,&rdquo; she felt the poverty of
+      her presently replying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re afraid I&rsquo;m knocked up&mdash;in any such way as that&mdash;you
+      may he at your ease about it.&rdquo; He turned away, this time in earnest, and
+      no hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. &ldquo;I shall leave Florence
+      to-morrow,&rdquo; he said without a quaver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m delighted to hear it!&rdquo; she answered passionately. Five minutes after
+      he had gone out she burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had
+      vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this
+      expression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;
+      Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She had
+      an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact public
+      before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about it. He had
+      said rather less than she expected, and she now had a somewhat angry sense
+      of having lost time. But she would lose no more; she waited till Mrs.
+      Touchett came into the drawing-room before the mid-day breakfast, and then
+      she began. &ldquo;Aunt Lydia, I&rsquo;ve something to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. &ldquo;You
+      needn&rsquo;t tell me; I know what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same way that I know when the window&rsquo;s open&mdash;by feeling a
+      draught. You&rsquo;re going to marry that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What man do you mean?&rdquo; Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame Merle&rsquo;s friend&mdash;Mr. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you call him Madame Merle&rsquo;s friend. Is that the
+      principal thing he&rsquo;s known by?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s not her friend he ought to be&mdash;after what she has done for
+      him!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have expected it of her; I&rsquo;m
+      disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement
+      you&rsquo;re greatly mistaken,&rdquo; Isabel declared with a sort of ardent coldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman&rsquo;s
+      having had to be lashed up? You&rsquo;re quite right. They&rsquo;re immense, your
+      attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she
+      hadn&rsquo;t put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he was
+      not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has taken a great deal for himself!&rdquo; cried Isabel with a voluntary
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. &ldquo;I think he must, after all, to have made
+      you like him so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought he even pleased <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did, at one time; and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m angry with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be angry with me, not with him,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m always angry with you; that&rsquo;s no satisfaction! Was it for this
+      that you refused Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t go back to that. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I like Mr. Osmond, since
+      others have done so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There&rsquo;s
+      nothing <i>of</i> him,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he can&rsquo;t hurt me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;re going to be happy? No one&rsquo;s happy, in such doings,
+      you should know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>you</i> will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry
+      as they go into partnership&mdash;to set up a house. But in your
+      partnership you&rsquo;ll bring everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it that Mr. Osmond isn&rsquo;t rich? Is that what you&rsquo;re talking about?&rdquo;
+       Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such
+      things and I have the courage to say it; I think they&rsquo;re very precious.
+      Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some
+      other reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated a little. &ldquo;I think I value everything that&rsquo;s valuable. I
+      care very much for money, and that&rsquo;s why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a
+      little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to him then; but marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name&rsquo;s good enough for me,&rdquo; the girl went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very pretty
+      name. Have I such a fine one myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen
+      American names. Do you marry him out of charity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s my duty to
+      explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn&rsquo;t be able. So please don&rsquo;t
+      remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can&rsquo;t
+      talk about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of
+      intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never do, and I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you. You&rsquo;ve been very
+      considerate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not considerate&mdash;it was convenient,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;But
+      I shall talk to Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good friend
+      to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has she done to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She couldn&rsquo;t have prevented it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can do anything; that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve always liked her for. I knew she
+      could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I
+      didn&rsquo;t understand that she would play two at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what part she may have played to you,&rdquo; Isabel said; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s
+      between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and devoted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me
+      she was watching you only in order to interpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said that to please you,&rdquo; the girl answered; conscious, however, of
+      the inadequacy of the explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;re ever much pleased,&rdquo; Isabel was obliged to reply. &ldquo;If
+      Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by
+      insincerity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you were
+      marching away, and she was really beating the drum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and
+      even if she had given the alarm you wouldn&rsquo;t have tried to stop me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but some one else would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo; Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.
+      Touchett&rsquo;s little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained her
+      gaze rather than returned it. &ldquo;Would you have listened to Ralph?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ralph doesn&rsquo;t abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know he does,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;and I shall feel the value of it now, for
+      he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,
+      and he argued the other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did it for the sake of argument,&rdquo; the girl smiled. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t accuse
+      him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never pretended he&rsquo;d prevent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that!&rdquo; cried Isabel gaily. &ldquo;I wish very much,&rdquo; she presently
+      added, &ldquo;that when he comes you&rsquo;d tell him first of my engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll mention it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;I shall say nothing more
+      to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s as you please. I only meant that it&rsquo;s rather better the
+      announcement should come from you than from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you; it&rsquo;s much more proper!&rdquo; And on this the aunt and
+      the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her word,
+      made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence, however,
+      she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an hour before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From an old friend&mdash;an American gentleman,&rdquo; Isabel said with a
+      colour in her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An American gentleman of course. It&rsquo;s only an American gentleman who
+      calls at ten o&rsquo;clock in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t he have come yesterday, at the usual time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He only arrived last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett cried. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+      an American gentleman truly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is indeed,&rdquo; said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what
+      Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.
+      Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed at
+      first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of his
+      health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been shocked
+      by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten how ill he
+      looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if
+      he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with an
+      invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to conventional beauty as he
+      advanced in life, and the now apparently complete loss of his health had
+      done little to mitigate the natural oddity of his person. Blighted and
+      battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a
+      lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker
+      languished upon a lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined
+      itself more sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and
+      loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet
+      jacket had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his
+      pockets; he shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that denoted
+      great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this whimsical gait that
+      helped to mark his character more than ever as that of the humorous
+      invalid&mdash;the invalid for whom even his own disabilities are part of
+      the general joke. They might well indeed with Ralph have been the chief
+      cause of the want of seriousness marking his view of a world in which the
+      reason for his own continued presence was past finding out. Isabel had
+      grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness had become dear to her. They
+      had been sweetened by association; they struck her as the very terms on
+      which it had been given him to be charming. He was so charming that her
+      sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state
+      of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual
+      advantage; it absolved him from all professional and official emotions and
+      left him the luxury of being exclusively personal. The personality so
+      resulting was delightful; he had remained proof against the staleness of
+      disease; he had had to consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow
+      escaped being formally sick. Such had been the girl&rsquo;s impression of her
+      cousin; and when she had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she
+      reflected a good deal she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion;
+      but she always had a dread of wasting that essence&mdash;a precious
+      article, worth more to the giver than to any one else. Now, however, it
+      took no great sensibility to feel that poor Ralph&rsquo;s tenure of life was
+      less elastic than it should be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he
+      had all the illumination of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he
+      was distressfully dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people, and she
+      felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now promised to
+      become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was not pleased
+      with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of her affection
+      for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not even prepared,
+      or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his
+      privilege&mdash;it would be indeed his natural line&mdash;to find fault
+      with any step she might take toward marriage. One&rsquo;s cousin always
+      pretended to hate one&rsquo;s husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a
+      part of one&rsquo;s cousin&rsquo;s always pretending to adore one. Ralph was nothing
+      if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things being equal,
+      have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any one, it would be
+      absurd to regard as important that her choice should square with his
+      views. What were his views after all? He had pretended to believe she had
+      better have married Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had
+      refused that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would certainly
+      have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could criticise
+      any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be open to criticism.
+      How well she herself, should she only give her mind to it, might criticise
+      this union of her own! She had other employment, however, and Ralph was
+      welcome to relieve her of the care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient
+      and most indulgent. He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd
+      he should say nothing. After three days had elapsed without his speaking
+      our young woman wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at
+      least go through the form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his
+      cousin, may easily believe that during the hours that followed his arrival
+      at Palazzo Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His
+      mother had literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even
+      more sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s maternal kiss. Ralph was
+      shocked and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in
+      the world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the
+      house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of
+      the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head thrown
+      back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the heart; he
+      had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could he say? If the
+      girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim
+      her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to persuade
+      her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose deep art she had
+      succumbed would be decently discreet only in the event of her being
+      persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have damned himself. It cost him an
+      equal effort to speak his thought and to dissemble; he could neither
+      assent with sincerity nor protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew&mdash;or
+      rather he supposed&mdash;that the affianced pair were daily renewing their
+      mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo
+      Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do
+      after their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage by
+      the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means of pursuing
+      a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and she drove in the morning
+      to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness, during the early hours, was void
+      of all intruders, and our young lady, joined by her lover in its quietest
+      part, strolled with him a while through the grey Italian shade and
+      listened to the nightingales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before luncheon,
+      she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and, instead of
+      ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed beneath another
+      archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this moment could not
+      have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over it, and the warm
+      shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious caves. Ralph was
+      sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore&mdash;a
+      dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of
+      Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at first to
+      Isabel that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the grass had not roused
+      him, and before turning away she stood for a moment looking at him. During
+      this instant he opened his eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair
+      that matched with his own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of
+      indifference she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had
+      something to brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly
+      by the languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with
+      the property inherited from his father&mdash;the fruit of eccentric
+      arrangements of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told
+      Isabel, now encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He
+      ought to have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to
+      Florence; he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in
+      the bank than in the state of Patagonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I waked you,&rdquo; Isabel said; &ldquo;you look too tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you tired of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road&rsquo;s long and I never arrive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you wish to arrive at?&rdquo; she put to him, closing her parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think too much of it,&rdquo; she lightly returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that it&rsquo;s none of my business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beyond a certain point, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me
+      wanting in good manners. I&rsquo;ve never congratulated you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been a good many reasons. I&rsquo;ll tell you now,&rdquo; Ralph said. He
+      pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at her.
+      He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against his
+      marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands laid
+      upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable; he
+      hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she was
+      usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to utter
+      a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. &ldquo;I think
+      I&rsquo;ve hardly got over my surprise,&rdquo; he went on at last. &ldquo;You were the last
+      person I expected to see caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you call it caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re going to be put into a cage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I like my cage, that needn&rsquo;t trouble you,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I wonder at; that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve been thinking of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve been thinking you may imagine how I&rsquo;ve thought! I&rsquo;m satisfied
+      that I&rsquo;m doing well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty
+      beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen it,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t look to me now, I admit, such an
+      inviting expanse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view of
+      it and wanted to survey the whole field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen that one can&rsquo;t do anything so general. One must choose a corner
+      and cultivate that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible. I
+      had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that you
+      were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me off my
+      guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew
+      nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your
+      guard, however,&rdquo; Isabel asked, &ldquo;what would you have done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have said &lsquo;Wait a little longer.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait for what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for a little more light,&rdquo; said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,
+      while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where should my light have come from? From you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might have struck a spark or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay upon
+      her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her expression
+      was not conciliatory. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re beating about the bush, Ralph. You wish to
+      say you don&rsquo;t like Mr. Osmond, and yet you&rsquo;re afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I&rsquo;m willing to wound <i>him</i>,
+      yes&mdash;but not to wound you. I&rsquo;m afraid of you, not of him. If you
+      marry him it won&rsquo;t be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>If</i> I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course that seems to you too fatuous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Isabel after a little; &ldquo;it seems to me too touching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stroked out her long gloves again. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;ve a great affection
+      for me. I can&rsquo;t get rid of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince
+      you how intensely I want you to do well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how little you trust me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. &ldquo;I trust
+      you, but I don&rsquo;t trust him,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve said it now,
+      and I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve made it so clear. But you&rsquo;ll suffer by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you&rsquo;re just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very just,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;What better proof of it can there be than
+      that I&rsquo;m not angry with you? I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s the matter with me, but
+      I&rsquo;m not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought to
+      be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn&rsquo;t think so. He wants me to know
+      everything; that&rsquo;s what I like him for. You&rsquo;ve nothing to gain, I know
+      that. I&rsquo;ve never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have much
+      reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice; you&rsquo;ve
+      often done so. No, I&rsquo;m very quiet; I&rsquo;ve always believed in your wisdom,&rdquo;
+       she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of
+      contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it touched
+      Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a creature he had
+      injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a moment he was
+      absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had said. But she
+      gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse, as she thought,
+      of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that direction. &ldquo;I see
+      you&rsquo;ve some special idea; I should like very much to hear it. I&rsquo;m sure
+      it&rsquo;s disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about,
+      and of course I ought to tell you definitely that if you expect to
+      dissuade me you may give it up. You&rsquo;ll not move me an inch; it&rsquo;s too late.
+      As you say, I&rsquo;m caught. Certainly it won&rsquo;t be pleasant for you to remember
+      this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts. I shall never reproach
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you ever will,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not in the least the sort
+      of marriage I thought you&rsquo;d make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of marriage was that, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can hardly say. I hadn&rsquo;t exactly a positive view of it, but I had
+      a negative. I didn&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;d decide for&mdash;well, for that type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s type, if it be one? His being so
+      independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,&rdquo; the girl declared.
+      &ldquo;What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Ralph said, &ldquo;I know him very little, and I confess I haven&rsquo;t facts
+      and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can&rsquo;t help feeling
+      that you&rsquo;re running a grave risk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk&rsquo;s as grave as mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s his affair! If he&rsquo;s afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he
+      would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her
+      cousin. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I understand you,&rdquo; she said at last coldly. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed you&rsquo;d marry a man of more importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped
+      into her face. &ldquo;Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that
+      one&rsquo;s husband should be of importance to one&rsquo;s self!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking
+      he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,
+      resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an
+      air of the most respectful deliberation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a moment what I mean,&rdquo; he presently said. He felt
+      agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished
+      to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel waited a little&mdash;then she went on with majesty. &ldquo;In everything
+      that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be
+      nobler natures, but I&rsquo;ve never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s is the finest I know; he&rsquo;s good enough for me, and interesting
+      enough, and clever enough. I&rsquo;m far more struck with what he has and what
+      he represents than with what he may lack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,&rdquo; Ralph observed
+      without answering this; &ldquo;I had amused myself with planning out a high
+      destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not
+      to come down so easily or so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come down, you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me
+      to be soaring far up in the blue&mdash;to be, sailing in the bright light,
+      over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud&mdash;a
+      missile that should never have reached you&mdash;and straight you drop to
+      the ground. It hurts me,&rdquo; said Ralph audaciously, &ldquo;hurts me as if I had
+      fallen myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand you in the least,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;You say you amused
+      yourself with a project for my career&mdash;I don&rsquo;t understand that. Don&rsquo;t
+      amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you&rsquo;re doing it at my expense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph shook his head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid of your not believing that I&rsquo;ve had
+      great ideas for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?&rdquo; she pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never moved on a higher plane than I&rsquo;m moving on now. There&rsquo;s
+      nothing higher for a girl than to marry a&mdash;a person she likes,&rdquo; said
+      poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my
+      dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a
+      more active, larger, freer sort of nature.&rdquo; Ralph hesitated, then added:
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get over the sense that Osmond is somehow&mdash;well, small.&rdquo; He
+      had uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would
+      flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of
+      considering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small?&rdquo; She made it sound immense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a great respect for himself; I don&rsquo;t blame him for that,&rdquo; said
+      Isabel. &ldquo;It makes one more sure to respect others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one&rsquo;s relation to
+      things&mdash;to others. I don&rsquo;t think Mr. Osmond does that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he&rsquo;s excellent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s the incarnation of taste,&rdquo; Ralph went on, thinking hard how he could
+      best express Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s sinister attributes without putting himself
+      in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe
+      him impersonally, scientifically. &ldquo;He judges and measures, approves and
+      condemns, altogether by that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride.
+      But have you ever seen such a taste&mdash;a really exquisite one&mdash;ruffled?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph&rsquo;s lips. &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s
+      wilful, that&rsquo;s unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that
+      way&mdash;you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the
+      sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment
+      looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult. But
+      &ldquo;You go too far,&rdquo; she simply breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said what I had on my mind&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve said it because I love
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden
+      wish to strike him off. &ldquo;Ah then, you&rsquo;re not disinterested!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you, but I love without hope,&rdquo; said Ralph quickly, forcing a smile
+      and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he
+      intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the
+      garden; but after a little she turned back to him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid your talk
+      then is the wildness of despair! I don&rsquo;t understand it&mdash;but it
+      doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;m not arguing with you; it&rsquo;s impossible I should; I&rsquo;ve
+      only tried to listen to you. I&rsquo;m much obliged to you for attempting to
+      explain,&rdquo; she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung
+      up had already subsided. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to try to warn me, if
+      you&rsquo;re really alarmed; but I won&rsquo;t promise to think of what you&rsquo;ve said: I
+      shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you&rsquo;ve
+      done your duty, and no man can do more. I can&rsquo;t explain to you what I
+      feel, what I believe, and I wouldn&rsquo;t if I could.&rdquo; She paused a moment and
+      then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in the midst
+      of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t enter
+      into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can&rsquo;t do it justice, because I see him in
+      quite another way. He&rsquo;s not important&mdash;no, he&rsquo;s not important; he&rsquo;s a
+      man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that&rsquo;s what you mean
+      when you call him &lsquo;small,&rsquo; then he&rsquo;s as small as you please. I call that
+      large&mdash;it&rsquo;s the largest thing I know. I won&rsquo;t pretend to argue with
+      you about a person I&rsquo;m going to marry,&rdquo; Isabel repeated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in the
+      least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he&rsquo;s not so weak as to need my
+      defence. I should think it would seem strange even to yourself that I
+      should talk of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t talk of him at all to any one but you; and you, after what you&rsquo;ve
+      said&mdash;I may just answer you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to
+      make a mercenary marriage&mdash;what they call a marriage of ambition?
+      I&rsquo;ve only one ambition&mdash;to be free to follow out a good feeling. I
+      had others once, but they&rsquo;ve passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond
+      because he&rsquo;s not rich? That&rsquo;s just what I like him for. I&rsquo;ve fortunately
+      money enough; I&rsquo;ve never felt so thankful for it as to-day. There have
+      been moments when I should like to go and kneel down by your father&rsquo;s
+      grave: he did perhaps a better thing than he knew when he put it into my
+      power to marry a poor man&mdash;a man who has borne his poverty with such
+      dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor
+      struggled&mdash;he has cared for no worldly prize. If that&rsquo;s to be narrow,
+      if that&rsquo;s to be selfish, then it&rsquo;s very well. I&rsquo;m not frightened by such
+      words, I&rsquo;m not even displeased; I&rsquo;m only sorry that you should make a
+      mistake. Others might have done so, but I&rsquo;m surprised that you should. You
+      might know a gentleman when you see one&mdash;you might know a fine mind.
+      Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows everything, he understands
+      everything, he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You&rsquo;ve got hold
+      of some false idea. It&rsquo;s a pity, but I can&rsquo;t help it; it regards you more
+      than me.&rdquo; Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye
+      illumined by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness of her
+      manner&mdash;a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain excited by his
+      words and the wounded pride of having needed to justify a choice of which
+      she felt only the nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she
+      paused Ralph said nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but
+      she was highly solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a
+      passion. &ldquo;What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?&rdquo; she
+      asked suddenly. &ldquo;You talk about one&rsquo;s soaring and sailing, but if one
+      marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs,
+      one has a heart in one&rsquo;s bosom, and one must marry a particular
+      individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not having come to a
+      better understanding with Lord Warburton, and she&rsquo;s horrified at my
+      contenting myself with a person who has none of his great advantages&mdash;no
+      property, no title, no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor
+      reputation, nor brilliant belongings of any sort. It&rsquo;s the total absence
+      of all these things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s simply a very lonely, a
+      very cultivated and a very honest man&mdash;he&rsquo;s not a prodigious
+      proprietor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited
+      deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of the things
+      she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight
+      of his total impression&mdash;the impression of her ardent good faith. She
+      was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally
+      consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that, having invented
+      a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really
+      possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph
+      remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it into her
+      power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He had done so, and the
+      girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor Ralph felt sick; he felt
+      ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of
+      conviction which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it
+      formally by turning away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked
+      beside her, and they passed into the court together and reached the big
+      staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused, turning on him a face of
+      elation&mdash;absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His opposition had
+      made her own conception of her conduct clearer to her. &ldquo;Shall you not come
+      up to breakfast?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I want no breakfast; I&rsquo;m not hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to eat,&rdquo; said the girl; &ldquo;you live on air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another
+      mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that if
+      you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That&rsquo;s how I
+      feel to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;m in trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One&rsquo;s in trouble when one&rsquo;s in error.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;I shall never complain of my trouble to you!&rdquo;
+       And she moved up the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with his
+      eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made
+      him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the
+      Florentine sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse
+      to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The
+      discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin
+      made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was simply
+      that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to
+      Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into
+      higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to
+      please herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this
+      for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel&rsquo;s satisfaction was confirmed
+      by her lover&rsquo;s admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was in love, and he
+      had never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them
+      numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism
+      passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s spirit by this criticism was that the passion of love separated
+      its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself
+      disjoined from every one she had ever known before&mdash;from her two
+      sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and
+      a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort who
+      was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Henrietta, who,
+      she was sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from
+      Lord Warburton, who would certainly console himself, and from Caspar
+      Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow
+      ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt;
+      and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but
+      a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished
+      her not to marry at all&mdash;that was what it really meant&mdash;because
+      he was amused with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His
+      disappointment made him say angry things about the man she had preferred
+      even to him: Isabel flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been
+      angry. It was the more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she
+      had now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as
+      an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to
+      prefer Gilbert Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other
+      ties. She tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her
+      conscious, almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the
+      charmed and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and
+      imputed virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness;
+      one&rsquo;s right was always made of the wrong of some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted
+      meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his
+      part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men,
+      was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him
+      an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten and
+      dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot
+      to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance&mdash;which presented
+      indeed no difficulty&mdash;of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was
+      immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present
+      of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a
+      high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for
+      one&rsquo;s self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of
+      superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick,
+      fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one&rsquo;s thought on a
+      polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced
+      literally&mdash;that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be
+      freshened in the reproduction even as &ldquo;words&rdquo; by music. His egotism had
+      never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this lady&rsquo;s
+      intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one&mdash;a plate
+      that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a
+      decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served
+      dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he
+      could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew
+      perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little
+      favour with the girl&rsquo;s relations; but he had always treated her so
+      completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to
+      express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one morning,
+      he made an abrupt allusion to it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the difference in our fortune they
+      don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They think I&rsquo;m in love with your money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you speaking of my aunt&mdash;of my cousin?&rdquo; Isabel asked. &ldquo;How do
+      you know what they think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not told me they&rsquo;re pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett the
+      other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I should
+      have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you rich is
+      the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course when a poor
+      man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. I don&rsquo;t mind
+      them; I only care for one thing&mdash;for your not having the shadow of a
+      doubt. I don&rsquo;t care what people of whom I ask nothing think&mdash;I&rsquo;m not
+      even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I&rsquo;ve never so concerned myself,
+      God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself
+      a compensation for everything? I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m sorry you&rsquo;re rich; I&rsquo;m
+      delighted. I delight in everything that&rsquo;s yours&mdash;whether it be money
+      or virtue. Money&rsquo;s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
+      It seems to me, however, that I&rsquo;ve sufficiently proved the limits of my
+      itch for it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be
+      less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and
+      grabbing. I suppose it&rsquo;s their business to suspect&mdash;that of your
+      family; it&rsquo;s proper on the whole they should. They&rsquo;ll like me better some
+      day; so will you, for that matter. Meanwhile my business is not to make
+      myself bad blood, but simply to be thankful for life and love.&rdquo; &ldquo;It has
+      made me better, loving you,&rdquo; he said on another occasion; &ldquo;it has made me
+      wiser and easier and&mdash;I won&rsquo;t pretend to deny&mdash;brighter and
+      nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to
+      be angry I didn&rsquo;t have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told
+      you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to
+      irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of
+      desire. Now I&rsquo;m really satisfied, because I can&rsquo;t think of anything
+      better. It&rsquo;s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the
+      twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes
+      over the book of life and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but
+      now that I can read it properly I see it&rsquo;s a delightful story. My dear
+      girl, I can&rsquo;t tell you how life seems to stretch there before us&mdash;what
+      a long summer afternoon awaits us. It&rsquo;s the latter half of an Italian day&mdash;with
+      a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy
+      in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and
+      which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I don&rsquo;t see why we shouldn&rsquo;t get
+      on. We&rsquo;ve got what we like&mdash;to say nothing of having each other.
+      We&rsquo;ve the faculty of admiration and several capital convictions. We&rsquo;re not
+      stupid, we&rsquo;re not mean, we&rsquo;re not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or
+      dreariness. You&rsquo;re remarkably fresh, and I&rsquo;m remarkably well-seasoned.
+      We&rsquo;ve my poor child to amuse us; we&rsquo;ll try and make up some little life
+      for her. It&rsquo;s all soft and mellow&mdash;it has the Italian colouring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal of
+      latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live for
+      the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had been a
+      party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy should be a
+      party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance
+      and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future at a
+      high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for unlimited
+      expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense that life was vacant
+      without some private duty that might gather one&rsquo;s energies to a point. She
+      had told Ralph she had &ldquo;seen life&rdquo; in a year or two and that she was
+      already tired, not of the act of living, but of that of observing. What
+      had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high
+      estimate of her independence and her incipient conviction that she should
+      never marry? These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need&mdash;a
+      need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet gratified
+      infinite desires. It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down
+      from above like the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation.
+      There was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own,
+      and that she should be able to be of use to him. She could surrender to
+      him with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she
+      was not only taking, she was giving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine&mdash;Pansy
+      who was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That
+      she would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father,
+      who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her
+      to go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore
+      a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She
+      found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of the
+      alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for
+      approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance had the
+      personal touch that the child&rsquo;s affectionate nature craved. She watched
+      her indications as if for herself also much depended on them&mdash;Pansy
+      already so represented part of the service she could render, part of the
+      responsibility she could face. Her father took so the childish view of her
+      that he had not yet explained to her the new relation in which he stood to
+      the elegant Miss Archer. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said to Isabel; &ldquo;she
+      doesn&rsquo;t guess; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I should come
+      and walk here together simply as good friends. There seems to me something
+      enchantingly innocent in that; it&rsquo;s the way I like her to be. No, I&rsquo;m not
+      a failure, as I used to think; I&rsquo;ve succeeded in two things. I&rsquo;m to marry
+      the woman I adore, and I&rsquo;ve brought up my child, as I wished, in the old
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very fond, in all things, of the &ldquo;old way&rdquo;; that had struck Isabel
+      as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. &ldquo;It occurs to me that you&rsquo;ll not
+      know whether you&rsquo;ve succeeded until you&rsquo;ve told her,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You must
+      see how she takes your news, She may be horrified&mdash;she may be
+      jealous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid of that; she&rsquo;s too fond of you on her own account. I
+      should like to leave her in the dark a little longer&mdash;to see if it
+      will come into her head that if we&rsquo;re not engaged we ought to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was impressed by Osmond&rsquo;s artistic, the plastic view, as it somehow
+      appeared, of Pansy&rsquo;s innocence&mdash;her own appreciation of it being more
+      anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a
+      few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who had
+      made such a pretty little speech&mdash;&ldquo;Oh, then I shall have a beautiful
+      sister!&rdquo; She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she had guessed it,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
+      would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her good
+      manners are paramount. That&rsquo;s also what I wished. You shall see for
+      yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini&rsquo;s, whither
+      Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
+      in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
+      that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
+      visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
+      ushered into the Countess&rsquo;s drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her
+      aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,
+      who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+      company. It was Isabel&rsquo;s view that the little girl might have given
+      lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified
+      this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself
+      while they waited together for the Countess. Her father&rsquo;s decision, the
+      year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive
+      the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her theory
+      that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa has told me that you&rsquo;ve kindly consented to marry him,&rdquo; said this
+      excellent woman&rsquo;s pupil. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very delightful; I think you&rsquo;ll suit very
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I shall suit <i>you</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will
+      suit each other. You&rsquo;re both so quiet and so serious. You&rsquo;re not so quiet
+      as he&mdash;or even as Madame Merle; but you&rsquo;re more quiet than many
+      others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She&rsquo;s always
+      in motion, in agitation&mdash;to-day especially; you&rsquo;ll see when she comes
+      in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but I
+      suppose there&rsquo;s no harm if we judge them favourably. You&rsquo;ll be a
+      delightful companion for papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you too, I hope,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I speak first of him on purpose. I&rsquo;ve told you already what I myself
+      think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I
+      think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You&rsquo;ll be my
+      model; I shall try to imitate you though I&rsquo;m afraid it will be very
+      feeble. I&rsquo;m very glad for papa&mdash;he needed something more than me.
+      Without you I don&rsquo;t see how he could have got it. You&rsquo;ll be my stepmother,
+      but we mustn&rsquo;t use that word. They&rsquo;re always said to be cruel; but I don&rsquo;t
+      think you&rsquo;ll ever so much as pinch or even push me. I&rsquo;m not afraid at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good little Pansy,&rdquo; said Isabel gently, &ldquo;I shall be ever so kind to
+      you.&rdquo; A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need
+      it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, I&rsquo;ve nothing to fear,&rdquo; the child returned with her note
+      of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest&mdash;or
+      what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini
+      was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room
+      with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead and
+      then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She
+      drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of
+      the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an
+      easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to a composition
+      of figures already sketched in. &ldquo;If you expect me to congratulate you I
+      must beg you to excuse me. I don&rsquo;t suppose you care if I do or not; I
+      believe you&rsquo;re supposed not to care&mdash;through being so clever&mdash;for
+      all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never
+      tell them unless there&rsquo;s something rather good to be gained. I don&rsquo;t see
+      what&rsquo;s to be gained with you&mdash;especially as you wouldn&rsquo;t believe me.
+      I don&rsquo;t make professions any more than I make paper flowers or flouncey
+      lampshades&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know how. My lampshades would be sure to take
+      fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I&rsquo;m very glad for my
+      own sake that you&rsquo;re to marry Osmond; but I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m glad for
+      yours. You&rsquo;re very brilliant&mdash;you know that&rsquo;s the way you&rsquo;re always
+      spoken of; you&rsquo;re an heiress and very good-looking and original, not
+      banal; so it&rsquo;s a good thing to have you in the family. Our family&rsquo;s very
+      good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and my mother was rather
+      distinguished&mdash;she was called the American Corinne. But we&rsquo;re
+      dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you&rsquo;ll pick us up. I&rsquo;ve great
+      confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to talk to you
+      about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to
+      make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy oughtn&rsquo;t
+      to hear all this; but that&rsquo;s what she has come to me for&mdash;to acquire
+      the tone of society. There&rsquo;s no harm in her knowing what horrors she may
+      be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on you I
+      thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not
+      to listen to him. Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything
+      of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all
+      I&rsquo;m very selfish. By the way, you won&rsquo;t respect me, not one little mite,
+      and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won&rsquo;t. Some day,
+      all the same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first.
+      My husband will come and see you, though, as you probably know, he&rsquo;s on no
+      sort of terms with Osmond. He&rsquo;s very fond of going to see pretty women,
+      but I&rsquo;m not afraid of you. In the first place I don&rsquo;t care what he does.
+      In the second, you won&rsquo;t care a straw for him; he won&rsquo;t be a bit, at any
+      time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he&rsquo;ll see you&rsquo;re not his. Some
+      day, if you can stand it, I&rsquo;ll tell you all about him. Do you think my
+      niece ought to go out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my
+      boudoir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her stay, please,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;I would rather hear nothing that
+      Pansy may not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing
+      appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an
+      old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame Merle;
+      whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a
+      lady&rsquo;s maid&rsquo;s manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and
+      requested the favour of his name. &ldquo;Mr. Edward Rosier,&rdquo; said the young man,
+      who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an ornament
+      of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he
+      sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of several
+      winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might
+      have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort.
+      In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the
+      current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences. He
+      passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a
+      charming young girl. To this little person he began to pay, on the spot,
+      particular attention: she struck him as exactly the household angel he had
+      long been looking for. He was never precipitate, he was nothing if not
+      discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it
+      seemed to him when they parted&mdash;the young lady to go down into Italy
+      and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join
+      other friends&mdash;that he should be romantically wretched if he were not
+      to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to
+      Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr. Rosier started
+      on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the first of
+      November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the young man there was a
+      strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might expose himself,
+      unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in November lay,
+      notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this
+      adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a
+      month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent
+      good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy
+      Osmond&rsquo;s composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last
+      touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous
+      meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china
+      shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom of her juvenility, had a
+      hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for that
+      manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of
+      comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the
+      attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle&rsquo;s drawing-room, which, although
+      furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in articles
+      of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and
+      looked round; and then &ldquo;By Jove, she has some jolly good things!&rdquo; he had
+      yearningly murmured. The room was small and densely filled with furniture;
+      it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might
+      totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful
+      tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions
+      embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him
+      standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace
+      flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it
+      delicately, as if he were smelling it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s old Venetian,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s rather good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too good for this; you ought to wear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but I can&rsquo;t wear mine,&rdquo; smiled the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you shouldn&rsquo;t! I&rsquo;ve better lace than that to wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve some very
+      good things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I hate them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to get rid of them?&rdquo; the young man quickly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s good to have something to hate: one works it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love my things,&rdquo; said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his
+      recognitions. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not about them, nor about yours, that I came to
+      talk to you.&rdquo; He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: &ldquo;I care
+      more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle opened wide eyes. &ldquo;Did you come to tell me that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to ask your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large
+      white hand. &ldquo;A man in love, you know, doesn&rsquo;t ask advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, if he&rsquo;s in a difficult position? That&rsquo;s often the case with a
+      man in love. I&rsquo;ve been in love before, and I know. But never so much as
+      this time&mdash;really never so much. I should like particularly to know
+      what you think of my prospects. I&rsquo;m afraid that for Mr. Osmond I&rsquo;m not&mdash;well,
+      a real collector&rsquo;s piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish me to intercede?&rdquo; Madame Merle asked with her fine arms
+      folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There
+      will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to
+      believe her father will consent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very considerate; that&rsquo;s in your favour. But you assume in rather
+      an off-hand way that I think you a prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been very kind to me,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It&rsquo;s very rare
+      now, and there&rsquo;s no telling what one may get by it.&rdquo; With which the
+      left-hand corner of Madame Merle&rsquo;s mouth gave expression to the joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently
+      strenuous. &ldquo;Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like you very much; but, if you please, we won&rsquo;t analyse. Pardon me if
+      I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I must
+      tell you, however, that I&rsquo;ve not the marrying of Pansy Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t suppose that. But you&rsquo;ve seemed to me intimate with her family,
+      and I thought you might have influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle considered. &ldquo;Whom do you call her family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, her father; and&mdash;how do you say it in English?&mdash;her
+      belle-mere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed a
+      member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that,&rdquo; said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. &ldquo;I
+      think Mrs. Osmond would favour me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely&mdash;if her husband doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyebrows. &ldquo;Does she take the opposite line from him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In everything. They think quite differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Rosier, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that; but it&rsquo;s none of my business.
+      She&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves
+      her as if she were her own mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor
+      child,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;Have you declared your sentiments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. &ldquo;Never till I&rsquo;ve
+      assured myself of those of the parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always wait for that? You&rsquo;ve excellent principles; you observe the
+      proprieties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re laughing at me,&rdquo; the young man murmured, dropping back in
+      his chair and feeling his small moustache. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect that of you,
+      Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and the
+      best you could adopt. Yes, that&rsquo;s what I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t agitate her&mdash;only to agitate her; I love her too much for
+      that,&rdquo; said Ned Rosier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad, after all, that you&rsquo;ve told me,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on. &ldquo;Leave
+      it to me a little; I think I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said you were the person to come to!&rdquo; her visitor cried with prompt
+      elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were very clever,&rdquo; Madame Merle returned more dryly. &ldquo;When I say I
+      can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a
+      little if it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully decent, you know,&rdquo; said Rosier earnestly. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;ve
+      no faults, but I&rsquo;ll say I&rsquo;ve no vices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that&rsquo;s negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call
+      vices. What&rsquo;s the positive side? What&rsquo;s the virtuous? What have you got
+      besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a comfortable little fortune&mdash;about forty thousand francs a
+      year. With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on
+      such an income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle&rsquo;s mouth rose to the left. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be famous; you&rsquo;d have
+      to make use of the teacups, and they&rsquo;d get broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything pretty
+      it would be enough. When one&rsquo;s as pretty as she one can afford&mdash;well,
+      quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but muslin&mdash;without
+      the sprig,&rdquo; said Rosier reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you even allow her the sprig? She&rsquo;d be much obliged to you at
+      any rate for that theory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the correct one, I assure you; and I&rsquo;m sure she&rsquo;d enter into it. She
+      understands all that; that&rsquo;s why I love her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a very good little girl, and most tidy&mdash;also extremely
+      graceful. But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier scarce demurred. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t in the least desire that he should. But I
+      may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money&rsquo;s his wife&rsquo;s; she brought him a large fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      exclaimed with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Osmond,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on, &ldquo;will probably prefer to keep her
+      money for her own children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her own children? Surely she has none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six
+      months after his birth. Others therefore may come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She&rsquo;s a splendid woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. &ldquo;Ah, about her there&rsquo;s much to
+      be said. Splendid as you like! We&rsquo;ve not exactly made out that you&rsquo;re a <i>parti</i>.
+      The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, I think it may be,&rdquo; said Rosier quite lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you underrate me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not so innocent as that? Seriously,&rdquo; said Madame Merle, &ldquo;of course
+      forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a combination to be
+      considered. I don&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s to be jumped at, but there might be a worse
+      offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline to believe he can do
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can&rsquo;t do
+      better than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,&rdquo; Rosier added
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does&mdash;I know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried the young man, &ldquo;I said you were the person to come to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t know how you know it, if you haven&rsquo;t asked her,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In such a case there&rsquo;s no need of asking and telling; as you say, we&rsquo;re
+      an innocent couple. How did <i>you</i> know it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I&rsquo;ll find
+      out for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. &ldquo;You say that rather coldly.
+      Don&rsquo;t simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do my best. I&rsquo;ll try to make the most of your advantages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I&rsquo;ll say a word to Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Gardez-vous-en bien!</i>&rdquo; And Madame Merle was on her feet. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t set
+      her going, or you&rsquo;ll spoil everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess <i>had</i> been
+      after all the right person to come to. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I understand you.
+      I&rsquo;m an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to
+      succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the
+      better, for she doesn&rsquo;t get on very well with some of her new. But don&rsquo;t
+      for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband
+      may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you
+      not to multiply points of difference between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier&rsquo;s face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand of
+      Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste for
+      proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which he
+      concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner&rsquo;s &ldquo;best set&rdquo;
+       came to his assistance. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that I&rsquo;m bound to consider Mr. Osmond
+      so very much!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;No, but you should consider <i>her</i>. You
+      say you&rsquo;re an old friend. Would you make her suffer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I&rsquo;ve taken a few
+      soundings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I&rsquo;m in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won&rsquo;t burn up! Why did you come to me, if you&rsquo;re not to heed what
+      I say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very kind; I&rsquo;ll be very good,&rdquo; the young man promised. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m
+      afraid Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s pretty hard,&rdquo; he added in his mild voice as he went to
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a short laugh. &ldquo;It has been said before. But his wife
+      isn&rsquo;t easy either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she&rsquo;s a splendid woman!&rdquo; Ned Rosier repeated, for departure. He
+      resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was already
+      a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he had given
+      Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself in spirits by an
+      occasional visit to Miss Osmond&rsquo;s home. He reflected constantly on what
+      his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his mind the impression of
+      her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her <i>de confiance</i>, as
+      they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been precipitate. He
+      found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash&mdash;he had incurred this
+      reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had known Madame
+      Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her a delightful
+      woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for assuming that
+      she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms, gracefully arranged
+      as these members might be to receive her. She had indeed shown him
+      benevolence, and she was a person of consideration among the girl&rsquo;s
+      people, where she had a rather striking appearance (Rosier had more than
+      once wondered how she managed it) of being intimate without being
+      familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. There was no
+      particular reason why she should take trouble for him; a charming woman
+      was charming to every one, and Rosier felt rather a fool when he thought
+      of his having appealed to her on the ground that she had distinguished
+      him. Very likely&mdash;though she had appeared to say it in joke&mdash;she
+      was really only thinking of his bibelots. Had it come into her head that
+      he might offer her two or three of the gems of his collection? If she
+      would only help him to marry Miss Osmond he would present her with his
+      whole museum. He could hardly say so to her outright; it would seem too
+      gross a bribe. But he should like her to believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s, Mrs.
+      Osmond having an &ldquo;evening&rdquo;&mdash;she had taken the Thursday of each week&mdash;when
+      his presence could be accounted for on general principles of civility. The
+      object of Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in
+      the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure overlooking a sunny
+      <i>piazzetta</i> in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace,
+      too, little Pansy lived&mdash;a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to
+      poor Rosier&rsquo;s apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the
+      young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he doubted of
+      his ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind of domestic
+      fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name, which smelt of
+      historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which was mentioned in
+      &ldquo;Murray&rdquo; and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague survey,
+      disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the <i>piano
+      nobile</i> and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide,
+      nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out
+      of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he could have done
+      justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered into the sentiment
+      of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on settling themselves in Rome
+      she and her husband had chosen this habitation for the love of local
+      colour. It had local colour enough, and though he knew less about
+      architecture than about Limoges enamels he could see that the proportions
+      of the windows and even the details of the cornice had quite the grand
+      air. But Rosier was haunted by the conviction that at picturesque periods
+      young girls had been shut up there to keep them from their true loves, and
+      then, under the threat of being thrown into convents, had been forced into
+      unholy marriages. There was one point, however, to which he always did
+      justice when once he found himself in Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s warm, rich-looking
+      reception-rooms, which were on the second floor. He acknowledged that
+      these people were very strong in &ldquo;good things.&rdquo; It was a taste of Osmond&rsquo;s
+      own&mdash;not at all of hers; this she had told him the first time he came
+      to the house, when, after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether
+      they had even better &ldquo;French&rdquo; than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot
+      to admit that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman
+      should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of
+      her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a
+      large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed a
+      number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his
+      greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.
+      Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.
+      For &ldquo;advice&rdquo; read &ldquo;cash,&rdquo; he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert
+      Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season
+      confirmed his most cherished doctrine&mdash;the doctrine that a collector
+      may freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier
+      presented himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the
+      walls of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really
+      yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme
+      seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about for
+      the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted a
+      gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took everything
+      comfortable for granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a concave
+      ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here Mrs. Osmond
+      usually sat&mdash;though she was not in her most customary place to-night&mdash;and
+      that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about the fire. The room
+      was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it contained the larger
+      things and&mdash;almost always&mdash;an odour of flowers. Pansy on this
+      occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the resort of younger
+      visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before the chimney, leaning
+      back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up and was warming the
+      sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were talking together; but
+      he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an expression, frequent with
+      them, that seemed to represent them as engaged with objects more worth
+      their while than the appearances actually thrust upon them. Rosier, coming
+      in unannounced, failed to attract his attention; but the young man, who
+      was very punctilious, though he was even exceptionally conscious that it
+      was the wife, not the husband, he had come to see, went up to shake hands
+      with him. Osmond put out his left hand, without changing his attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d&rsquo;ye do? My wife&rsquo;s somewhere about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never fear; I shall find her,&rdquo; said Rosier cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so
+      efficiently looked at. &ldquo;Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn&rsquo;t like
+      it,&rdquo; he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there, but
+      she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or would
+      come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond, having a
+      fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly resentful, and
+      where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of being quite in
+      the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without help, and then in a
+      moment, &ldquo;I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte to-day,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his
+      boot-sole, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a fig for Capo di Monte!&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;re not losing your interest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In old pots and plates? Yes, I&rsquo;m losing my interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+      thinking of parting with a&mdash;a piece or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier,&rdquo; said
+      Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,&rdquo; Rosier remarked brightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly. I&rsquo;ve nothing I wish to match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of
+      assurance. &ldquo;Ah, well, I have!&rdquo; was all he could murmur; and he knew his
+      murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the
+      adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She was
+      dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and
+      yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought of her and the
+      terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his admiration. Like his
+      appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his
+      eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a
+      sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a &ldquo;lustre&rdquo; beyond any
+      recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had
+      still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might
+      well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich
+      her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on
+      its stem. She had lost something of that quick eagerness to which her
+      husband had privately taken exception&mdash;she had more the air of being
+      able to wait. Now, at all events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck
+      our young man as the picture of a gracious lady. &ldquo;You see I&rsquo;m very
+      regular,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But who should be if I&rsquo;m not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve known you longer than any one here. But we mustn&rsquo;t indulge in
+      tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, please, what young lady?&rdquo; Rosier was immensely obliging; but this was
+      not what he had come for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.&rdquo; Rosier
+      hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t Mr. Osmond speak to her? He&rsquo;s within six feet
+      of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not very lively, and he doesn&rsquo;t like
+      dull people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s good enough for me? Ah now, that&rsquo;s hard!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only mean that you&rsquo;ve ideas for two. And then you&rsquo;re so obliging.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s not&mdash;to me.&rdquo; And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I tell him,&rdquo; she said, still smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see I want some tea,&rdquo; Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; but after that I&rsquo;ll abandon her to her fate. The simple truth
+      is I&rsquo;m dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, turning away, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help you there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink, whom
+      he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in making to
+      Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of
+      his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable of occupying this
+      young man&rsquo;s mind for a considerable time. At last, however, he became&mdash;comparatively
+      speaking&mdash;reckless; he cared little what promises he might break. The
+      fate to which he had threatened to abandon the damsel in pink proved to be
+      none so terrible; for Pansy Osmond, who had given him the tea for his
+      companion&mdash;Pansy was as fond as ever of making tea&mdash;presently
+      came and talked to her. Into this mild colloquy Edward Rosier entered
+      little; he sat by moodily, watching his small sweetheart. If we look at
+      her now through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of
+      the obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before, was sent to
+      walk short distances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Archer
+      talked together of matters sacred to elder people. But after a moment we
+      shall perceive that if at nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she
+      doesn&rsquo;t really fill out the part; that if she has grown very pretty she
+      lacks in a deplorable degree the quality known and esteemed in the
+      appearance of females as style; and that if she is dressed with great
+      freshness she wears her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of
+      saving it&mdash;very much as if it were lent her for the occasion. Edward
+      Rosier, it would seem, would have been just the man to note these defects;
+      and in point of fact there was not a quality of this young lady, of any
+      sort, that he had not noted. Only he called her qualities by names of his
+      own&mdash;some of which indeed were happy enough. &ldquo;No, she&rsquo;s unique&mdash;she&rsquo;s
+      absolutely unique,&rdquo; he used to say to himself; and you may be sure that
+      not for an instant would he have admitted to you that she was wanting in
+      style. Style? Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you couldn&rsquo;t
+      see it you had no eye. It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would
+      produce no impression in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff
+      little dress, only looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough
+      for Edward Rosier, who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious
+      eyes, her charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a
+      childish prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she
+      liked him&mdash;a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It
+      made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his
+      handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect
+      <i>jeune fille</i>, and one couldn&rsquo;t make of a <i>jeune fille</i> the
+      enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a point. A <i>jeune fille</i>
+      was what Rosier had always dreamed of&mdash;a <i>jeune fille</i> who
+      should yet not be French, for he had felt that this nationality would
+      complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had never looked at a newspaper
+      and that, in the way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was
+      the very most. An American jeune fille&mdash;what could be better than
+      that? She would be frank and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor
+      have received letters from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to see
+      the comedy of manners. Rosier could not deny that, as the matter stood, it
+      would be a breach of hospitality to appeal directly to this
+      unsophisticated creature; but he was now in imminent danger of asking
+      himself if hospitality were the most sacred thing in the world. Was not
+      the sentiment that he entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater
+      importance? Of greater importance to him&mdash;yes; but not probably to
+      the master of the house. There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had
+      been placed on his guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the
+      warning to Pansy; it would not have been part of his policy to let her
+      know that a prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he <i>was</i>
+      in love with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions
+      of circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant
+      by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely he
+      himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl in so
+      vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her mother,
+      who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that she must
+      carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter departed
+      together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be virtually
+      alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before; he had never
+      been alone with a <i>jeune fille</i>. It was a great moment; poor Rosier
+      began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in
+      which they stood&mdash;a small room that had been thrown open and lighted,
+      but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty all the
+      evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; there were
+      several lamps; through the open door it looked the very temple of
+      authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture; he was
+      afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of stretching
+      out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other maiden had left
+      them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on the far side of the
+      room. For a little it occurred to him that she was frightened&mdash;too
+      frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured him she was not,
+      and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed for that. After a
+      supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and look at the yellow
+      room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He had been there
+      already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was of the First
+      French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he didn&rsquo;t really
+      admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He therefore felt
+      that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, you may go,&rdquo; said Pansy; &ldquo;and if you like I&rsquo;ll show you.&rdquo; She
+      was not in the least frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I hoped you&rsquo;d say; you&rsquo;re so very kind,&rdquo; Rosier
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it
+      seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not for
+      winter evenings; it&rsquo;s more for summer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s papa&rsquo;s taste; he
+      has so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He looked
+      about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t Mrs.
+      Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, a great deal; but it&rsquo;s more for literature,&rdquo; said Pansy&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier was silent a little. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing I&rsquo;m sure he knows!&rdquo; he
+      broke out presently. &ldquo;He knows that when I come here it&rsquo;s, with all
+      respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who&rsquo;s so charming&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      really,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;to see you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see me?&rdquo; And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see you; that&rsquo;s what I come for,&rdquo; Rosier repeated, feeling the
+      intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not
+      needed to make her face more modest. &ldquo;I thought it was for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it was not disagreeable to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t tell; I didn&rsquo;t know. You never told me,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid of offending you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t offend me,&rdquo; the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel had
+      kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like me then, Pansy?&rdquo; Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock was
+      perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from
+      without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him the
+      very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and
+      hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with
+      her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive.
+      She liked him&mdash;she had liked him all the while; now anything might
+      happen! She was ready&mdash;she had been ready always, waiting for him to
+      speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the
+      word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Rosier felt
+      that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his heart she would
+      submit without a murmur, would rest there without a question. It was true
+      that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow Empire <i>salottino</i>.
+      She had known it was for her he came, and yet like what a perfect little
+      lady she had carried it off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very dear to me,&rdquo; he murmured, trying to believe that there was
+      after all such a thing as hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. &ldquo;Did you say papa
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me just now he knows everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you must make sure,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, when once I&rsquo;m sure of <i>you</i>!&rdquo; Rosier murmured in her
+      ear; whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of
+      consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame
+      Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.
+      How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for
+      she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor
+      dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the
+      audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very
+      tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+      because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest
+      thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more striking,
+      she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master of the house.
+      There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these two&mdash;they
+      always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the commonplace&mdash;and
+      then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked if little Mr.
+      Rosier had come this evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came nearly an hour ago&mdash;but he has disappeared,&rdquo; Osmond said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where&rsquo;s Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the other room. There are several people there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s probably among them,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to see him?&rdquo; Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the
+      eighth of a note. &ldquo;Yes, I should like to say to him that I&rsquo;ve told you
+      what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell him that. He&rsquo;ll try to interest me more&mdash;which is exactly
+      what I don&rsquo;t want. Tell him I hate his proposal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t hate it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t signify; I don&rsquo;t love it. I let him see that, myself, this
+      evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing&rsquo;s a great bore.
+      There&rsquo;s no hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell him that you&rsquo;ll take time and think it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t do that. He&rsquo;ll hang on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I discourage him he&rsquo;ll do the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but in the one case he&rsquo;ll try to talk and explain&mdash;which would
+      be exceedingly tiresome. In the other he&rsquo;ll probably hold his tongue and
+      go in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with
+      a donkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s a nuisance&mdash;with his eternal majolica.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a gentleman,
+      he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand
+      francs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s misery&mdash;&lsquo;genteel&rsquo; misery,&rdquo; Osmond broke in. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what I&rsquo;ve
+      dreamed of for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe him?&rdquo; Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you consider that that matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has
+      thought of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That opinion&rsquo;s more convenient,&rdquo; said Madame Merle quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she told you she&rsquo;s in love with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      added in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other
+      knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly&mdash;his long, fine
+      forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it&mdash;and gazed a while
+      before him. &ldquo;This kind of thing doesn&rsquo;t find me unprepared. It&rsquo;s what I
+      educated her for. It was all for this&mdash;that when such a case should
+      come up she should do what I prefer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid that she&rsquo;ll not do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, where&rsquo;s the hitch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of Mr.
+      Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t keep him. Keep him yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I&rsquo;ll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.&rdquo;
+       Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing
+      about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit to
+      interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the last
+      words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out of the
+      adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a few steps
+      and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken to her,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion never turned his head. &ldquo;So much for your belief in his
+      promises. He ought to be horsewhipped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He intends to confess, poor little man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t
+      matter,&rdquo; he murmured, turning away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner of
+      unfamiliar politeness. This lady&rsquo;s reception of her was not more intimate;
+      she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very late,&rdquo; the young creature gently said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, I&rsquo;m never later than I intend to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward
+      Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it off
+      his mind, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spoken to her!&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it, Mr. Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come
+      and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.&rdquo; She was severe, and in the
+      manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of contempt
+      which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor the
+      place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking with
+      an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady was
+      Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. &ldquo;You said
+      just now you wouldn&rsquo;t help me,&rdquo; he began to Mrs. Osmond. &ldquo;Perhaps you&rsquo;ll
+      feel differently when you know&mdash;when you know&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel met his hesitation. &ldquo;When I know what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that we&rsquo;ve come to an understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s all wrong,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
+      testified to his sense of injury. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been treated so,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;What is there against me, after all? That&rsquo;s not the way I&rsquo;m usually
+      considered. I could have married twenty times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a pity you didn&rsquo;t. I don&rsquo;t mean twenty times, but once,
+      comfortably,&rdquo; Isabel added, smiling kindly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not rich enough for
+      Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t care a straw for one&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but her father does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, he has proved that!&rdquo; cried the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
+      ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
+      to look at Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s collection of miniatures, which were neatly
+      arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
+      seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
+      certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used to
+      being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such a
+      fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
+      searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire was
+      now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to Isabel;
+      it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a rude thing
+      to her&mdash;the only point that would now justify a low view of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn&rsquo;t have done, a while ago,&rdquo; he
+      began. &ldquo;But you must remember my situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember what you said,&rdquo; she answered coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re offended, and now you&rsquo;ll never help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that
+      I won&rsquo;t; I simply can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Her manner was almost passionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you <i>could</i>, just a little, I&rsquo;d never again speak of your husband
+      save as an angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The inducement&rsquo;s great,&rdquo; said Isabel gravely&mdash;inscrutably, as he
+      afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the eyes,
+      a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow that he
+      had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked, and he took
+      himself off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let him
+      off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop there till
+      something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher
+      expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his
+      daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if
+      one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that
+      tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+      felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn&rsquo;t be a
+      miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy her
+      father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by
+      precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a
+      sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of
+      itself&mdash;it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his
+      own situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the
+      world, and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she
+      justly declared, one couldn&rsquo;t have everything one wanted; she had learned
+      that lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert
+      Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter
+      dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have
+      anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn&rsquo;t like it at
+      all,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do that he&rsquo;ll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the
+      house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As little as possible? Who&rsquo;s to measure the possibility?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,
+      but don&rsquo;t go at all at odd times, and don&rsquo;t fret about Pansy. I&rsquo;ll see
+      that she understands everything. She&rsquo;s a calm little nature; she&rsquo;ll take
+      it quietly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was
+      advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to Palazzo
+      Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he went early
+      the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the
+      first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to
+      be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad that you can take a hint,&rdquo; Pansy&rsquo;s father said, slightly closing
+      his keen, conscious eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You took it? Where did you take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
+      asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. &ldquo;Madame Merle
+      gave me, as I understood it, a message from you&mdash;to the effect that
+      you declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to
+      explain my wishes to you.&rdquo; And he flattered himself he spoke rather
+      sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
+      Madame Merle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked her for an opinion&mdash;for nothing more. I did so because she
+      had seemed to me to know you very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know me so well as she thinks,&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
+      hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond stared into the fire a moment. &ldquo;I set a great price on my
+      daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t set a higher one than I do. Don&rsquo;t I prove it by wishing to
+      marry her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to marry her very well,&rdquo; Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
+      which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I pretend she&rsquo;d marry well in marrying me. She couldn&rsquo;t marry a
+      man who loves her more&mdash;or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to me,&rdquo; Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
+      his eyes to his boot-toes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have her promise, sir!&rdquo; cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+      exasperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
+      some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
+      had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: &ldquo;I think she has no
+      recollection of having given it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
+      uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again to the
+      room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a gentleman&mdash;a
+      stranger&mdash;had just come in, unannounced, according to the Roman
+      custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter smiled
+      blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face and a
+      large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You apparently don&rsquo;t recognise me,&rdquo; he said with a smile that expressed
+      more than Osmond&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as
+      usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond in
+      his path. He gave his hostess no greeting&mdash;he was too righteously
+      indignant, but said to her crudely: &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s awfully cold-blooded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t expect
+      every one to be as hot as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to be cold, but I&rsquo;m cool. What has he been doing to his
+      daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you take any interest?&rdquo; Rosier demanded with his sense that she too
+      was irritating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she answered nothing; then, &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said abruptly and with
+      a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me if I don&rsquo;t believe that. Where&rsquo;s Miss Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by intervening
+      groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely given to her
+      occupation. &ldquo;What on earth has he done to her?&rdquo; he asked again
+      imploringly. &ldquo;He declares to me she has given me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has not given you up,&rdquo; Isabel said in a low tone and without looking
+      at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, thank you for that! Now I&rsquo;ll leave her alone as long as you think
+      proper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that
+      Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just
+      entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and
+      evident social experience, a little embarrassed. &ldquo;Isabel,&rdquo; said her
+      husband, &ldquo;I bring you an old friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend&rsquo;s,
+      not perfectly confident. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy to see Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she said.
+      Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted,
+      felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick
+      impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn&rsquo;t notice what he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe
+      him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a
+      pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her, was
+      plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes
+      had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and
+      attestation strictly sincere. He was &ldquo;heavier&rdquo; than of yore and looked
+      older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you didn&rsquo;t expect to see me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve but just arrived.
+      Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I&rsquo;ve lost no time in
+      coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,&rdquo; Osmond
+      remarked to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we&rsquo;re greatly
+      flattered,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, it&rsquo;s better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,&rdquo; Osmond
+      went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hotel seems very good; I think it&rsquo;s the same at which I saw you four
+      years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it&rsquo;s a long
+      time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?&rdquo; his lordship asked
+      of his hostess. &ldquo;It was in the Capitol, in the first room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember that myself,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;I was there at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome&mdash;so sorry
+      that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I&rsquo;ve never
+      cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,&rdquo; her old
+      friend went on to Isabel, &ldquo;and I assure you I&rsquo;ve often thought of you. It
+      must be a charming place to live in,&rdquo; he added with a look, round him, at
+      her established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his
+      old ruefulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should have been glad to see you at any time,&rdquo; Osmond observed with
+      propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much. I haven&rsquo;t been out of England since then. Till a
+      month ago I really supposed my travels over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of you from time to time,&rdquo; said Isabel, who had already, with
+      her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting
+      him again meant for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ve heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
+      blank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the good reigns in history,&rdquo; Osmond suggested. He appeared to think
+      his duties as a host now terminated&mdash;he had performed them so
+      conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely
+      measured, than his courtesy to his wife&rsquo;s old friend. It was punctilious,
+      it was explicit, it was everything but natural&mdash;a deficiency which
+      Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may
+      be supposed to have perceived. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll leave you and Mrs. Osmond together,&rdquo;
+       he added. &ldquo;You have reminiscences into which I don&rsquo;t enter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you lose a good deal!&rdquo; Lord Warburton called after him, as he
+      moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation of
+      his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the deepest,
+      consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      really very glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very pleasant. You&rsquo;re very kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that you&rsquo;re changed&mdash;a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She just hesitated. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;a good deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the
+      better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to <i>you</i>,&rdquo; she
+      bravely returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, for me&mdash;it&rsquo;s a long time. It would be a pity there
+      shouldn&rsquo;t be something to show for it.&rdquo; They sat down and she asked him
+      about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He
+      answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she
+      saw&mdash;or believed she saw&mdash;that he would press with less of his
+      whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without
+      chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel
+      felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend&rsquo;s manner was
+      certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or
+      like her at least, to know him for such. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I must tell
+      you without more delay,&rdquo; he resumed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought Ralph Touchett with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought him with you?&rdquo; Isabel&rsquo;s surprise was great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to see him,&rdquo; she immediately said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I hoped you&rsquo;d do. I had an idea you hadn&rsquo;t seen much
+      of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a&mdash;a
+      little more formal. That&rsquo;s why I hesitated&mdash;like an awkward Briton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m as fond of Ralph as ever,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;But why has he come to
+      Rome?&rdquo; The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he&rsquo;s very far gone, Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined to
+      give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England, indoors,
+      in what he called an artificial climate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow, he doesn&rsquo;t succeed with the artificial! I went to see him
+      three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has been
+      getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He smokes no
+      more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was
+      as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to
+      start for Sicily. I didn&rsquo;t believe in it&mdash;neither did the doctors,
+      nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America,
+      so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it would be
+      the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania. He said he could take
+      servants and furniture, could make himself comfortable, but in point of
+      fact he hasn&rsquo;t brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to
+      save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome.
+      After that, though I thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come
+      with him. I&rsquo;m acting as&mdash;what do you call it in America?&mdash;as a
+      kind of moderator. Poor Ralph&rsquo;s very moderate now. We left England a
+      fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He can&rsquo;t keep warm,
+      and the further south we come the more he feels the cold. He has got
+      rather a good man, but I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;s beyond human help. I wanted him to
+      take with him some clever fellow&mdash;I mean some sharp young doctor; but
+      he wouldn&rsquo;t hear of it. If you don&rsquo;t mind my saying so, I think it was a
+      most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to decide on going to America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. &ldquo;My
+      aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When the
+      date comes round she starts; I think she&rsquo;d have started if Ralph had been
+      dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes think he <i>is</i> dying,&rdquo; Lord Warburton said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sprang up. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to him then now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his
+      words. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day, in
+      the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching Rome&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+      very fond of Rome, you know&mdash;gave him strength. An hour ago, when I
+      bade him good-night, he told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to
+      him in the morning; that&rsquo;s all I mean. I didn&rsquo;t tell him I was coming
+      here; I didn&rsquo;t decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered he
+      had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very Thursday. It
+      occurred to me to come in and tell you he&rsquo;s here, and let you know you had
+      perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he said he hadn&rsquo;t written
+      to you.&rdquo; There was no need of Isabel&rsquo;s declaring that she would act upon
+      Lord Warburton&rsquo;s information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged
+      creature held back. &ldquo;Let alone that I wanted to see you for myself,&rdquo; her
+      visitor gallantly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand Ralph&rsquo;s plan; it seems to me very wild,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went to see him; you&rsquo;ve been extremely kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, I had nothing to do,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hear, on the contrary, that you&rsquo;re doing great things. Every one
+      speaks of you as a great statesman, and I&rsquo;m perpetually seeing your name
+      in the Times, which, by the way, doesn&rsquo;t appear to hold it in reverence.
+      You&rsquo;re apparently as wild a radical as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.
+      Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way
+      from London. I tell him he&rsquo;s the last of the Tories, and he calls me the
+      King of the Goths&mdash;says I have, down to the details of my personal
+      appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there&rsquo;s life in him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from
+      asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived
+      that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject&mdash;he had
+      a conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say
+      to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was
+      able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an
+      image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned
+      with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new trouble. But
+      she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live with her on
+      good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her and was
+      incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was not a
+      form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to punish
+      her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice to
+      believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a
+      good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation
+      of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never
+      fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She gave
+      an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to
+      plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course spoke
+      of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even went so far
+      as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he
+      told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her marriage and
+      that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s acquaintance&mdash;since
+      he could hardly be said to have made it on the other occasion. He had not
+      written to her at the time of that passage in her history, but he didn&rsquo;t
+      apologise to her for this. The only thing he implied was that they were
+      old friends, intimate friends. It was very much as an intimate friend that
+      he said to her, suddenly, after a short pause which he had occupied in
+      smiling, as he looked about him, like a person amused, at a provincial
+      entertainment, by some innocent game of guesses&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well now, I suppose you&rsquo;re very happy and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her
+      almost as the accent of comedy. &ldquo;Do you suppose if I were not I&rsquo;d tell
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. I don&rsquo;t see why not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do then. Fortunately, however, I&rsquo;m very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got an awfully good house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s very pleasant. But that&rsquo;s not my merit&mdash;it&rsquo;s my
+      husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean he has arranged it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was nothing when we came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a genius for upholstery,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a
+      taste of your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I enjoy things when they&rsquo;re done, but I&rsquo;ve no ideas. I can never propose
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you accept what others propose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very willingly, for the most part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I&rsquo;ve in a few small ways
+      a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you to some
+      of these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please don&rsquo;t; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady
+      in the blue dress. She has a charming face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one talking to the rosy young man? That&rsquo;s my husband&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must make her acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment&mdash;with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.&rdquo; He
+      ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to
+      Mrs. Osmond. &ldquo;Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?&rdquo;
+       he presently went on. &ldquo;You seem to me, after all, very much the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet I find it a great change to be married,&rdquo; said Isabel with mild
+      gaiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven&rsquo;t
+      gone in for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It rather surprises me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry,&rdquo; he
+      added more simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ought to be very easy,&rdquo; Isabel said, rising&mdash;after which she
+      reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the person
+      to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the pang that
+      he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having contributed
+      then to the facility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy&rsquo;s
+      tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she
+      asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an English lord,&rdquo; said Rosier. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if he&rsquo;ll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind that; I&rsquo;ve something particular to say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak so loud every one will hear,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only thought
+      in life was the wish the kettle would boil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has just been filled; the servants never know!&rdquo;&mdash;and she sighed
+      with the weight of her responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn&rsquo;t mean
+      what you said a week ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean
+      what I say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me you had forgotten me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, I don&rsquo;t forget,&rdquo; said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then everything&rsquo;s just the very same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has he done to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he
+      forbade me to marry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t mind that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I must indeed. I can&rsquo;t disobey papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;
+      then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. &ldquo;I love you just as
+      much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good will that do me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You disappoint me,&rdquo; groaned poor Rosier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t
+      talk any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this to be all my satisfaction?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa said I was not to talk with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it&rsquo;s too much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d wait a little,&rdquo; said the girl in a voice just distinct
+      enough to betray a quaver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll wait if you&rsquo;ll give me hope. But you take my life away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll not give you up&mdash;oh no!&rdquo; Pansy went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll try and make you marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then are we to wait for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she&rsquo;ll help us.&rdquo; It
+      was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t help us much. She&rsquo;s afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your father, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy shook her little head. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not afraid of any one. We must have
+      patience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s an awful word,&rdquo; Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.
+      Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his
+      hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the
+      carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about him
+      and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey&mdash;it was still her
+      little curtsey of the convent&mdash;to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond
+      had introduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett
+      should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done
+      before that event&mdash;an event of which he took such a view as could
+      hardly prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we
+      know, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him to
+      resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That
+      discussion had made a difference&mdash;the difference he feared rather
+      than the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl&rsquo;s zeal in carrying out
+      her engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.
+      No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph&rsquo;s opinion of
+      Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they
+      managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a
+      difference, as Ralph often said to himself&mdash;there was a difference.
+      She had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had
+      gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn&rsquo;t care;
+      and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+      represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should justify
+      him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was of the
+      sort that women remember best. As Osmond&rsquo;s wife she could never again be
+      his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity she
+      expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had
+      attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the
+      other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he
+      should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+      her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed his
+      cousin&rsquo;s marriage, Ralph&rsquo;s prevision of the future; and if his meditations
+      appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom of health. He
+      consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed) beautifully, and
+      was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united to Mr. Osmond, and
+      which was performed in Florence in the month of June. He learned from his
+      mother that Isabel at first had thought of celebrating her nuptials in her
+      native land, but that as simplicity was what she chiefly desired to secure
+      she had finally decided, in spite of Osmond&rsquo;s professed willingness to
+      make a journey of any length, that this characteristic would be best
+      embodied in their being married by the nearest clergyman in the shortest
+      time. The thing was done therefore at the little American chapel, on a
+      very hot day, in the presence only of Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy
+      Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That severity in the proceedings of which
+      I just spoke was in part the result of the absence of two persons who
+      might have been looked for on the occasion and who would have lent it a
+      certain richness. Madame Merle had been invited, but Madame Merle, who was
+      unable to leave Rome, had written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta
+      Stackpole had not been invited, as her departure from America, announced
+      to Isabel by Mr. Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her
+      profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle&rsquo;s,
+      intimating that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have
+      been present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe
+      had taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel
+      in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged&mdash;perhaps a trifle too
+      freely&mdash;her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject
+      of it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+      Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. &ldquo;It
+      isn&rsquo;t in the least that you&rsquo;ve married&mdash;it is that you have married
+      <i>him</i>,&rdquo; she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be
+      seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few
+      of his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta&rsquo;s second visit to Europe,
+      however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the
+      moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+      that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he
+      took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon the scene
+      and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain. Henrietta&rsquo;s
+      letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she had yet published,
+      and there had been one in especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled
+      &lsquo;Moors and Moonlight,&rsquo; which generally passed for her masterpiece. Isabel
+      had been secretly disappointed at her husband&rsquo;s not seeing his way simply
+      to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if his sense of fun, or
+      of the funny&mdash;which would be his sense of humour, wouldn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;were
+      by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a
+      person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta&rsquo;s
+      violated conscience. Osmond had thought their alliance a kind of
+      monstrosity; he couldn&rsquo;t imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr.
+      Bantling&rsquo;s fellow tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had
+      also pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the
+      verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made him wonder afresh
+      at the oddity of some of his wife&rsquo;s tastes. Isabel could explain it only
+      by saying that she liked to know people who were as different as possible
+      from herself. &ldquo;Why then don&rsquo;t you make the acquaintance of your
+      washerwoman?&rdquo; Osmond had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she
+      was afraid her washerwoman wouldn&rsquo;t care for her. Now Henrietta cared so
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that
+      had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her
+      residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been joined
+      in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him to England,
+      to see what they were doing at the bank&mdash;an operation she couldn&rsquo;t
+      induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a
+      small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but late in the
+      month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome. It was the
+      first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face with Isabel;
+      his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She had written to
+      him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing he wanted to know.
+      He had asked his mother what she was making of her life, and his mother
+      had simply answered that she supposed she was making the best of it. Mrs.
+      Touchett had not the imagination that communes with the unseen, and she
+      now pretended to no intimacy with her niece, whom she rarely encountered.
+      This young woman appeared to be living in a sufficiently honourable way,
+      but Mrs. Touchett still remained of the opinion that her marriage had been
+      a shabby affair. It had given her no pleasure to think of Isabel&rsquo;s
+      establishment, which she was sure was a very lame business. From time to
+      time, in Florence, she rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best
+      always to minimise the contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond,
+      who made her think of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these
+      days; but Mrs. Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she
+      had been talked of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in
+      the person of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle&rsquo;s relations with Mrs.
+      Touchett had undergone a perceptible change. Isabel&rsquo;s aunt had told her,
+      without circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and
+      Madame Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no
+      one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,
+      for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of irritation&mdash;Madame
+      Merle now took a very high tone and declared that this was an accusation
+      from which she couldn&rsquo;t stoop to defend herself. She added, however
+      (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only too simple, that she
+      had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel was not eager to marry
+      and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated visits had been nothing; he
+      was boring himself to death on his hill-top and he came merely for
+      amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to herself, and her journey to
+      Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown dust in her companion&rsquo;s eyes.
+      Madame Merle accepted the event&mdash;she was unprepared to think of it as
+      a scandal; but that she had played any part in it, double or single, was
+      an imputation against which she proudly protested. It was doubtless in
+      consequence of Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s attitude, and of the injury it offered to
+      habits consecrated by many charming seasons, that Madame Merle had, after
+      this, chosen to pass many months in England, where her credit was quite
+      unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had done her a wrong; there are some things that
+      can&rsquo;t be forgiven. But Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always
+      something exquisite in her dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in this
+      pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the girl on
+      her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the game. He
+      should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear
+      a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in her union, so
+      that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should fall out of it,
+      she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he had been a goose. He
+      would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in order to know Isabel&rsquo;s
+      real situation. At present, however, she neither taunted him with his
+      fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was justified; if she wore
+      a mask it completely covered her face. There was something fixed and
+      mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was not an expression,
+      Ralph said&mdash;it was a representation, it was even an advertisement.
+      She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she
+      scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could say to
+      Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred six months
+      before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning. She appeared
+      to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken of as having a
+      &ldquo;charming position.&rdquo; He observed that she produced the impression of being
+      peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among many people, to be a
+      privilege even to know her. Her house was not open to every one, and she
+      had an evening in the week to which people were not invited as a matter of
+      course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed to be a
+      member of her circle to perceive it; for there was nothing to gape at,
+      nothing to criticise, nothing even to admire, in the daily proceedings of
+      Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in all this, recognised the hand of the
+      master; for he knew that Isabel had no faculty for producing studied
+      impressions. She struck him as having a great love of movement, of gaiety,
+      of late hours, of long rides, of fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained,
+      to be interested, even to be bored, to make acquaintances, to see people
+      who were talked about, to explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into
+      relation with certain of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all
+      this there was much less discrimination than in that desire for
+      comprehensiveness of development on which he had been used to exercise his
+      wit. There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in
+      some of her experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that
+      she even spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her
+      marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations&mdash;she who used
+      to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great
+      delight in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked
+      so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a
+      crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she
+      appeared now to think there was nothing worth people&rsquo;s either differing
+      about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+      indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was greater
+      than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had gained no
+      great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a brilliancy in
+      her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence to her beauty.
+      Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten her? Her light step
+      drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent head sustained a majesty
+      of ornament. The free, keen girl had become quite another person; what he
+      saw was the fine lady who was supposed to represent something. What did
+      Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself; and he could only answer by saying
+      that she represented Gilbert Osmond. &ldquo;Good heavens, what a function!&rdquo; he
+      then woefully exclaimed. He was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He saw
+      how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated, animated
+      their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had material
+      to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects were deeply
+      calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as
+      vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior with a sort of
+      invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of exclusion, to
+      make people believe his house was different from every other, to impart to
+      the face that he presented to the world a cold originality&mdash;this was
+      the ingenious effort of the personage to whom Isabel had attributed a
+      superior morality. &ldquo;He works with superior material,&rdquo; Ralph said to
+      himself; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s rich abundance compared with his former resources.&rdquo; Ralph
+      was a clever man; but Ralph had never&mdash;to his own sense&mdash;been so
+      clever as when he observed, <i>in petto</i>, that under the guise of
+      caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world.
+      Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble
+      servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success.
+      He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so
+      stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose&mdash;pose
+      so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it
+      for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of
+      consideration. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his
+      collections, were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence
+      had been the conscious attitude of years. His solitude, his ennui, his
+      love for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many
+      features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model of
+      impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the world,
+      but to please himself by exciting the world&rsquo;s curiosity and then declining
+      to satisfy it. It had made him feel great, ever, to play the world a
+      trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly to please himself
+      was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this case indeed the gullible
+      world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel, who had been mystified to
+      the top of her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in being consistent;
+      he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could not in
+      honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its articles for what they
+      may at the time have been worth. It was certain that he was very skilful
+      in fitting the facts to his theory&mdash;even the fact that during the
+      month he spent in Rome at this period the husband of the woman he loved
+      appeared to regard him not in the least as an enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
+      had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all. He
+      was Isabel&rsquo;s cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill&mdash;it was on
+      this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
+      asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
+      climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
+      the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary; but
+      his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in the
+      presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward the
+      end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond&rsquo;s making it of small ease to his wife
+      that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not jealous&mdash;he
+      had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But he made Isabel
+      pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was still left; and as
+      Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his suspicion had become
+      sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he had deprived Isabel of a
+      very interesting occupation: she had been constantly wondering what fine
+      principle was keeping him alive. She had decided that it was his love of
+      conversation; his conversation had been better than ever. He had given up
+      walking; he was no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair&mdash;almost
+      any chair would serve, and was so dependent on what you would do for him
+      that, had not his talk been highly contemplative, you might have thought
+      he was blind. The reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever
+      to know, and the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery.
+      What kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough
+      of the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet
+      satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn&rsquo;t make up his mind to lose
+      that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband&mdash;or what
+      her husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama,
+      and he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had
+      held good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time
+      of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an
+      air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+      accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,
+      unremunerative&mdash;and unremunerated&mdash;son of hers than she had ever
+      been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant
+      land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal of
+      the same emotion&mdash;the excitement of wondering in what state she
+      should find him&mdash;that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after
+      Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert
+      Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for
+      him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,
+      at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought
+      after all he wouldn&rsquo;t go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together
+      after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had
+      left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,
+      which he instantly removed from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t go to Sicily? Where then will you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I won&rsquo;t go anywhere,&rdquo; said Ralph, from the sofa, all
+      shamelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you&rsquo;ll return to England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear no; I&rsquo;ll stay in Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome won&rsquo;t do for you. Rome&rsquo;s not warm enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have to do. I&rsquo;ll make it do. See how well I&rsquo;ve been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying to
+      see it. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been better than you were on the journey, certainly. I
+      wonder how you lived through that. But I don&rsquo;t understand your condition.
+      I recommend you to try Sicily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t try,&rdquo; said poor Ralph. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done trying. I can&rsquo;t move further. I
+      can&rsquo;t face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don&rsquo;t
+      want to die on the Sicilian plains&mdash;to be snatched away, like
+      Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce then did you come for?&rdquo; his lordship enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the idea took me. I see it won&rsquo;t do. It really doesn&rsquo;t matter
+      where I am now. I&rsquo;ve exhausted all remedies, I&rsquo;ve swallowed all climates.
+      As I&rsquo;m here I&rsquo;ll stay. I haven&rsquo;t a single cousin in Sicily&mdash;much less
+      a married one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your cousin&rsquo;s certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked him, and I don&rsquo;t care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond
+      will bury me. But I shall not die here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not.&rdquo; Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. &ldquo;Well, I
+      must say,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;for myself I&rsquo;m very glad you don&rsquo;t insist on
+      Sicily. I had a horror of that journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but for you it needn&rsquo;t have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you
+      in my train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly didn&rsquo;t mean to let you go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,&rdquo; Ralph
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have gone with you and seen you settled,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good Christian. You&rsquo;re a very kind man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I should have come back here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then you&rsquo;d have gone to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I should have stayed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Ralph, &ldquo;if that&rsquo;s what we are both up to, I don&rsquo;t see where
+      Sicily comes in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking up,
+      &ldquo;I say, tell me this,&rdquo; he broke out; &ldquo;did you really mean to go to Sicily
+      when we started?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ah, vous m&rsquo;en demandez trop!</i> Let me put a question first. Did you
+      come with me quite&mdash;platonically?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect we&rsquo;ve each been playing our little game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here a
+      while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
+      Affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen him three times. He&rsquo;s very amusing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;ve forgotten what you came for,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I have,&rdquo; his companion answered rather gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
+      absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
+      without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
+      There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
+      recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival in Rome,
+      where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half-diffident,
+      half-confident silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recommend you to get the doctor&rsquo;s consent, all the same,&rdquo; Lord
+      Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor&rsquo;s consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then does Mrs. Osmond think?&rdquo; Ralph&rsquo;s friend demanded. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not
+      told her. She&rsquo;ll probably say that Rome&rsquo;s too cold and even offer to go
+      with me to Catania. She&rsquo;s capable of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your place I should like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her husband won&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you&rsquo;re not bound to mind
+      his likings. They&rsquo;re his affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to make any more trouble between them,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there so much already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the
+      explosion. Osmond isn&rsquo;t fond of his wife&rsquo;s cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then of course he&rsquo;d make a row. But won&rsquo;t he make a row if you stop
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
+      then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it&rsquo;s my duty to stop
+      and defend her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Touchett, your defensive powers&mdash;!&rdquo; Lord Warburton began
+      with a smile. But he saw something in his companion&rsquo;s face that checked
+      him. &ldquo;Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,&rdquo;
+       he observed instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph for a short time answered nothing. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true that my defensive
+      powers are small,&rdquo; he returned at last; &ldquo;but as my aggressive ones are
+      still smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At
+      any rate,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;there are things I&rsquo;m curious to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not much interested in my health, and I&rsquo;m deeply interested in Mrs.
+      Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. But not as I once was,&rdquo; Lord Warburton added quickly. This was
+      one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she strike you as very happy?&rdquo; Ralph enquired, emboldened by this
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;ve hardly thought. She told me the other night she
+      was happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she told <i>you</i>, of course,&rdquo; Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she
+      might have complained to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Complained? She&rsquo;ll never complain. She has done it&mdash;what she <i>has</i>
+      done&mdash;and she knows it. She&rsquo;ll complain to you least of all. She&rsquo;s
+      very careful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She needn&rsquo;t be. I don&rsquo;t mean to make love to her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of <i>your</i>
+      duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton gravely; &ldquo;none!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Permit me to ask,&rdquo; Ralph went on, &ldquo;whether it&rsquo;s to bring out the fact
+      that you don&rsquo;t mean to make love to her that you&rsquo;re so very civil to the
+      little girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,
+      looking at it hard. &ldquo;Does that strike you as very ridiculous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think her a delightful little person. I don&rsquo;t know when a girl of that
+      age has pleased me more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there&rsquo;s the difference in our ages&mdash;more than twenty
+      years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Warburton,&rdquo; said Ralph, &ldquo;are you serious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly serious&mdash;as far as I&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad. And, heaven help us,&rdquo; cried Ralph, &ldquo;how cheered-up old
+      Osmond will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion frowned. &ldquo;I say, don&rsquo;t spoil it. I shouldn&rsquo;t propose for his
+      daughter to please <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have the perversity to be pleased all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not so fond of me as that,&rdquo; said his lordship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that people
+      needn&rsquo;t be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you. Now, with
+      me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that they loved me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general
+      axioms&mdash;he was thinking of a special case. &ldquo;Do you judge she&rsquo;ll be
+      pleased?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl herself? Delighted, surely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at him a moment. &ldquo;My dear fellow, what has she to do with
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever she chooses. She&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true&mdash;very true.&rdquo; And Ralph slowly got up. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an interesting
+      question&mdash;how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her.&rdquo; He stood
+      there a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. &ldquo;I
+      hope, you know, that you&rsquo;re very&mdash;very sure. The deuce!&rdquo; he broke
+      off. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s awkward. I hope you&rsquo;re sure that among Miss Osmond&rsquo;s merits
+      her being&mdash;a&mdash;so near her stepmother isn&rsquo;t a leading one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, Touchett!&rdquo; cried Lord Warburton angrily, &ldquo;for what do you
+      take me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady
+      having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had spent
+      six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a winter in
+      Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and gave
+      countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less
+      inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the past
+      only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of the sunniest
+      niches of the Pincian&mdash;an apartment which often stood empty&mdash;this
+      suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a danger which Isabel at
+      one period had been much inclined to deplore. Familiarity had modified in
+      some degree her first impression of Madame Merle, but it had not
+      essentially altered it; there was still much wonder of admiration in it.
+      That personage was armed at all points; it was a pleasure to see a
+      character so completely equipped for the social battle. She carried her
+      flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, and she used them
+      with a skill which struck Isabel as more and more that of a veteran. She
+      was never weary, never overcome with disgust; she never appeared to need
+      rest or consolation. She had her own ideas; she had of old exposed a great
+      many of them to Isabel, who knew also that under an appearance of extreme
+      self-control her highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility.
+      But her will was mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the
+      way she kept going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it&mdash;as
+      if the art of life were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she
+      herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts;
+      there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with
+      some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old
+      habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with
+      suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As
+      a younger person she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation
+      to the other: there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame
+      Merle had suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing;
+      she lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel
+      would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant friend
+      had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had become aware
+      more than before of the advantage of being like that&mdash;of having made
+      one&rsquo;s self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed
+      acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again a
+      continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done
+      since her marriage; but by this time Isabel&rsquo;s needs and inclinations had
+      considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she would
+      have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this lady&rsquo;s
+      clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself, and if
+      life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself beaten.
+      Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an ornament to any
+      circle; but was she&mdash;would she be&mdash;of use to others in periods
+      of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her friend&mdash;this
+      indeed Isabel had always thought&mdash;was to imitate her, to be as firm
+      and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,
+      considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside her
+      own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which had
+      virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was almost
+      detached&mdash;pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear of
+      being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion that
+      she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note&mdash;was apt, in the
+      vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge&mdash;had
+      never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle&rsquo;s conduct, to her
+      perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always &ldquo;quiet.&rdquo; But
+      in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the Osmond
+      family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a little.
+      That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent. She
+      remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other
+      interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and his
+      little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not after all
+      of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of their
+      affairs till she was asked, even pressed&mdash;as when her opinion was
+      wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid
+      as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>must</i> be on my guard,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I might so easily, without
+      suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my
+      intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew
+      your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you
+      were a silly woman you might be jealous. You&rsquo;re not a silly woman; I know
+      that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I&rsquo;m determined not to get into
+      trouble. A little harm&rsquo;s very soon done; a mistake&rsquo;s made before one knows
+      it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had ten years
+      to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn&rsquo;t likely I shall begin
+      to-day, when I&rsquo;m so much less attractive than I was. But if I were to
+      annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn&rsquo;t belong to me, you
+      wouldn&rsquo;t make that reflection; you&rsquo;d simply say I was forgetting certain
+      differences. I&rsquo;m determined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend
+      isn&rsquo;t always thinking of that; one doesn&rsquo;t suspect one&rsquo;s friends of
+      injustice. I don&rsquo;t suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect human
+      nature. Don&rsquo;t think I make myself uncomfortable; I&rsquo;m not always watching
+      myself. I think I sufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All
+      I wish to say is, however, that if you were to be jealous&mdash;that&rsquo;s the
+      form it would take&mdash;I should be sure to think it was a little my
+      fault. It certainly wouldn&rsquo;t be your husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s theory that
+      Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage. We know how she had at
+      first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage,
+      but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer&rsquo;s. That was the work of&mdash;Isabel
+      scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery
+      of things. It was true her aunt&rsquo;s complaint had been not so much of Madame
+      Merle&rsquo;s activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange
+      event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been
+      great, to Isabel&rsquo;s mind; she couldn&rsquo;t make a crime of Madame Merle&rsquo;s
+      having been the producing cause of the most important friendship she had
+      ever formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage, after her
+      little discussion with her aunt and at a time when she was still capable
+      of that large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic
+      historian, to her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her
+      change of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With
+      her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never
+      concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel
+      discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he
+      seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of
+      their social rosary. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like Madame Merle?&rdquo; Isabel had once said
+      to him. &ldquo;She thinks a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you once for all,&rdquo; Osmond had answered. &ldquo;I liked her once
+      better than I do to-day. I&rsquo;m tired of her, and I&rsquo;m rather ashamed of it.
+      She&rsquo;s so almost unnaturally good! I&rsquo;m glad she&rsquo;s not in Italy; it makes
+      for relaxation&mdash;for a sort of moral detente. Don&rsquo;t talk of her too
+      much; it seems to bring her back. She&rsquo;ll come back in plenty of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late&mdash;too
+      late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But
+      meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel&rsquo;s
+      feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation
+      was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied
+      mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom
+      as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle&rsquo;s having had a
+      hand in Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+      consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not
+      so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and
+      Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would
+      not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an
+      immediate horror at having made it. &ldquo;Whatever happens to me let me not be
+      unjust,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them upon
+      others!&rdquo; This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious
+      apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make and of
+      which I have given a sketch; for there was something irritating&mdash;there
+      was almost an air of mockery&mdash;in her neat discriminations and clear
+      convictions. In Isabel&rsquo;s mind to-day there was nothing clear; there was a
+      confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she
+      turned away from her friend, who had just made the statements I have
+      quoted: Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking of! She was
+      herself moreover so unable to explain. Jealous of her&mdash;jealous of her
+      with Gilbert? The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost
+      wished jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a manner for
+      refreshment. Wasn&rsquo;t it in a manner one of the symptoms of happiness?
+      Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she might have been
+      pretending to know Isabel better than Isabel knew herself. This young
+      woman had always been fertile in resolutions&mdash;any of them of an
+      elevated character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy
+      of her heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a
+      family likeness; they might have been summed up in the determination that
+      if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor
+      winged spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not
+      as yet been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to
+      justice&mdash;not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame
+      Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revenge&mdash;especially as
+      the pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It
+      might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It
+      was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if
+      ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless
+      not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within
+      herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered
+      and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way
+      to repair it&mdash;just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to
+      accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever;
+      a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was
+      a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been
+      right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day about a month after Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s arrival in Rome Isabel came
+      back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
+      determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for Pansy&mdash;it
+      was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak.
+      Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the
+      rightness of the young creature&rsquo;s attachment or the sweetness of her own
+      clearness about it. It was like a soft presence&mdash;like a small hand in
+      her own; on Pansy&rsquo;s part it was more than an affection&mdash;it was a kind
+      of ardent coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl&rsquo;s
+      dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason when
+      motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take
+      our duty where we find it, and that we must look for it as much as
+      possible. Pansy&rsquo;s sympathy was a direct admonition; it seemed to say that
+      here was an opportunity, not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an
+      opportunity for what Isabel could hardly have said; in general, to be more
+      for the child than the child was able to be for herself. Isabel could have
+      smiled, in these days, to remember that her little companion had once been
+      ambiguous, for she now perceived that Pansy&rsquo;s ambiguities were simply her
+      own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care
+      so much&mdash;so extraordinarily much&mdash;to please. But since then she
+      had seen this delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to
+      think of it. It was the whole creature&mdash;it was a sort of genius.
+      Pansy had no pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly
+      extending her conquests she took no credit for them. The two were
+      constantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter.
+      Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of one&rsquo;s carrying a nosegay
+      composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under
+      any provocation to neglect her&mdash;this she had made an article of
+      religion. The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel&rsquo;s
+      society than in that of any one save her father,&mdash;whom she admired
+      with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an
+      exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild.
+      Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means
+      of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was
+      negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble&mdash;a conviction which
+      certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She was
+      therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was
+      careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Isabel&rsquo;s
+      propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought
+      otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, and though
+      she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale when it came to
+      her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward it wistfully&mdash;an
+      attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the
+      world. When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go
+      to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond
+      should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Isabel appreciated
+      the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a
+      passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a
+      conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she
+      liked even the tiresome parts&mdash;the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of
+      dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage.
+      During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small
+      fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if
+      she had been taken to drive for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the
+      city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await them by
+      the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the Campagna,
+      which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This
+      was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a
+      swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming to
+      Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she
+      liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter
+      undulation beside her father&rsquo;s wife, who afterwards, on their return to
+      Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit of the
+      Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a
+      sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo
+      Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel
+      passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the
+      second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered from the
+      staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s rich devices had not been
+      able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just beyond the threshold
+      of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being
+      that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness,
+      nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the
+      soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene before she
+      interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond
+      was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Isabel
+      had often seen that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at
+      least had not noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment
+      converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she instantly
+      perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was standing
+      on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair,
+      leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect, as usual, but her
+      eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first was that he was sitting
+      while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her.
+      Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their
+      exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old
+      friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was
+      nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing
+      made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of light.
+      Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as
+      something detected. But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen
+      it. Madame Merle had seen her and had welcomed her without moving; her
+      husband, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He presently murmured
+      something about wanting a walk and, after having asked their visitor to
+      excuse him, left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn&rsquo;t I
+      waited for you,&rdquo; Madame Merle said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t he ask you to sit down?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle looked about her. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s very true; I was going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must stay now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I came for a reason; I&rsquo;ve something on my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you that before,&rdquo; Isabel said&mdash;&ldquo;that it takes something
+      extraordinary to bring you to this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you know what I&rsquo;ve told <i>you</i>; that whether I come or whether I
+      stay away, I&rsquo;ve always the same motive&mdash;the affection I bear you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;ve told me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look just now as if you didn&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Isabel answered, &ldquo;the profundity of your motives, that&rsquo;s the last
+      thing I doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head gravely. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;ve always been kind to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As often as you would let me. You don&rsquo;t always take it; then one has to
+      let you alone. It&rsquo;s not to do you a kindness, however, that I&rsquo;ve come
+      to-day; it&rsquo;s quite another affair. I&rsquo;ve come to get rid of a trouble of my
+      own&mdash;to make it over to you. I&rsquo;ve been talking to your husband about
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised at that; he doesn&rsquo;t like troubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially other people&rsquo;s; I know very well. But neither do you, I
+      suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It&rsquo;s about
+      poor Mr. Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel reflectively, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s his trouble then, not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a
+      week, to talk about Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle hesitated. &ldquo;I gathered from your husband that perhaps you
+      didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s probably because he doesn&rsquo;t know how to speak of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nevertheless the sort of question in which he&rsquo;s rarely at fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
+      To-day he doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you been telling him?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. &ldquo;Do you know you&rsquo;re a little
+      dry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I can&rsquo;t help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that there&rsquo;s some reason. You&rsquo;re so near the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;for all the comfort I&rsquo;ve given him! If you think me
+      dry, I wonder what <i>he</i> thinks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do more at least than I. I don&rsquo;t know what mysterious connection
+      he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to me from the
+      first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps coming back, to
+      spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very much in love,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much&mdash;for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think she&rsquo;s
+      attractive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dearest little person possible&mdash;but very limited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s not
+      unlimited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;he has about the extent of one&rsquo;s pocket-handkerchief&mdash;the
+      small ones with lace borders.&rdquo; Her humour had lately turned a good deal to
+      sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent
+      an object as Pansy&rsquo;s suitor. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very kind, very honest,&rdquo; she presently
+      added; &ldquo;and he&rsquo;s not such a fool as he seems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He assures me that she delights in him,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;ve not asked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve never sounded her a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my place; it&rsquo;s her father&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re too literal!&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must judge for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave her smile again. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t easy to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To help me?&rdquo; said Isabel very seriously. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy to displease you. Don&rsquo;t you see how wise I am to be careful? I
+      notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the
+      love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. <i>Je n&rsquo;y peux rien,
+      moi!</i> I can&rsquo;t talk to Pansy about him. Especially,&rdquo; added Madame Merle,
+      &ldquo;as I don&rsquo;t think him a paragon of husbands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t wash your
+      hands then!&rdquo; she said. After which again she added in another tone: &ldquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t&mdash;you&rsquo;re too much interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the
+      intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before. Only
+      this time the latter saw nothing. &ldquo;Ask him the next time, and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him
+      know that he&rsquo;s not welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said Madame Merle, &ldquo;I forgot that&mdash;though it&rsquo;s the burden
+      of his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,&rdquo; she
+      went on, &ldquo;Osmond doesn&rsquo;t dislike him so much as he thinks.&rdquo; She had got up
+      as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and
+      had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the point
+      she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not opening the
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must have pleased him, if you&rsquo;ve told him,&rdquo; she answered, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I&rsquo;ve told him; as far as that goes I&rsquo;ve encouraged him. I&rsquo;ve
+      preached patience, have said that his case isn&rsquo;t desperate if he&rsquo;ll only
+      hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head
+      to be jealous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jealous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Merle
+      observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the
+      mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there&rsquo;s nothing impossible in Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s falling in love with Pansy,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on. Isabel was
+      silent a little; she turned away from the glass. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true&mdash;there&rsquo;s
+      nothing impossible,&rdquo; she returned at last, gravely and more gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ve had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not ask him,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      added, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      behaviour than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see no reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t tell you that he likes my stepdaughter
+      very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. &ldquo;Likes her, you mean&mdash;as
+      Mr. Rosier means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know
+      that he&rsquo;s charmed with Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve never told Osmond?&rdquo; This observation was immediate,
+      precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle&rsquo;s lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s eyes rested on her. &ldquo;I suppose he&rsquo;ll know in time; Lord Warburton
+      has a tongue and knows how to express himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly
+      than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave
+      the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been
+      thinking it over a little: &ldquo;That would be better than marrying poor Mr.
+      Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much better, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It&rsquo;s really
+      very kind of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very kind of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, Pansy Osmond&rsquo;s the most attractive person he has ever known!&rdquo;
+       Isabel exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. &ldquo;Ah, a moment
+      ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said she was limited. And so she is. And so&rsquo;s Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are we all, if you come to that. If it&rsquo;s no more than Pansy deserves,
+      all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier I won&rsquo;t
+      admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s a nuisance!&rdquo; Isabel cried abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you, and I&rsquo;m delighted to know that I&rsquo;m not expected
+      to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be
+      closed to him.&rdquo; And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared to
+      depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an
+      inconsequent request from Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, you know, be kind to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan&rsquo;t be kind to him,
+      for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord
+      Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better wait till he asks her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If what you say&rsquo;s true, he&rsquo;ll ask her. Especially,&rdquo; said Madame Merle in
+      a moment, &ldquo;if you make him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I make him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite in your power. You&rsquo;ve great influence with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel frowned a little. &ldquo;Where did you learn that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you&mdash;never!&rdquo; said Madame Merle, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly never told you anything of the sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>might</i> have done so&mdash;so far as opportunity went&mdash;when
+      we were by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told
+      me very little; I&rsquo;ve often thought so since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But
+      she didn&rsquo;t admit it now&mdash;perhaps because she wished not to appear to
+      exult in it. &ldquo;You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,&rdquo; she
+      simply returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+      Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of
+      course I think you&rsquo;ve done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn&rsquo;t
+      marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to
+      marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the
+      bright expressiveness of Madame Merle&rsquo;s. But in a moment she said,
+      reasonably and gently enough: &ldquo;I should be very glad indeed if, as regards
+      Pansy, it could be arranged.&rdquo; Upon which her companion, who seemed to
+      regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than
+      might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very
+      late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent
+      the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had been
+      sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his
+      books and which he called his study. At ten o&rsquo;clock Lord Warburton had
+      come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at
+      home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Isabel,
+      after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on purpose;
+      she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to read; she
+      even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if she mightn&rsquo;t
+      leave the room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of
+      Pansy&rsquo;s becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at
+      first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm.
+      Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation of
+      inflammable material. When Isabel was unhappy she always looked about her&mdash;partly
+      from impulse and partly by theory&mdash;for some form of positive
+      exertion. She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a
+      state of disease&mdash;of suffering as opposed to doing. To &ldquo;do&rdquo;&mdash;it
+      hardly mattered what&mdash;would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some
+      degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to convince herself that she had done
+      everything possible to content her husband; she was determined not to be
+      haunted by visions of his wife&rsquo;s limpness under appeal. It would please
+      him greatly to see Pansy married to an English nobleman, and justly please
+      him, since this nobleman was so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel
+      that if she could make it her duty to bring about such an event she should
+      play the part of a good wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able
+      to believe sincerely, and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then
+      such an undertaking had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and
+      she desired occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really
+      amuse herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to
+      Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming
+      girl. It was a little &ldquo;weird&rdquo; he should&mdash;being what he was; but there
+      was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one&mdash;any
+      one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small,
+      too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a
+      little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking
+      for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for
+      what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it. No
+      theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or
+      more natural than anything else. If he had cared for <i>her</i> it might
+      seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different; but he had not
+      cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had completely
+      got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair had failed, he should
+      think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say,
+      had not come at first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her feel
+      almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find in
+      the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however,
+      that Edward Rosier had crossed their path!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path lost
+      something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that Pansy
+      thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men&mdash;as sure as if she
+      had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome she
+      should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing
+      herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it
+      into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It
+      was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;
+      the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of the
+      type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It was true
+      that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a statesman;
+      still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and she would make
+      a perfect little pearl of a peeress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden strangely
+      cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this difficulty could
+      probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied in poor Rosier could
+      not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there were always means of
+      levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly aware that she had not
+      taken the measure of Pansy&rsquo;s tenacity, which might prove to be
+      inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her as rather letting go,
+      under suggestion, than as clutching under deprecation&mdash;since she had
+      certainly the faculty of assent developed in a very much higher degree
+      than that of protest. She would cling, yes, she would cling; but it really
+      mattered to her very little what she clung to. Lord Warburton would do as
+      well as Mr. Rosier&mdash;especially as she seemed quite to like him; she
+      had expressed this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; she
+      had said she thought his conversation most interesting&mdash;he had told
+      her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the rightest and
+      easiest&mdash;Isabel noticed that for herself, as she also observed that
+      he talked to her not in the least in a patronising way, reminding himself
+      of her youth and simplicity, but quite as if she understood his subjects
+      with that sufficiency with which she followed those of the fashionable
+      operas. This went far enough for attention to the music and the barytone.
+      He was careful only to be kind&mdash;he was as kind as he had been to
+      another fluttered young chit at Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched
+      by that; she remembered how she herself had been touched, and said to
+      herself that if she had been as simple as Pansy the impression would have
+      been deeper still. She had not been simple when she refused him; that
+      operation had been as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had
+      been. Pansy, however, in spite of <i>her</i> simplicity, really did
+      understand, and was glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about
+      her partners and bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of
+      the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of
+      Roman society. She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her
+      tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave
+      little quiet oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his
+      clothes, as if she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might
+      have reminded her, was better than Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s. But Isabel contented
+      herself at such moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came
+      no more at all to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold
+      it had taken of her&mdash;the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch
+      upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had
+      been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and
+      leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this
+      light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying as
+      much as possible to take her husband&rsquo;s view. She succeeded after a
+      fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all she couldn&rsquo;t
+      rise to it; something held her and made this impossible. It was not
+      exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a general thing
+      practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience, and Isabel was
+      instinctively much more true than false to the common genius of her sex.
+      There was a vague doubt that interposed&mdash;a sense that she was not
+      quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Lord
+      Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give Pansy a full
+      account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered if she had prevented
+      something which would have happened if she had absented herself for a
+      quarter of an hour; and then she pronounced&mdash;always mentally&mdash;that
+      when their distinguished visitor should wish her to go away he would
+      easily find means to let her know it. Pansy said nothing whatever about
+      him after he had gone, and Isabel studiously said nothing, as she had
+      taken a vow of reserve until after he should have declared himself. He was
+      a little longer in coming to this than might seem to accord with the
+      description he had given Isabel of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and
+      Isabel had to admit that she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was
+      thinking of. Her transparent little companion was for the moment not to be
+      seen through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an
+      hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and then sat
+      down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had transferred her
+      eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to Osmond&rsquo;s face, and she
+      watched him while he kept his silence. Covert observation had become a
+      habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say
+      that it was allied to that of self-defence, had made it habitual. She
+      wished as much as possible to know his thoughts, to know what he would
+      say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her answer. Preparing answers
+      had not been her strong point of old; she had rarely in this respect got
+      further than thinking afterwards of clever things she might have said. But
+      she had learned caution&mdash;learned it in a measure from her husband&rsquo;s
+      very countenance. It was the same face she had looked into with eyes
+      equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating, on the terrace of a
+      Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown slightly stouter since his
+      marriage. He still, however, might strike one as very distinguished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Lord Warburton been here?&rdquo; he presently asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he stayed half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he see Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he talk with her much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He talked almost only to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me he&rsquo;s attentive. Isn&rsquo;t that what you call it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call it anything,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve waited for you to give it a
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a consideration you don&rsquo;t always show,&rdquo; Osmond answered after a
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve determined, this time, to try and act as you&rsquo;d like. I&rsquo;ve so often
+      failed of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. &ldquo;Are you trying to quarrel
+      with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m trying to live at peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s more easy; you know I don&rsquo;t quarrel myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you call it when you try to make me angry?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t try; if I&rsquo;ve done so it has been the most natural thing in the
+      world. Moreover I&rsquo;m not in the least trying now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel smiled. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;ve determined never to be angry
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an excellent resolve. Your temper isn&rsquo;t good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;it&rsquo;s not good.&rdquo; She pushed away the book she had been reading
+      and took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s partly why I&rsquo;ve not spoken to you about this business of my
+      daughter&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most
+      frequent with him. &ldquo;I was afraid I should encounter opposition&mdash;that
+      you too would have views on the subject. I&rsquo;ve sent little Rosier about his
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were afraid I&rsquo;d plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven&rsquo;t you noticed that I&rsquo;ve
+      never spoken to you of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never given you a chance. We&rsquo;ve so little conversation in these
+      days. I know he was an old friend of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he&rsquo;s an old friend of mine.&rdquo; Isabel cared little more for him than
+      for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an
+      old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate
+      such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified
+      her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in
+      themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of
+      tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they belonged
+      to her unmarried life. &ldquo;But as regards Pansy,&rdquo; she added in a moment,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given him no encouragement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s fortunate,&rdquo; Osmond observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no use talking of him,&rdquo; Osmond said. &ldquo;As I tell you, I&rsquo;ve turned
+      him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but a lover outside&rsquo;s always a lover. He&rsquo;s sometimes even more of
+      one. Mr. Rosier still has hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit perfectly
+      quiet to become Lady Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like that?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not so
+      affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for Osmond
+      had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her. The
+      intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady Warburton
+      had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But that was for
+      herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should have put it into
+      words; she would not take for granted with him that he thought Lord
+      Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was unusual among the
+      Osmonds. It was Gilbert&rsquo;s constant intimation that for him nothing in life
+      was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal with the most
+      distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter had only to look
+      about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore a lapse from
+      consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord Warburton and that
+      if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might not be found; with
+      which moreover it was another of his customary implications that he was
+      never inconsistent. He would have liked his wife to glide over the point.
+      But strangely enough, now that she was face to face with him and although
+      an hour before she had almost invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel
+      was not accommodating, would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the
+      effect on his mind of her question: it would operate as an humiliation.
+      Never mind; he was terribly capable of humiliating her&mdash;all the more
+      so that he was also capable of waiting for great opportunities and of
+      showing sometimes an almost unaccountable indifference to small ones.
+      Isabel perhaps took a small opportunity because she would not have availed
+      herself of a great one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. &ldquo;I should like it
+      extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has
+      another advantage: he&rsquo;s an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for
+      him to come into the family. It&rsquo;s very odd Pansy&rsquo;s admirers should all be
+      your old friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they
+      see Pansy. Seeing her it&rsquo;s natural they should fall in love with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think. But you&rsquo;re not bound to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,&rdquo; Isabel went on
+      frankly. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only to
+      sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won&rsquo;t sit perfectly still. If she loses
+      Mr. Rosier she may jump up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire. &ldquo;Pansy
+      would like to be a great lady,&rdquo; he remarked in a moment with a certain
+      tenderness of tone. &ldquo;She wishes above all to please,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, to please me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me too a little, I think,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she&rsquo;ll do what I like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re sure of that, it&rsquo;s very well,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime,&rdquo; said Osmond, &ldquo;I should like our distinguished visitor to
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken&mdash;to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to
+      him to believe she could care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, &ldquo;Why
+      didn&rsquo;t you tell me that?&rdquo; he asked sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I&rsquo;ve taken the first
+      chance that has offered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you speak to him of Rosier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was hardly necessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it best he should know, so that, so that&mdash;&rdquo; And Isabel
+      paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that he might act accordingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that he might back out, do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, so that he might advance while there&rsquo;s yet time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the effect it seems to have had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have patience,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You know Englishmen are shy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This one&rsquo;s not. He was not when he made love to <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to
+      her. &ldquo;I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the
+      pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy&rsquo;s tapestry.
+      &ldquo;You must have a great deal of influence with him,&rdquo; Osmond went on at
+      last. &ldquo;The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of his
+      saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said to
+      herself. &ldquo;Why should I have influence?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;What have I ever done
+      to put him under an obligation to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refused to marry him,&rdquo; said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must not presume too much on that,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire with
+      his hands behind him. &ldquo;Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I shall
+      leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think that over
+      and remember how much I count on you.&rdquo; He waited a little, to give her
+      time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before
+      her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them
+      that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust
+      herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and
+      closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still
+      further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation. A
+      servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh
+      candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had
+      said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion from
+      another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton&mdash;this had
+      given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it true
+      that there was something still between them that might be a handle to make
+      him declare himself to Pansy&mdash;a susceptibility, on his part, to
+      approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not
+      asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now that
+      it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer
+      frightened her. Yes, there was something&mdash;something on Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link
+      that united them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had
+      been reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a
+      hair, but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For
+      herself nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always
+      thought; it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in
+      fact a better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she
+      might be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the
+      memory of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?
+      Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But what
+      were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they mingled
+      with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was he in love
+      with Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s wife, and if so what comfort did he expect to derive
+      from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in love with her
+      stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother he was not in love
+      with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed in order to
+      make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would do so for her sake and
+      not for the small creature&rsquo;s own&mdash;was this the service her husband
+      had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty with which she found
+      herself confronted&mdash;from the moment she admitted to herself that her
+      old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was
+      not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She asked herself
+      with dismay whether Lord Warburton were pretending to be in love with
+      Pansy in order to cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called
+      other chances. Of this refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted
+      him; she preferred to believe him in perfect good faith. But if his
+      admiration for Pansy were a delusion this was scarcely better than its
+      being an affectation. Isabel wandered among these ugly possibilities until
+      she had completely lost her way; some of them, as she suddenly encountered
+      them, seemed ugly enough. Then she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her
+      eyes, and declared that her imagination surely did her little honour and
+      that her husband&rsquo;s did him even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested
+      as he need be, and she was no more to him than she need wish. She would
+      rest upon this till the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually
+      than by a cynical intimation of Osmond&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace, for
+      her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of
+      thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set
+      them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange
+      impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband&rsquo;s being in
+      more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That
+      impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it had
+      never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an
+      hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making everything
+      wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It
+      was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact
+      was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption
+      against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were
+      a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in
+      the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the
+      clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between
+      them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either
+      side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition,
+      of the like of which she had never dreamed&mdash;an opposition in which
+      the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It
+      was not her fault&mdash;she had practised no deception; she had only
+      admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the purest
+      confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of a
+      multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end.
+      Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world
+      would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of
+      exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather
+      downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression where
+      the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and
+      where it served to deepen the feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust
+      of her husband&mdash;this was what darkened the world. That is a sentiment
+      easily indicated, but not so easily explained, and so composite in its
+      character that much time and still more suffering had been needed to bring
+      it to its actual perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active
+      condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of
+      thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered
+      herself that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,&mdash;that
+      no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when
+      she thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually&mdash;it was not till the
+      first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had
+      closed that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather;
+      it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+      out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could still
+      see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again it had
+      occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect that were
+      impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from her own mind:
+      she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be just and temperate,
+      to see only the truth. They were a part, they were a kind of creation and
+      consequence, of her husband&rsquo;s very presence. They were not his misdeeds,
+      his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing&mdash;that is but of one thing,
+      which was <i>not</i> a crime. She knew of no wrong he had done; he was not
+      violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated her. That was all
+      she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was
+      not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had
+      discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had
+      believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first he could change
+      her, and she had done her best to be what he would like. But she was,
+      after all, herself&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t help that; and now there was no use
+      pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and had made up his
+      mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension he would hurt
+      her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort. He would if
+      possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the wrong. Isabel,
+      scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he would have the
+      better of her there. She would give him many pretexts, she would often put
+      herself in the wrong. There were times when she almost pitied him; for if
+      she had not deceived him in intention she understood how completely she
+      must have done so in fact. She had effaced herself when he first knew her;
+      she had made herself small, pretending there was less of her than there
+      really was. It was because she had been under the extraordinary charm that
+      he, on his side, had taken pains to put forth. He was not changed; he had
+      not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than
+      she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of
+      the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the
+      full moon now&mdash;she saw the whole man. She had kept still, as it were,
+      so that he should have a free field, and yet in spite of this she had
+      mistaken a part for the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it was
+      there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond
+      delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love to
+      her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he had
+      succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never occurred
+      to her now to deny him that. He admired her&mdash;he had told her why:
+      because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might very
+      well have been true; for during those months she had imagined a world of
+      things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous vision of him,
+      fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred fancy!&mdash;she had not
+      read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in
+      them she had seen the most striking of figures. That he was poor and
+      lonely and yet that somehow he was noble&mdash;that was what had
+      interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There had been an
+      indefinable beauty about him&mdash;in his situation, in his mind, in his
+      face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and ineffectual,
+      but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness which was the very
+      flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager strolling on the beach
+      while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It
+      was in all this she had found her occasion. She would launch his boat for
+      him; she would be his providence; it would be a good thing to love him.
+      And she had loved him, she had so anxiously and yet so ardently given
+      herself&mdash;a good deal for what she found in him, but a good deal also
+      for what she brought him and what might enrich the gift. As she looked
+      back at the passion of those full weeks she perceived in it a kind of
+      maternal strain&mdash;the happiness of a woman who felt that she was a
+      contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her money, as she
+      saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then her mind wandered off
+      to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author
+      of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At bottom her money had
+      been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to
+      transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to some more prepared
+      receptacle. What would lighten her own conscience more effectually than to
+      make it over to the man with the best taste in the world? Unless she
+      should have given it to a hospital there would have been nothing better
+      she could do with it; and there was no charitable institution in which she
+      had been as much interested as in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune
+      in a way that would make her think better of it and rub off a certain
+      grossness attaching to the good luck of an unexpected inheritance. There
+      had been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the
+      delicacy had been all in Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s leaving them to her. But to marry
+      Gilbert Osmond and bring him such a portion&mdash;in that there would be
+      delicacy for her as well. There would be less for him&mdash;that was true;
+      but that was his affair, and if he loved her he wouldn&rsquo;t object to her
+      being rich. Had he not had the courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married on
+      a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with her
+      money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was only half
+      the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of her&mdash;a
+      sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in his personal
+      qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme conviction had
+      filled her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to
+      her that she could not have done otherwise. The finest&mdash;in the sense
+      of being the subtlest&mdash;manly organism she had ever known had become
+      her property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her hands
+      and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion. She had not
+      been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly
+      now. She had lived with it, she had lived <i>in</i> it almost&mdash;it
+      appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been captured it had
+      taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps had some worth. A
+      mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated, more trained to
+      admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was this exquisite
+      instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself in infinite dismay
+      when she thought of the magnitude of <i>his</i> deception. It was a
+      wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn&rsquo;t hate her more. She
+      remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it&mdash;it had been
+      like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their
+      life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she must
+      get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their marriage; but
+      then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only afterwards. This
+      time she might well have noticed it, because he had really meant it. The
+      words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening
+      experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous. He
+      had really meant it&mdash;he would have liked her to have nothing of her
+      own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had too many ideas; she
+      had more even than he had supposed, many more than she had expressed to
+      him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she <i>had</i> been
+      hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas for
+      herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with some
+      one else. One couldn&rsquo;t pluck them up by the roots, though of course one
+      might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been this,
+      however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She had no
+      opinions&mdash;none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in the
+      satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant had been
+      the whole thing&mdash;her character, the way she felt, the way she judged.
+      This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not known
+      until he had found himself&mdash;with the door closed behind, as it were&mdash;set
+      down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at life which
+      he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least it was a very
+      humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that she should not have
+      suspected from the first that his own had been so different. She had
+      thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly that of an honest man
+      and a gentleman. Hadn&rsquo;t he assured her that he had no superstitions, no
+      dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their freshness? Hadn&rsquo;t he
+      all the appearance of a man living in the open air of the world,
+      indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth and knowledge
+      and believing that two intelligent people ought to look for them together
+      and, whether they found them or not, find at least some happiness in the
+      search? He had told her he loved the conventional; but there was a sense
+      in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that sense, that of the love
+      of harmony and order and decency and of all the stately offices of life,
+      she went with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing ominous.
+      But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him further and he
+      had led her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, <i>then</i> she
+      had seen where she really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had
+      taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived
+      ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the
+      house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful
+      mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her.
+      Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there
+      might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her
+      husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was
+      something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity,
+      under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism
+      lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him
+      seriously, but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she&mdash;especially
+      when she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought of
+      himself&mdash;as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had
+      thought of him at first, and that indeed was the reason she had married
+      him. But when she began to see what it implied she drew back; there was
+      more in the bond than she had meant to put her name to. It implied a
+      sovereign contempt for every one but some three or four very exalted
+      people whom he envied, and for everything in the world but half a dozen
+      ideas of his own. That was very well; she would have gone with him even
+      there a long distance; for he pointed out to her so much of the baseness
+      and shabbiness of life, opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the
+      depravity, the ignorance of mankind, that she had been properly impressed
+      with the infinite vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one&rsquo;s
+      self unspotted by it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was
+      after all what one was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one&rsquo;s
+      eye, in order not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract
+      from it some recognition of one&rsquo;s own superiority. On the one hand it was
+      despicable, but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to
+      Isabel about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+      dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to her
+      admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite
+      independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities; she
+      had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,
+      avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her fellow
+      creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing, however,
+      to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of a personal
+      life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her believe it
+      was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and the thing
+      certainly would have been easier than to care for society as Osmond cared
+      for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really
+      done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared to be
+      most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have
+      hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such
+      different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity and
+      propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he deemed
+      himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never lapsed from
+      it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame of doing so.
+      That again was very well; here too she would have agreed; but they
+      attached such different ideas, such different associations and desires, to
+      the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the
+      union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one
+      a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it
+      was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. He was
+      fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted; so was she, but she
+      pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an immense esteem for
+      tradition; he had told her once that the best thing in the world was to
+      have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not to have it one must
+      immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he meant by this that she
+      hadn&rsquo;t it, but that he was better off; though from what source he had
+      derived his traditions she never learned. He had a very large collection
+      of them, however; that was very certain, and after a little she began to
+      see. The great thing was to act in accordance with them; the great thing
+      not only for him but for her. Isabel had an undefined conviction that to
+      serve for another person than their proprietor traditions must be of a
+      thoroughly superior kind; but she nevertheless assented to this intimation
+      that she too must march to the stately music that floated down from
+      unknown periods in her husband&rsquo;s past; she who of old had been so free of
+      step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There
+      were certain things they must do, a certain posture they must take,
+      certain people they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system
+      close about her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense
+      of darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her;
+      she seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of
+      course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the
+      situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had
+      pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for
+      the aspect and denomination of their life&mdash;the cause of other
+      instincts and longings, of quite another ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that her husband&rsquo;s personality, touched as it never had been,
+      stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were answered only
+      by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed of her. What did
+      he think of her&mdash;that she was base, vulgar, ignoble? He at least knew
+      now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his prevision of things
+      that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were worthy of a
+      radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real offence, as she
+      ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind
+      was to be his&mdash;attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a
+      deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the flowers; he would
+      weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece
+      of property for a proprietor already far-reaching. He didn&rsquo;t wish her to
+      be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had
+      pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his
+      favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered
+      himself that it would be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to
+      feel with him and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his
+      preferences; and Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great
+      insolence on the part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at
+      least so tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To
+      begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the
+      Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and
+      even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything
+      of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did all
+      women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their price?
+      Were there only three or four that didn&rsquo;t deceive their husbands? When
+      Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for the
+      gossip of a village parlour&mdash;a scorn that kept its freshness in a
+      very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
+      husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied, and
+      she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was enough to
+      find these facts assumed among Osmond&rsquo;s traditions&mdash;it was enough
+      without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn of his
+      assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He had plenty of
+      contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that
+      she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own conception of
+      things&mdash;this was a danger he had not allowed for. He believed he
+      should have regulated her emotions before she came to it; and Isabel could
+      easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his discovering he had been
+      too confident. When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there was
+      nothing left but to hate her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
+      had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and comfort
+      of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he had had the
+      revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If to herself the
+      idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of
+      infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be
+      expected to have had upon <i>him</i>? It was very simple; he despised her;
+      she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor
+      Isabel, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This was the
+      certitude she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to
+      measure. What was coming&mdash;what was before them? That was her constant
+      question. What would he do&mdash;what ought <i>she</i> to do? When a man
+      hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn&rsquo;t hate him, that she was sure
+      of, for every little while she felt a passionate wish to give him a
+      pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt afraid, and it used to
+      come over her, as I have intimated, that she had deceived him at the very
+      first. They were strangely married, at all events, and it was a horrible
+      life. Until that morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his
+      manner was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a special
+      reason; he was displeased at Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s staying on in Rome. He
+      thought she saw too much of her cousin&mdash;he had told her a week before
+      it was indecent she should go to him at his hotel. He would have said more
+      than this if Ralph&rsquo;s invalid state had not appeared to make it brutal to
+      denounce him; but having had to contain himself had only deepened his
+      disgust. Isabel read all this as she would have read the hour on the
+      clock-face; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in
+      her cousin stirred her husband&rsquo;s rage as if Osmond had locked her into her
+      room&mdash;which she was sure was what he wanted to do. It was her honest
+      belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she certainly couldn&rsquo;t
+      pretend to be indifferent to Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and
+      that she should never see him again, and this gave her a tenderness for
+      him that she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now;
+      how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown
+      away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart&mdash;there
+      was a livid light on everything. But Ralph&rsquo;s little visit was a lamp in
+      the darkness; for the hour that she sat with him her ache for herself
+      became somehow her ache for <i>him</i>. She felt to-day as if he had been
+      her brother. She had never had a brother, but if she had and she were in
+      trouble and he were dying, he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes,
+      if Gilbert was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn&rsquo;t
+      make Gilbert look better to sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not
+      that they talked of him&mdash;it was not that she complained. His name was
+      never uttered between them. It was simply that Ralph was generous and that
+      her husband was not. There was something in Ralph&rsquo;s talk, in his smile, in
+      the mere fact of his being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round
+      which she walked more spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he
+      made her feel what might have been. He was after all as intelligent as
+      Osmond&mdash;quite apart from his being better. And thus it seemed to her
+      an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it
+      elaborately; she was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and
+      before her again&mdash;it lived before her again,&mdash;it had never had
+      time to die&mdash;that morning in the garden at Florence when he had
+      warned her against Osmond. She had only to close her eyes to see the
+      place, to hear his voice, to feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have
+      known? What a mystery, what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert?
+      He was much more intelligent&mdash;to arrive at such a judgement as that.
+      Gilbert had never been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from
+      her at least he should never know if he was right; and this was what she
+      was taking care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion,
+      exaltation, religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange
+      exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin, had
+      an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a kindness
+      perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was, the
+      kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had once
+      wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but that, as
+      she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge and even
+      considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face. Ralph smiled to
+      himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary form of
+      consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She didn&rsquo;t wish
+      him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was the great thing,
+      and it didn&rsquo;t matter that such knowledge would rather have righted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire had
+      gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in a fever.
+      She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but her vigil
+      took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of
+      extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to her there,
+      where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of
+      rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could be
+      a better proof of it than that she should linger there half the night,
+      trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why Pansy shouldn&rsquo;t be
+      married as you would put a letter in the post-office? When the clock
+      struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for the lamp had
+      long since gone out and the candles burned down to their sockets. But even
+      then she stopped again in the middle of the room and stood there gazing at
+      a remembered vision&mdash;that of her husband and Madame Merle
+      unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which Osmond,
+      who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as ready for a
+      dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had not extended to
+      other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on those of love. If she
+      was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a
+      prevision of success. Isabel thought this unlikely; it was much more
+      likely that Pansy had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never
+      had such a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried
+      herself no less attentively than usual and kept no less anxious an eye
+      upon her vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet very tight and counted over
+      the flowers for the twentieth time. She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so
+      long since she had been in a flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly
+      admired, was never in want of partners, and very soon after their arrival
+      she gave Isabel, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had
+      rendered her this service for some minutes when she became aware of the
+      near presence of Edward Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his
+      affable smile and wore a look of almost military resolution. The change in
+      his appearance would have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case
+      to be at bottom a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope
+      than of gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to
+      notify her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet.
+      After he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      all pansies; it must be hers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel smiled kindly. &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s hers; she gave it to me to hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?&rdquo; the poor young man asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t trust you; I&rsquo;m afraid you wouldn&rsquo;t give it back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
+      But may I not at least have a single flower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the bouquet.
+      &ldquo;Choose one yourself. It&rsquo;s frightful what I&rsquo;m doing for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!&rdquo; Rosier exclaimed with his
+      glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put it into your button-hole,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t for the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I wish
+      to show her that I believe in her still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very well to show it to her, but it&rsquo;s out of place to show it to
+      others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is that all <i>you</i> can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.
+      Osmond,&rdquo; said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. &ldquo;You know
+      our acquaintance goes back very far&mdash;quite into the days of our
+      innocent childhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make me out too old,&rdquo; Isabel patiently answered. &ldquo;You come back to
+      that very often, and I&rsquo;ve never denied it. But I must tell you that, old
+      friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry you I
+      should have refused you on the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere
+      Parisian trifler!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I esteem you very much, but I&rsquo;m not in love with you. What I mean by
+      that, of course, is that I&rsquo;m not in love with you for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I see. You pity me&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo; And Edward Rosier looked
+      all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to
+      him that people shouldn&rsquo;t be more pleased; but he was at least too proud
+      to show that the deficiency struck him as general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the
+      dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things, was
+      against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness, after
+      all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more than
+      before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the most
+      affecting thing in the world&mdash;young love struggling with adversity.
+      &ldquo;Would you really be very kind to her?&rdquo; she finally asked in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held in
+      his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. &ldquo;You pity me; but don&rsquo;t
+      you pity <i>her</i> a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;m not sure. She&rsquo;ll always enjoy life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will depend on what you call life!&rdquo; Mr. Rosier effectively said. &ldquo;She
+      won&rsquo;t enjoy being tortured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be nothing of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it. She knows what she&rsquo;s about. You&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she does, and she&rsquo;ll never disobey her father. But she&rsquo;s coming
+      back to me,&rdquo; Isabel added, &ldquo;and I must beg you to go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her
+      cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he
+      walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved this
+      sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh and
+      cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her bouquet.
+      Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers; whereupon she
+      said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at play than she
+      had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she said nothing to
+      Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after he had made his
+      bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare misfortune of having
+      already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however, she had discovered her
+      lover to have abstracted a flower; though this knowledge was not needed to
+      account for the dutiful grace with which she responded to the appeal of
+      her next partner. That perfect amenity under acute constraint was part of
+      a larger system. She was again led forth by a flushed young man, this time
+      carrying her bouquet; and she had not been absent many minutes when Isabel
+      saw Lord Warburton advancing through the crowd. He presently drew near and
+      bade her good-evening; she had not seen him since the day before. He
+      looked about him, and then &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the little maid?&rdquo; he asked. It was in
+      this manner that he had formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss
+      Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s dancing,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see her somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy&rsquo;s eye. &ldquo;She sees me,
+      but she won&rsquo;t notice me,&rdquo; he then remarked. &ldquo;Are you not dancing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see, I&rsquo;m a wall-flower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you dance with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I&rsquo;d rather you should dance with the little maid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One needn&rsquo;t prevent the other&mdash;especially as she&rsquo;s engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She
+      dances very hard, and you&rsquo;ll be the fresher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She dances beautifully,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton, following her with his
+      eyes. &ldquo;Ah, at last,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;she has given me a smile.&rdquo; He stood there
+      with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel observed him
+      it came over her, as it had done before, that it was strange a man of his
+      mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It struck her as a great
+      incongruity; neither Pansy&rsquo;s small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his
+      good-nature, not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and
+      constant, were sufficient to account for it. &ldquo;I should like to dance with
+      you,&rdquo; he went on in a moment, turning back to Isabel; &ldquo;but I think I like
+      even better to talk with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s better, and it&rsquo;s more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen
+      oughtn&rsquo;t to waltz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s different. If you danced with her it would look simply like a
+      piece of kindness&mdash;as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you
+      dance with me you&rsquo;ll look as if you were doing it for your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray haven&rsquo;t I a right to amuse myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The British Empire be hanged! You&rsquo;re always laughing at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amuse yourself with talking to me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s really a recreation. You&rsquo;re too pointed; I&rsquo;ve always to
+      be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous
+      to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave my place. Pansy must find me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a little. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re wonderfully good to her,&rdquo; he said
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared a little and smiled. &ldquo;Can you imagine one&rsquo;s not being?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a
+      great deal for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve taken her out with me,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling still. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve seen
+      that she has proper clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You&rsquo;ve talked to her,
+      advised her, helped her to develop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, if she isn&rsquo;t the rose she has lived near it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain
+      visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete hilarity.
+      &ldquo;We all try to live as near it as we can,&rdquo; he said after a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she
+      welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she
+      thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there
+      was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case
+      of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She
+      felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in
+      his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of
+      nature. Yet for all that it didn&rsquo;t suit her that he should be too near
+      her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was
+      afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn&rsquo;t. She
+      felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to
+      flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with
+      another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the
+      first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were too
+      many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which were
+      fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent that the
+      resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself to Pansy&rsquo;s
+      desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she
+      smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her attention, her
+      sympathy were immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to
+      a sentiment with which they were in no way connected&mdash;a lively
+      conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make love to
+      her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others as well; it was
+      the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought about while
+      she pinned up Pansy&rsquo;s dress. If it were so, as she feared, he was of
+      course unwitting; he himself had not taken account of his intention. But
+      this made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none less
+      impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with things
+      the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy&mdash;on whom it was
+      certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion.
+      Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspiration; he
+      had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as
+      usual, wandered up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to
+      her for exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright
+      was not of the painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary,
+      she looked as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them
+      together a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with
+      whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for which she
+      knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a
+      little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond&rsquo;s view of
+      his daughter&rsquo;s complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and
+      momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had
+      her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy&rsquo;s
+      extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But
+      Osmond had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter&rsquo;s
+      duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and
+      contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think she
+      obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her
+      doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her
+      again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound his
+      thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. &ldquo;She has promised to
+      dance with me later,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that. I suppose you&rsquo;ve engaged her for the cotillion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this he looked a little awkward. &ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t ask her for that. It&rsquo;s a
+      quadrille.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re not clever!&rdquo; said Isabel almost angrily. &ldquo;I told her to keep
+      the cotillion in case you should ask for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little maid, fancy that!&rdquo; And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. &ldquo;Of
+      course I will if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her
+      book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there
+      looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined
+      to ask him to remove them. She didn&rsquo;t do so, however; she only said to
+      him, after a minute, with her own raised: &ldquo;Please let me understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me ten days ago that you&rsquo;d like to marry my stepdaughter. You&rsquo;ve
+      not forgotten it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;he didn&rsquo;t mention to me that he had heard from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton stammered a little. &ldquo;I&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t send my letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you forgot <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t satisfied with it. It&rsquo;s an awkward sort of letter to write,
+      you know. But I shall send it to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At three o&rsquo;clock in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean later, in the course of the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. You still wish then to marry her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you afraid that you&rsquo;ll bore her?&rdquo; And as her companion stared at
+      this enquiry Isabel added: &ldquo;If she can&rsquo;t dance with you for half an hour
+      how will she be able to dance with you for life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton readily, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let her dance with other people!
+      About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you&mdash;that you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I would do it with you? I told you I&rsquo;d do nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly; so that while it&rsquo;s going on I might find some quiet corner where
+      we may sit down and talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Isabel gravely, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re much too considerate of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself, thinking,
+      in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions. Isabel
+      recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that he would
+      dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite of the
+      remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the ground
+      that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an
+      exception in Lord Warburton&rsquo;s favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all I don&rsquo;t care to dance,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a barbarous amusement:
+      I&rsquo;d much rather talk.&rdquo; And he intimated that he had discovered exactly the
+      corner he had been looking for&mdash;a quiet nook in one of the smaller
+      rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere with
+      conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished
+      to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though she
+      knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his daughter. It was
+      with his daughter&rsquo;s <i>pretendant</i>, however; that would make it right
+      for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon Edward Rosier,
+      who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance in
+      the attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped a moment and
+      asked him if he were not dancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, if I can&rsquo;t dance with <i>her</i>!&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better go away then,&rdquo; said Isabel with the manner of good
+      counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not go till she does!&rdquo; And he let Lord Warburton pass without
+      giving him a look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked
+      Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the young man I&rsquo;ve told you about, who&rsquo;s in love with Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has reason. My husband won&rsquo;t listen to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with him?&rdquo; Lord Warburton enquired. &ldquo;He seems very
+      harmless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t money enough, and he isn&rsquo;t very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account
+      of Edward Rosier. &ldquo;Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he is, but my husband&rsquo;s very particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see.&rdquo; And Lord Warburton paused a moment. &ldquo;How much money has he
+      got?&rdquo; he then ventured to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some forty thousand francs a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that&rsquo;s very good, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I&rsquo;ve noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an
+      idiot, the young man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An idiot? Not in the least; he&rsquo;s charming. When he was twelve years old I
+      myself was in love with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t look much more than twelve to-day,&rdquo; Lord Warburton rejoined
+      vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think we
+      might sit here?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever you please.&rdquo; The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a
+      subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our
+      friends came in. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr.
+      Rosier,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered
+      what ailed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a just man,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve a kind thought even for a
+      rival.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. &ldquo;A rival! Do you call him my
+      rival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely&mdash;if you both wish to marry the same person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but since he has no chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It
+      shows imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like me for it?&rdquo; And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain
+      eye. &ldquo;I think you mean you&rsquo;re laughing at me for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh
+      at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you
+      suppose one could do for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since I have been praising your imagination I&rsquo;ll leave you to imagine
+      that yourself,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;Pansy too would like you for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. &ldquo;Well then, I don&rsquo;t
+      understand you. You don&rsquo;t mean that she cares for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quick blush sprang to his brow. &ldquo;You told me she would have no wish
+      apart from her father&rsquo;s, and as I&rsquo;ve gathered that he would favour me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       He paused a little and then suggested &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo; through his blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it
+      would probably take her very far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That seems to me a very proper feeling,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; it&rsquo;s a very proper feeling.&rdquo; Isabel remained silent for some
+      moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them
+      with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she
+      said: &ldquo;But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man
+      would wish to be indebted for a wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; if the wife&rsquo;s a good one and he thinks she does well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course you must think that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do; I can&rsquo;t help it. You call that very British, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I
+      don&rsquo;t know who should know it better than you. But you&rsquo;re not in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head. &ldquo;You like to think you are while you sit here with
+      me. But that&rsquo;s not how you strike me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
+      it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
+      Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree with you. I&rsquo;m delighted to have good reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn&rsquo;t care a straw
+      for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, really in love&mdash;really in love!&rdquo; Lord Warburton exclaimed,
+      folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little.
+      &ldquo;You must remember that I&rsquo;m forty-two years old. I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m as I
+      once was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;re sure,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him.
+      Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his
+      friend. &ldquo;Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?&rdquo; She met his eyes, and
+      for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be
+      satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression
+      the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account&mdash;that she
+      was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as
+      it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he
+      suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an
+      implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a
+      betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper
+      meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she said, smiling, &ldquo;you may do, so far as I&rsquo;m
+      concerned, whatever comes into your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
+      within her companion&rsquo;s view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
+      gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had
+      been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
+      regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away&mdash;all
+      the more as Lord Warburton didn&rsquo;t follow her. She was glad of this,
+      however, and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
+      when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
+      planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. &ldquo;You did right
+      not to go away. I&rsquo;ve some comfort for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need it,&rdquo; the young man softly wailed, &ldquo;when I see you so awfully thick
+      with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of him; I&rsquo;ll do what I can for you. I&rsquo;m afraid it won&rsquo;t be
+      much, but what I can I&rsquo;ll do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. &ldquo;What has suddenly brought you
+      round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!&rdquo; she answered,
+      smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy,
+      and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing
+      guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached Lord
+      Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle.
+      He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and
+      she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then
+      Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured
+      gently: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to send your letter to her father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored&mdash;bored, in her own
+      phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
+      struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
+      unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
+      where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
+      talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
+      obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won
+      from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence,
+      was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in
+      other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull
+      Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay
+      frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more
+      explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon
+      Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not an
+      habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed
+      to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were
+      other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all.
+      She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or rather not
+      all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much more to say
+      about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and
+      wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter&rsquo;s. They are reasons,
+      however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the
+      declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence
+      was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently
+      needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was
+      convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you
+      met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At Florence there were no
+      celebrities; none at least that one had heard of. Since her brother&rsquo;s
+      marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure his wife
+      had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as
+      Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome&mdash;not to
+      the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and
+      museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the
+      rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly
+      that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for
+      herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of
+      Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of
+      her brother&rsquo;s marriage, but she had not been encouraged to renew this
+      satisfaction. Osmond didn&rsquo;t want her&mdash;that she was perfectly aware
+      of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn&rsquo;t care
+      two straws about Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn&rsquo;t let her, and the
+      money question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the
+      Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been
+      blinded by envy to Isabel&rsquo;s personal merits. She had always observed that
+      she got on better with clever women than with silly ones like herself; the
+      silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones&mdash;the
+      really clever ones&mdash;always understood her silliness. It appeared to
+      her that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel
+      and she had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their
+      feet upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should
+      both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,
+      with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was
+      constantly expecting that Isabel would &ldquo;look down&rdquo; on her, and she as
+      constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would
+      begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared
+      much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law
+      regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor
+      Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as soon
+      have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a
+      grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband&rsquo;s sister, however; she
+      was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her
+      very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she was
+      like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably pink
+      lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle was
+      apparently the Countess&rsquo;s spiritual principle, a little loose nut that
+      tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous
+      for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there was no
+      question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not
+      scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species&mdash;a
+      fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another
+      time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it
+      all away&mdash;in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The fact of
+      not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Countess&rsquo;s
+      going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to
+      deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo
+      Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote to his
+      sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she found
+      in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it I am unable to say; but
+      she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for
+      one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother had
+      found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so
+      sorry as to have had serious thoughts&mdash;if any of the Countess&rsquo;s
+      thoughts were serious&mdash;of putting her on her guard. But she had let
+      that pass, and after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as
+      ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very
+      exact at measurements, but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw
+      herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to
+      learn now was whether Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her
+      immense pleasure to see Osmond overtopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the
+      card of a visitor&mdash;a card with the simple superscription &ldquo;Henrietta
+      C. Stackpole.&rdquo; The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she
+      didn&rsquo;t remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant then
+      remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the Countess
+      should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on seeing
+      her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded
+      herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s; the only
+      woman of letters she had ever encountered&mdash;that is the only modern
+      one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognised Miss
+      Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly
+      unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly good-natured, thought it
+      rather fine to be called on by a person of that sort of distinction. She
+      wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account of her mother&mdash;whether
+      she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like
+      Isabel&rsquo;s friend; the Countess could see at a glance that this lady was
+      much more contemporary; and she received an impression of the improvements
+      that were taking place&mdash;chiefly in distant countries&mdash;in the
+      character (the professional character) of literary ladies. Her mother had
+      been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown over a pair of shoulders timorously
+      bared of their tight black velvet (oh the old clothes!) and a gold
+      laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of glossy ringlets. She had spoken
+      softly and vaguely, with the accent of her &ldquo;Creole&rdquo; ancestors, as she
+      always confessed; she sighed a great deal and was not at all enterprising.
+      But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was always closely buttoned and
+      compactly braided; there was something brisk and business-like in her
+      appearance; her manner was almost conscientiously familiar. It was as
+      impossible to imagine her ever vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter
+      posted without its address. The Countess could not but feel that the
+      correspondent of the <i>Interviewer</i> was much more in the movement than
+      the American Corinne. She explained that she had called on the Countess
+      because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that when she
+      visited a foreign city she liked to see something more than superficial
+      travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett, but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and
+      even if she had been in Florence Henrietta would not have put herself out
+      for her, since Mrs. Touchett was not one of her admirations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean by that that I am?&rdquo; the Countess graciously asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I like you better than I do her,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I seem to
+      remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don&rsquo;t
+      know whether it was an accident or whether it&rsquo;s your usual style. At any
+      rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it
+      afterwards in print.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; &ldquo;I had no idea I
+      ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was about the position of woman in this city,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole
+      remarked. &ldquo;You threw a good deal of light upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The position of woman&rsquo;s very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And
+      you wrote it down and published it?&rdquo; the Countess went on. &ldquo;Ah, do let me
+      see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write to them to send you the paper if you like,&rdquo; Henrietta said. &ldquo;I
+      didn&rsquo;t mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I
+      quoted your views.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped hands.
+      &ldquo;Do you know I&rsquo;m rather sorry you didn&rsquo;t mention my name? I should have
+      rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my views were; I
+      have so many! But I&rsquo;m not ashamed of them. I&rsquo;m not at all like my brother&mdash;I
+      suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of scandal to be put in
+      the papers; if you were to quote him he&rsquo;d never forgive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t be afraid; I shall never refer to him,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole
+      with bland dryness. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s another reason,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;why I wanted to
+      come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel&rsquo;s. I was trying to think what I knew
+      about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite willing to be known by that,&rdquo; Henrietta declared. &ldquo;But that
+      isn&rsquo;t what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my
+      relations with Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t permit it,&rdquo; said the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to talk about. I&rsquo;m going to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I!&rdquo; the Countess cried. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I&rsquo;ll mention you
+      by name as my companion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside her
+      visitor. &ldquo;Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won&rsquo;t like it, but he
+      need never see it. Besides, he doesn&rsquo;t know how to read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta&rsquo;s large eyes became immense. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t know how to read? May I
+      put that into my letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into your letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the <i>Interviewer</i>. That&rsquo;s my paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
+      &ldquo;She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered that
+      she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess listened with extreme interest. &ldquo;The reason&rsquo;s Osmond,&rdquo; she
+      pregnantly remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isabel ought to make a stand,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid she has
+      changed a great deal. I told her she would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn&rsquo;t my
+      brother like you?&rdquo; the Countess ingenuously added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know and I don&rsquo;t care. He&rsquo;s perfectly welcome not to like me; I
+      don&rsquo;t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
+      people did. A journalist can&rsquo;t hope to do much good unless he gets a good
+      deal hated; that&rsquo;s the way he knows how his work goes on. And it&rsquo;s just
+      the same for a lady. But I didn&rsquo;t expect it of Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that she hates you?&rdquo; the Countess enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I want to see. That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m going to Rome for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what a tiresome errand!&rdquo; the Countess exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t write to me in the same way; it&rsquo;s easy to see there&rsquo;s a
+      difference. If you know anything,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole went on, &ldquo;I should like
+      to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. &ldquo;I know
+      very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn&rsquo;t like me any
+      better than he appears to like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet you&rsquo;re not a lady correspondent,&rdquo; said Henrietta pensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they&rsquo;ve invited me&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      to stay in the house!&rdquo; And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
+      exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s
+      disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have gone if
+      she <i>had</i> asked me. That is I think I shouldn&rsquo;t; and I&rsquo;m glad I
+      hadn&rsquo;t to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn&rsquo;t have been
+      happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that&rsquo;s not
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome&rsquo;s very good just now,&rdquo; said the Countess; &ldquo;there are all sorts of
+      brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?&rdquo;
+       Henrietta enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know him, but I&rsquo;m told he&rsquo;s extremely grand seigneur. He&rsquo;s making
+      love to Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Making love to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m told; I don&rsquo;t know the details,&rdquo; said the Countess lightly. &ldquo;But
+      Isabel&rsquo;s pretty safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said nothing.
+      &ldquo;When do you go to Rome?&rdquo; she enquired abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for a week, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to-morrow,&rdquo; Henrietta said. &ldquo;I think I had better not wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, I&rsquo;m sorry; I&rsquo;m having some dresses made. I&rsquo;m told Isabel
+      receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you at your
+      pension.&rdquo; Henrietta sat still&mdash;she was lost in thought; and suddenly
+      the Countess cried: &ldquo;Ah, but if you don&rsquo;t go with me you can&rsquo;t describe
+      our journey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking of
+      something else and presently expressed it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that I understand
+      you about Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand me? I mean he&rsquo;s very nice, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?&rdquo; Henrietta
+      enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s certain
+      all the nice men do it. Get married and you&rsquo;ll see!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That idea would be enough to prevent me,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I should
+      want my own husband; I shouldn&rsquo;t want any one else&rsquo;s. Do you mean that
+      Isabel&rsquo;s guilty&mdash;guilty&mdash;?&rdquo; And she paused a little, choosing
+      her expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I mean she&rsquo;s guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that
+      Osmond&rsquo;s very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great deal
+      at the house. I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;re scandalised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m just anxious,&rdquo; Henrietta said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more
+      confidence. I&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; the Countess added quickly: &ldquo;if it will be a
+      comfort to you I engage to draw him off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her
+      gaze. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me,&rdquo; she said after a while. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the
+      idea you seem to suppose. I&rsquo;m not afraid for Isabel&mdash;in that way. I&rsquo;m
+      only afraid she&rsquo;s unhappy&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I want to get at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and
+      sarcastic. &ldquo;That may very well be; for my part I should like to know
+      whether Osmond is.&rdquo; Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she&rsquo;s really changed that must be at the bottom of it,&rdquo; Henrietta went
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see; she&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; said the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she may <i>not</i> tell me&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if Osmond isn&rsquo;t amusing himself&mdash;in his own old way&mdash;I
+      flatter myself I shall discover it,&rdquo; the Countess rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care for that,&rdquo; said Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do immensely! If Isabel&rsquo;s unhappy I&rsquo;m very sorry for her, but I can&rsquo;t
+      help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I can&rsquo;t
+      tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and marry him
+      for? If she had listened to me she&rsquo;d have got rid of him. I&rsquo;ll forgive
+      her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she has simply
+      allowed him to trample upon her I don&rsquo;t know that I shall even pity her.
+      But I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s very likely. I count upon finding that if she&rsquo;s
+      miserable she has at least made <i>him</i> so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+      expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond
+      unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of
+      fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose
+      mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a
+      capacity for coarseness even there. &ldquo;It will be better if they love each
+      other,&rdquo; she said for edification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t. He can&rsquo;t love any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for Isabel.
+      I shall positively start to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isabel certainly has devotees,&rdquo; said the Countess, smiling very vividly.
+      &ldquo;I declare I don&rsquo;t pity her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be I can&rsquo;t assist her,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were well
+      not to have illusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have wanted to, at any rate; that&rsquo;s something. I believe that&rsquo;s
+      what you came from America for,&rdquo; the Countess suddenly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I wanted to look after her,&rdquo; Henrietta said serenely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an
+      eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come. &ldquo;Ah,
+      that&rsquo;s very pretty <i>c&rsquo;est bien gentil</i>! Isn&rsquo;t it what they call
+      friendship?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what they call it. I thought I had better come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very happy&mdash;she&rsquo;s very fortunate,&rdquo; the Countess went on. &ldquo;She
+      has others besides.&rdquo; And then she broke out passionately. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s more
+      fortunate than I! I&rsquo;m as unhappy as she&mdash;I&rsquo;ve a very bad husband;
+      he&rsquo;s a great deal worse than Osmond. And I&rsquo;ve no friends. I thought I had,
+      but they&rsquo;re gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you&rsquo;ve done
+      for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She gazed
+      at her companion a moment, and then: &ldquo;Look here, Countess, I&rsquo;ll do
+      anything for you that you like. I&rsquo;ll wait over and travel with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: &ldquo;only
+      describe me in the newspaper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her understand
+      that she could give no fictitious representation of her journey to Rome.
+      Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On quitting her she took
+      the way to the Lung&rsquo; Arno, the sunny quay beside the yellow river where
+      the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had
+      learned her way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very
+      quick in such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great decision
+      of step out of the little square which forms the approach to the bridge of
+      the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and
+      stopped in front of one of the hotels which overlook that delightful
+      structure. Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card
+      and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our
+      privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the
+      brief query: &ldquo;Could I see you this evening for a few moments on a very
+      important matter?&rdquo; Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for
+      Rome. Armed with this little document she approached the porter, who now
+      had taken up his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at
+      home. The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out
+      about twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and
+      begged it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued
+      her course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through
+      which she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of
+      paintings. Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads
+      to the upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated
+      with antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented
+      an empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble
+      floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but
+      scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of
+      artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had
+      after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the
+      little Correggio of the Tribune&mdash;the Virgin kneeling down before the
+      sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands to
+      him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special
+      devotion to this intimate scene&mdash;she thought it the most beautiful
+      picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she
+      was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that
+      they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite
+      work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it involved
+      a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn into the
+      Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a little
+      exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just been at your hotel,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I left a card for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very much honoured,&rdquo; Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not to honour you I did it; I&rsquo;ve called on you before and I know
+      you don&rsquo;t like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. &ldquo;I shall be very glad to
+      hear what you wish to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t like to talk with me,&rdquo; said Henrietta. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t care for
+      that; I don&rsquo;t talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come
+      and see me; but since I&rsquo;ve met you here this will do as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just going away,&rdquo; Goodwood stated; &ldquo;but of course I&rsquo;ll stop.&rdquo; He
+      was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was so
+      much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on any terms.
+      She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I want to. I&rsquo;ve been here an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you&rsquo;ve seen my Correggio,&rdquo; said Henrietta. &ldquo;I came up on
+      purpose to have a look at it.&rdquo; She went into the Tribune and he slowly
+      accompanied her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I&rsquo;ve seen it, but I didn&rsquo;t know it was yours. I don&rsquo;t remember
+      pictures&mdash;especially that sort.&rdquo; She had pointed out her favourite
+      work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s about something less harmonious!&rdquo; They had the
+      small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves;
+      there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus. &ldquo;I want you to
+      do me a favour,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at the
+      sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man than our
+      earlier friend. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s something I shan&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; he said rather
+      loudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;ll like it. If you did it would be no favour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let&rsquo;s hear it,&rdquo; he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious of
+      his patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say there&rsquo;s no particular reason why you should do me a favour.
+      Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you&rsquo;d let me I&rsquo;d gladly do you
+      one.&rdquo; Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had
+      an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a hard
+      surface, couldn&rsquo;t help being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely
+      showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked
+      away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly; he
+      seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued therefore
+      disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. &ldquo;I may say now, indeed&mdash;it
+      seems a good time&mdash;that if I&rsquo;ve ever annoyed you (and I think
+      sometimes I have) it&rsquo;s because I knew I was willing to suffer annoyance
+      for you. I&rsquo;ve troubled you&mdash;doubtless. But I&rsquo;d <i>take</i> trouble
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood hesitated. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re taking trouble now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am&mdash;some. I want you to consider whether it&rsquo;s better on the
+      whole that you should go to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were going to say that!&rdquo; he answered rather artlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>have</i> considered it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I have, very carefully. I&rsquo;ve looked all round it. Otherwise I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t have come so far as this. That&rsquo;s what I stayed in Paris two
+      months for. I was thinking it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you
+      were so much attracted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best for whom, do you mean?&rdquo; Goodwood demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it won&rsquo;t do <i>her</i> any good! I don&rsquo;t flatter myself that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it do her some harm?&mdash;that&rsquo;s the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what it will matter to her. I&rsquo;m nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But
+      if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that&rsquo;s why you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How will it help you?&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I want to know,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I can&rsquo;t tell you. It&rsquo;s just what I was thinking about in
+      Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will make you more discontented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say &lsquo;more&rsquo; so?&rdquo; Goodwood asked rather sternly. &ldquo;How do you
+      know I&rsquo;m discontented?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta, hesitating a little, &ldquo;you seem never to have cared
+      for another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know what I care for?&rdquo; he cried with a big blush. &ldquo;Just now I
+      care to go to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she observed at last, &ldquo;I only wanted to tell you what I think; I
+      had it on my mind. Of course you think it&rsquo;s none of my business. But
+      nothing is any one&rsquo;s business, on that principle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you; I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you for your interest,&rdquo;
+       said Caspar Goodwood. &ldquo;I shall go to Rome and I shan&rsquo;t hurt Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?&mdash;that&rsquo;s the real
+      issue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she in need of help?&rdquo; he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most women always are,&rdquo; said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness
+      and generalising less hopefully than usual. &ldquo;If you go to Rome,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll be a true friend&mdash;not a selfish one!&rdquo; And she
+      turned off and began to look at the pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round
+      the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard something
+      about her here,&rdquo; he then resumed. &ldquo;I should like to know what you&rsquo;ve
+      heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion
+      there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking
+      some minutes, to make no superficial exception. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve heard,&rdquo; she
+      answered; &ldquo;but as I don&rsquo;t want you to go to Rome I won&rsquo;t tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as you please. I shall see for myself,&rdquo; he said. Then
+      inconsistently, for him, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard she&rsquo;s unhappy!&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won&rsquo;t see that!&rdquo; Henrietta exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not. When do you start?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss
+      Stackpole&rsquo;s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the
+      same character as Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s, but it had at this moment an equal
+      distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s virtues than a
+      reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,
+      and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.
+      Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things
+      in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he
+      supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was
+      this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Stackpole
+      didn&rsquo;t take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always
+      ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when they met in
+      Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the
+      assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to
+      allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was <i>not</i> always thinking of her; he was
+      perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of
+      men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into
+      the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn&rsquo;t care so much; he even
+      wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave
+      him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections&mdash;which
+      show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour was from Gilbert
+      Osmond&rsquo;s. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go
+      alone, in the night-train. He hated the European railway-carriages, in
+      which one sat for hours in a vise, knee to knee and nose to nose with a
+      foreigner to whom one presently found one&rsquo;s self objecting with all the
+      added vehemence of one&rsquo;s wish to have the window open; and if they were
+      worse at night even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and
+      dream of an American saloon-car. But he couldn&rsquo;t take a night-train when
+      Miss Stackpole was starting in the morning; it struck him that this would
+      be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she
+      had gone unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. It
+      wouldn&rsquo;t do to start the next day. She worried him; she oppressed him; the
+      idea of spending the day in a European railway-carriage with her offered a
+      complication of irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it
+      was his duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions
+      about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave
+      for some moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry
+      but in a tone of extreme distinctness, &ldquo;Of course if you&rsquo;re going
+      to-morrow I&rsquo;ll go too, as I may be of assistance to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!&rdquo; Henrietta returned imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be
+      displeased by the continuance of Ralph&rsquo;s visit to Rome. That knowledge was
+      very present to her as she went to her cousin&rsquo;s hotel the day after she
+      had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and
+      at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the
+      sources of Osmond&rsquo;s opposition. He wished her to have no freedom of mind,
+      and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of freedom. It was
+      just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, that it was a
+      refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that she partook of
+      this refreshment in spite of her husband&rsquo;s aversion to it, that is partook
+      of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken
+      to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was her appointed and
+      inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous
+      blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however;
+      constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and
+      sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her with shame
+      as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had lost sight of
+      this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband&rsquo;s intentions were
+      as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the less, the rapid
+      approach of the day when she should have to take back something she had
+      solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous; she tried
+      to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do nothing to help it by
+      beginning first; he would put that burden upon her to the end. He had not
+      yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph; but she felt sure that
+      unless Ralph should very soon depart this prohibition would come. How
+      could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could
+      perfectly understand her husband&rsquo;s wish for the event; she didn&rsquo;t, to be
+      just, see how he <i>could</i> like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never
+      said a word against him, but Osmond&rsquo;s sore, mute protest was none the less
+      founded. If he should positively interpose, if he should put forth his
+      authority, she would have to decide, and that wouldn&rsquo;t be easy. The
+      prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance;
+      there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture, she found
+      herself wishing Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use
+      that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a
+      feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that
+      almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act&mdash;the
+      single sacred act&mdash;of her life. That appeared to make the whole
+      future hideous. To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any
+      open acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that
+      their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no
+      condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal readjustment.
+      They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was to have been
+      exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there was no
+      conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel went to
+      the Hôtel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure of propriety
+      was in the canon of taste, and there couldn&rsquo;t have been a better proof
+      that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation. Isabel&rsquo;s
+      application of that measure had been particularly free to-day, for in
+      addition to the general truth that she couldn&rsquo;t leave Ralph to die alone
+      she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was Gilbert&rsquo;s
+      business as well as her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. &ldquo;I want you to answer
+      me a question. It&rsquo;s about Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I guess your question,&rdquo; Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out of
+      which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t say I can do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re intimate with him,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve a great deal of observation
+      of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he dissimulate? That&rsquo;s not his nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,&rdquo; said Ralph
+      with an air of private amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a certain extent&mdash;yes. But is he really in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much, I think. I can make that out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+      mystification. &ldquo;You say that as if you were disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s after all no business of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very philosophic,&rdquo; said her cousin. And then in a moment: &ldquo;May I
+      enquire what you&rsquo;re talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared. &ldquo;I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants, of
+      all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I&rsquo;ve told you that before,
+      without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I
+      think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, for Pansy, no!&rdquo; cried Ralph very positively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said just now he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph waited a moment. &ldquo;That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head gravely. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s nonsense, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton&rsquo;s, not mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be very tiresome.&rdquo; She spoke, as she flattered herself, with
+      much subtlety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you indeed,&rdquo; Ralph went on, &ldquo;that to me he has denied
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you
+      that he&rsquo;s in love with Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken very well of her&mdash;very properly. He has let me know,
+      of course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he really think it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what Warburton really thinks&mdash;!&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves on
+      which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked up, and
+      then, &ldquo;Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!&rdquo; she cried abruptly and
+      passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the words
+      shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of relief, of
+      pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf between them
+      had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a moment: &ldquo;How
+      unhappy you must be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the
+      first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. &ldquo;When I
+      talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense,&rdquo; she said with a quick
+      smile. &ldquo;The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments! The
+      matter&rsquo;s very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can&rsquo;t
+      undertake to see him through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to succeed easily,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but he has not always succeeded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss
+      Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he&rsquo;ll let the
+      matter drop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll do nothing dishonourable,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to
+      leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it&rsquo;s cruel
+      to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cruel to the other person perhaps&mdash;the one she cares for. But
+      Warburton isn&rsquo;t obliged to mind that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, cruel to her,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;She would be very unhappy if she were to
+      allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea seems
+      to amuse you; of course you&rsquo;re not in love with him. He has the merit&mdash;for
+      Pansy&mdash;of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance that Lord
+      Warburton isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;d be very good to her,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a
+      word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with
+      perfect propriety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would your husband like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain
+      satisfaction himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he commissioned you to obtain it?&rdquo; Ralph ventured to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s&mdash;an older
+      friend, that is, than Gilbert&mdash;I should take an interest in his
+      intentions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. &ldquo;Let me understand. Are you pleading
+      his cause?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least. I&rsquo;m very glad he shouldn&rsquo;t become your stepdaughter&rsquo;s
+      husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!&rdquo; said Ralph, smiling.
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven&rsquo;t pushed
+      him enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. &ldquo;He knows me well enough
+      not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention of pushing, I
+      presume. I&rsquo;m not afraid I shall not be able to justify myself!&rdquo; she said
+      lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to
+      Ralph&rsquo;s infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural
+      face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage
+      desire to hear her complain of her husband&mdash;hear her say that she
+      should be held accountable for Lord Warburton&rsquo;s defection. Ralph was
+      certain that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the
+      form that in such an event Osmond&rsquo;s displeasure would take. It could only
+      take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of it&mdash;to
+      let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It little
+      mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+      satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not
+      deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt
+      cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely
+      mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did she
+      seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention? Why
+      did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her? How
+      could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her
+      humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
+      mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+      trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
+      bound to consider. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be decidedly at variance, all the same,&rdquo; he
+      said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
+      understood, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find yourselves thinking very differently,&rdquo; he
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may easily happen, among the most united couples!&rdquo; She took up her
+      parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a
+      matter we can hardly quarrel about, however,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;for almost all
+      the interest is on his side. That&rsquo;s very natural. Pansy&rsquo;s after all his
+      daughter&mdash;not mine.&rdquo; And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn&rsquo;t leave him without his
+      letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
+      opportunity to lose. &ldquo;Do you know what his interest will make him say?&rdquo; he
+      asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly&mdash;not
+      discouragingly&mdash;and he went on. &ldquo;It will make him say that your want
+      of zeal is owing to jealousy.&rdquo; He stopped a moment; her face made him
+      afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To jealousy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To jealousy of his daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed red and threw back her head. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not kind,&rdquo; she said in a
+      voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be frank with me and you&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
+      tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
+      mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to
+      the girl&rsquo;s room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was always
+      in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and
+      the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she
+      was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had blown
+      out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the
+      economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now
+      more careful than ever to observe; so that the room was lighted only by a
+      couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they
+      were numerous, and Pansy&rsquo;s virginal bower was an immense chamber with a
+      dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of
+      it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick
+      deference, to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with
+      her shy sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task&mdash;the only thing was to
+      perform it as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she
+      warned herself against betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking
+      too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But
+      Pansy seemed to have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for
+      after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little
+      nearer to the fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down
+      on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on
+      her stepmother&rsquo;s knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own
+      lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she
+      desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke
+      it. The girl&rsquo;s father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and
+      indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a
+      disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her
+      tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+      Pansy&rsquo;s supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel
+      had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the
+      effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with
+      her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half
+      in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of
+      the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked out for
+      sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When Isabel
+      said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might have been
+      going on in relation to her getting married, but that her silence had not
+      been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire to leave her at
+      liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer, and with a
+      little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she
+      had greatly wished her to speak and that she begged her to advise her now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s difficult for me to advise you,&rdquo; Isabel returned. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how
+      I can undertake that. That&rsquo;s for your father; you must get his advice and,
+      above all, you must act on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. &ldquo;I think I
+      should like your advice better than papa&rsquo;s,&rdquo; she presently remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not as it should be,&rdquo; said Isabel coldly. &ldquo;I love you very much,
+      but your father loves you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t because you love me&mdash;it&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;re a lady,&rdquo; Pansy
+      answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. &ldquo;A lady can
+      advise a young girl better than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father&rsquo;s wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said the child eagerly, &ldquo;I must do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I speak to you now about your getting married it&rsquo;s not for your
+      own sake, it&rsquo;s for mine,&rdquo; Isabel went on. &ldquo;If I try to learn from you what
+      you expect, what you desire, it&rsquo;s only that I may act accordingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stared, and then very quickly, &ldquo;Will you do everything I want?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before I say yes I must know what such things are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to
+      marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so if
+      her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn&rsquo;t allow it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, it&rsquo;s impossible,&rdquo; Isabel pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s impossible,&rdquo; said Pansy without a sigh and with the same
+      extreme attention in her clear little face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must think of something else then,&rdquo; Isabel went on; but Pansy,
+      sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the
+      least success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think of those who think of you,&rdquo; she said with a faint smile. &ldquo;I
+      know Mr. Rosier thinks of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought not to,&rdquo; said Isabel loftily. &ldquo;Your father has expressly
+      requested he shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t help it, because he knows I think of <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t think of him. There&rsquo;s some excuse for him, perhaps; but
+      there&rsquo;s none for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would try to find one,&rdquo; the girl exclaimed as if she were
+      praying to the Madonna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be very sorry to attempt it,&rdquo; said the Madonna with unusual
+      frigidity. &ldquo;If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think
+      of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but I don&rsquo;t admit Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s right!&rdquo; Isabel hypocritically cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking
+      advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of
+      disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that
+      she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And
+      she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might
+      never marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She
+      appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of
+      course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning. She
+      was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This might
+      seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy, evidently, it
+      failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness toward her
+      father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only the sweetness
+      of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite intimation that she
+      could prove it better by remaining single than even by marrying him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father would like you to make a better marriage,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Rosier&rsquo;s fortune is not at all large.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean better&mdash;if that would be good enough? And I have
+      myself so little money; why should I look for a fortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.&rdquo; With which
+      Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face
+      were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was
+      what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy&rsquo;s solemn eyes, fixed on her own,
+      almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light of
+      the girl&rsquo;s preference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should you like me to do?&rdquo; her companion softly demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous
+      vagueness. &ldquo;To remember all the pleasure it&rsquo;s in your power to give your
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To marry some one else, you mean&mdash;if he should ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Isabel&rsquo;s answer caused itself to be waited for; then she
+      heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy&rsquo;s attention seemed to
+      make. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;to marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&rsquo;s eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting
+      her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting up
+      from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands unclasped
+      and then quavered out: &ldquo;Well, I hope no one will ask me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready to
+      ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he can have been ready,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would appear so if he had been sure he&rsquo;d succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he had been sure? Then he wasn&rsquo;t ready!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment
+      looking into the fire. &ldquo;Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,&rdquo; she
+      resumed; &ldquo;of course you know it&rsquo;s of him I speak.&rdquo; She found herself,
+      against her expectation, almost placed in the position of justifying
+      herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more crudely than she
+      had intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean
+      that he&rsquo;ll propose for me I think you&rsquo;re mistaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. &ldquo;Lord Warburton won&rsquo;t
+      propose simply to please papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father would like you to encourage him,&rdquo; Isabel went on
+      mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I encourage him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Your father must tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if she
+      were in possession of a bright assurance. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no danger&mdash;no
+      danger!&rdquo; she declared at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her
+      believing it, which conduced to Isabel&rsquo;s awkwardness. She felt accused of
+      dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect she
+      was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that there
+      was a danger. But she didn&rsquo;t; she only said&mdash;in her embarrassment
+      rather wide of the mark&mdash;that he surely had been most kind, most
+      friendly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he has been very kind,&rdquo; Pansy answered. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I like him
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then is the difficulty so great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always felt sure of his knowing that I don&rsquo;t want&mdash;what did you
+      say I should do?&mdash;to encourage him. He knows I don&rsquo;t want to marry,
+      and he wants me to know that he therefore won&rsquo;t trouble me. That&rsquo;s the
+      meaning of his kindness. It&rsquo;s as if he said to me: &lsquo;I like you very much,
+      but if it doesn&rsquo;t please you I&rsquo;ll never say it again.&rsquo; I think that&rsquo;s very
+      kind, very noble,&rdquo; Pansy went on with deepening positiveness. &ldquo;That is all
+      we&rsquo;ve said to each other. And he doesn&rsquo;t care for me either. Ah no,
+      there&rsquo;s no danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this
+      submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy&rsquo;s wisdom&mdash;began
+      almost to retreat before it. &ldquo;You must tell your father that,&rdquo; she
+      remarked reservedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;d rather not,&rdquo; Pansy unreservedly answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You oughtn&rsquo;t to let him have false hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he
+      believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa
+      won&rsquo;t propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,&rdquo; said
+      the child very lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion
+      draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.
+      Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that she
+      herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock. Nevertheless
+      it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond, that she was on
+      her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the influence of this
+      sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she retired&mdash;a
+      suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have done her
+      utmost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a
+      nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for Isabel
+      to pass. &ldquo;I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!&rdquo; she remarked very gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s drawing-room for several
+      days, and Isabel couldn&rsquo;t fail to observe that her husband said nothing to
+      her about having received a letter from him. She couldn&rsquo;t fail to observe,
+      either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that, though it was
+      not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend
+      kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four days he alluded to his
+      absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a
+      tradesman with a bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about him,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;I saw him last Friday at the
+      German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has never written to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I supposed, from your not having told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an odd fish,&rdquo; said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel&rsquo;s making no
+      rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five days to
+      indite a letter. &ldquo;Does he form his words with such difficulty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Isabel was reduced to replying. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had a letter
+      from him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate
+      correspondence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation
+      drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the
+      afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you say
+      to him?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She just faltered. &ldquo;I think I told him not to forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you believe there was a danger of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you say, he&rsquo;s an odd fish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently he has forgotten it,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;Be so good as to remind
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like me to write to him?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no objection whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expect too much of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I shall disappoint you,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself! If you
+      really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t
+      be easy, with you working against me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of
+      looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of her
+      but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully cruel
+      intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable necessity of
+      thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence. That effect had
+      never been so marked as now. &ldquo;I think you accuse me of something very
+      base,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn&rsquo;t after all come
+      forward it will be because you&rsquo;ve kept him off. I don&rsquo;t know that it&rsquo;s
+      base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I&rsquo;ve no
+      doubt you&rsquo;ve the finest ideas about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you I would do what I could,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that gained you time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him
+      beautiful. &ldquo;How much you must want to make sure of him!&rdquo; she exclaimed in
+      a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her words,
+      of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made a
+      comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had once
+      held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich enough to let
+      it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her&mdash;a horrible
+      delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her that none
+      of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing otherwise,
+      however; he only said quickly: &ldquo;Yes, I want it immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed
+      the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing Osmond.
+      He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress; a movement
+      that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a perception of
+      ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English address, in which a
+      vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element of good-breeding; in
+      which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving transitions. Osmond
+      was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel remarked, promptly
+      enough, that they had been in the act of talking about their visitor. Upon
+      this her husband added that they hadn&rsquo;t known what was become of him&mdash;they
+      had been afraid he had gone away. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he explained, smiling and looking
+      at Osmond; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m only on the point of going.&rdquo; And then he mentioned that he
+      found himself suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow
+      or the day after. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry to leave poor Touchett!&rdquo; he ended by
+      exclaiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back in
+      his chair, listening. Isabel didn&rsquo;t look at him; she could only fancy how
+      he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor&rsquo;s face, where they were the more
+      free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel
+      was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it expressive.
+      &ldquo;You had better take poor Touchett with you,&rdquo; she heard her husband say,
+      lightly enough, in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had better wait for warmer weather,&rdquo; Lord Warburton answered. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t advise him to travel just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see
+      them again&mdash;unless indeed they should come to England, a course he
+      strongly recommended. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they come to England in the autumn?&mdash;that
+      struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such pleasure to do
+      what he could for them&mdash;to have them come and spend a month with him.
+      Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but once; which was an
+      absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and intelligence. It was
+      just the country for him&mdash;he would be sure to get on well there. Then
+      Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what a good time she had had
+      there and if she didn&rsquo;t want to try it again. Didn&rsquo;t she want to see
+      Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really very good. Touchett didn&rsquo;t
+      take proper care of it, but it was the sort of place you could hardly
+      spoil by letting it alone. Why didn&rsquo;t they come and pay Touchett a visit?
+      He surely must have asked them. Hadn&rsquo;t asked them? What an ill-mannered
+      wretch!&mdash;and Lord Warburton promised to give the master of
+      Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a mere accident; he
+      would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with Touchett and a
+      month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the people they must know
+      there, they really wouldn&rsquo;t find it half bad. Lord Warburton added that it
+      would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told him that she had never been
+      to England and whom he had assured it was a country she deserved to see.
+      Of course she didn&rsquo;t need to go to England to be admired&mdash;that was
+      her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense success there, she
+      certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked if she were not at
+      home: couldn&rsquo;t he say good-bye? Not that he liked good-byes&mdash;he
+      always funked them. When he left England the other day he hadn&rsquo;t said
+      good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind to leave Rome
+      without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What could be more
+      dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted&mdash;one
+      remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said
+      a lot of things one shouldn&rsquo;t, simply from a sense that one had to say
+      something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled one&rsquo;s wits. He had it at
+      present, and that was the effect it produced on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn&rsquo;t
+      think he spoke as he ought she must set it down to agitation; it was no
+      light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond. He was really very sorry to be
+      going. He had thought of writing to her instead of calling&mdash;but he
+      would write to her at any rate, to tell her a lot of things that would be
+      sure to occur to him as soon as he had left the house. They must think
+      seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the
+      announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord
+      Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other manner,
+      and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was capable of
+      executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked him quite
+      well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He would do that
+      on any occasion&mdash;not from impudence but simply from the habit of
+      success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband&rsquo;s power to frustrate this
+      faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on in her mind. On
+      one side she listened to their visitor; said what was proper to him; read,
+      more or less, between the lines of what he said himself; and wondered how
+      he would have spoken if he had found her alone. On the other she had a
+      perfect consciousness of Osmond&rsquo;s emotion. She felt almost sorry for him;
+      he was condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of cursing.
+      He had had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish into smoke, he was
+      obliged to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs. Not that he troubled
+      himself to smile very brightly; he treated their friend on the whole to as
+      vacant a countenance as so clever a man could very well wear. It was
+      indeed a part of Osmond&rsquo;s cleverness that he could look consummately
+      uncompromised. His present appearance, however, was not a confession of
+      disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond&rsquo;s habitual system, which
+      was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He
+      had been intent on this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his
+      eagerness to irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible
+      son-in-law as he treated every one&mdash;with an air of being interested
+      in him only for his own advantage, not for any profit to a person already
+      so generally, so perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no
+      sign now of an inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of
+      gain&mdash;not the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if
+      it was any satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a
+      satisfaction; she wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and
+      at the same time she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord
+      Warburton. Osmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor,
+      the advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it
+      was something almost as good&mdash;that of not attempting. As he leaned
+      back in his place, listening but vaguely to the other&rsquo;s friendly offers
+      and suppressed explanations&mdash;as if it were only proper to assume that
+      they were addressed essentially to his wife&mdash;he had at least (since
+      so little else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he
+      personally had kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he
+      was now able to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was
+      something to be able to look as if the leave-taker&rsquo;s movements had no
+      relation to his own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond&rsquo;s
+      performance was in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      position was after all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why
+      he shouldn&rsquo;t leave Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had
+      stopped short of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour
+      was safe. Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal
+      that they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success
+      Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but left
+      Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration. Isabel,
+      even while she made this remark, could see the great vista which had
+      suddenly opened out in her husband&rsquo;s mind, with Pansy&rsquo;s little figure
+      marching up the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither
+      Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of
+      giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if it
+      were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed and
+      stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it was not
+      to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would rather not
+      see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone&mdash;he had something to
+      say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she was afraid it
+      would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense with
+      explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good taste
+      to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish to say
+      just the last word of all to the ladies. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a letter to write before
+      dinner,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you must excuse me. I&rsquo;ll see if my daughter&rsquo;s
+      disengaged, and if she is she shall know you&rsquo;re here. Of course when you
+      come to Rome you&rsquo;ll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you about
+      the English expedition: she decides all those things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little
+      speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole it
+      was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he left the
+      room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s very
+      angry&rdquo;; which would have been extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless,
+      if he had done so, she would have said: &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be anxious. He doesn&rsquo;t
+      hate you: it&rsquo;s me that he hates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend showed
+      a certain vague awkwardness&mdash;sitting down in another chair, handling
+      two or three of the objects that were near him. &ldquo;I hope he&rsquo;ll make Miss
+      Osmond come,&rdquo; he presently remarked. &ldquo;I want very much to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s the last time,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. She doesn&rsquo;t care for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she doesn&rsquo;t care for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wonder at it,&rdquo; he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come to England, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we had better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you owe me a visit. Don&rsquo;t you remember that you were to have come to
+      Lockleigh once, and you never did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything&rsquo;s changed since then,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not changed for the worse, surely&mdash;as far as we&rsquo;re concerned. To see
+      you under my roof&rdquo;&mdash;and he hung fire but an instant&mdash;&ldquo;would be a
+      great satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.
+      They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,
+      already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek. She
+      shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his face with a
+      fixed smile&mdash;a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship probably
+      never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going away,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to bid you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Lord Warburton.&rdquo; Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Lord Warburton,&rdquo; Pansy answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. &ldquo;You ought to be very
+      happy&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got a guardian angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I shall be happy,&rdquo; said Pansy in the tone of a person whose
+      certainties were always cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should
+      ever fail you, remember&mdash;remember&mdash;&rdquo; And her interlocutor
+      stammered a little. &ldquo;Think of me sometimes, you know!&rdquo; he said with a
+      vague laugh. Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her
+      stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you <i>are</i> my guardian angel!&rdquo; she exclaimed very sweetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not an angel of any kind. I&rsquo;m at the most your
+      good friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good friend then&mdash;to have asked papa to be gentle with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve asked your father nothing,&rdquo; said Isabel, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a
+      very kind kiss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;that was quite his own idea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she was
+      to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn&rsquo;t put himself
+      the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after their
+      dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till late in
+      the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him before going
+      to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his usual munificence,
+      and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his daughter had been
+      injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was a partial
+      expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his wife. She
+      was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she would
+      remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the
+      drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand what you wish to do,&rdquo; he said in a moment. &ldquo;I should
+      like to know&mdash;so that I may know how to act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just now I wish to go to bed. I&rsquo;m very tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there&mdash;take a
+      comfortable place.&rdquo; And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were
+      scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,
+      however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair. The
+      fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew her
+      cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re trying to
+      humiliate me,&rdquo; Osmond went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a most absurd undertaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea what you mean,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve played a very deep game; you&rsquo;ve managed it beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that I&rsquo;ve managed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.&rdquo; And he
+      stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
+      her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know
+      that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that Lord Warburton&rsquo;s under an obligation to come back you&rsquo;re
+      wrong,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s under none whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I complain of. But when I say he&rsquo;ll come back I don&rsquo;t
+      mean he&rsquo;ll come from a sense of duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, that&rsquo;s a shallow judgement. Rome&rsquo;s inexhaustible.&rdquo; And Osmond
+      began to walk about again. &ldquo;However, about that perhaps there&rsquo;s no hurry,&rdquo;
+       he added. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather a good idea of his that we should go to England. If
+      it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I think I should try
+      to persuade you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be that you&rsquo;ll not find my cousin,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as possible.
+      At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told me so much
+      about at one time: what do you call it?&mdash;Gardencourt. It must be a
+      charming thing. And then, you know, I&rsquo;ve a devotion to the memory of your
+      uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to see where
+      he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was right. Pansy
+      ought to see England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no doubt she would enjoy it,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s a long time hence; next autumn&rsquo;s far off,&rdquo; Osmond continued;
+      &ldquo;and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you think
+      me so very proud?&rdquo; he suddenly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you very strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not even when you insult me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t insult you; I&rsquo;m incapable of it. I merely speak of certain facts,
+      and if the allusion&rsquo;s an injury to you the fault&rsquo;s not mine. It&rsquo;s surely a
+      fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going back to Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Isabel asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired of
+      his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall hear it again before we&rsquo;ve done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that
+      this ceased to be a pain. He was going down&mdash;down; the vision of such
+      a fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,
+      too different; he didn&rsquo;t touch her. Still, the working of his morbid
+      passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in what
+      light he saw himself justified. &ldquo;I might say to you that I judge you&rsquo;ve
+      nothing to say to me that&rsquo;s worth hearing,&rdquo; she returned in a moment. &ldquo;But
+      I should perhaps be wrong. There&rsquo;s a thing that would be worth my hearing&mdash;to
+      know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of having prevented Pansy&rsquo;s marriage to Warburton. Are those words plain
+      enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when
+      you told me that you counted on me&mdash;that I think was what you said&mdash;I
+      accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me more
+      willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get him out
+      of the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I see what you mean,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the letter you told me he had written me?&rdquo; her husband demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea; I haven&rsquo;t asked him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stopped it on the way,&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered her
+      to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first cousin
+      to that of pity. &ldquo;Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine&mdash;!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed in a long murmur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was never so fine as you. You&rsquo;ve done everything you wanted. You&rsquo;ve got
+      him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you&rsquo;ve placed me in the
+      position in which you wished to see me&mdash;that of a man who has tried
+      to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pansy doesn&rsquo;t care for him. She&rsquo;s very glad he&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has nothing to do with the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he doesn&rsquo;t care for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do; you told me he did. I don&rsquo;t know why you wanted this
+      particular satisfaction,&rdquo; Osmond continued; &ldquo;you might have taken some
+      other. It doesn&rsquo;t seem to me that I&rsquo;ve been presumptuous&mdash;that I have
+      taken too much for granted. I&rsquo;ve been very modest about it, very quiet.
+      The idea didn&rsquo;t originate with me. He began to show that he liked her
+      before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend to
+      such things yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. &ldquo;I thought you were very
+      fond of my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been more so than to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that
+      perhaps is natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this all you wished to say to me?&rdquo; Isabel asked, taking a candle that
+      stood on one of the tables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that on the whole you&rsquo;re disappointed. You&rsquo;ve had another
+      opportunity to try to stupefy me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that. It&rsquo;s proved that Pansy can aim high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little Pansy!&rdquo; said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had
+      come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some
+      importance to Isabel&mdash;the temporary absence, once again, of Madame
+      Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor
+      of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel&rsquo;s
+      happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of women
+      might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at night, she
+      had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her friend&mdash;his
+      friend&mdash;in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to her that
+      she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve. Isabel&rsquo;s
+      imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but every now
+      and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming
+      woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She
+      had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was in
+      Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to her immediately after
+      meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to Isabel, and though he was
+      in Europe she thought it very possible he might not desire to see her.
+      Their last interview, before her marriage, had had quite the character of
+      a complete rupture; if she remembered rightly he had said he wished to
+      take his last look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant
+      survival of her earlier time&mdash;the only one in fact with which a
+      permanent pain was associated. He had left her that morning with a sense
+      of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels
+      in broad daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden current to excuse it,
+      and she herself had only wished to steer wide. He had bumped against her
+      prow, however, while her hand was on the tiller, and&mdash;to complete the
+      metaphor&mdash;had given the lighter vessel a strain which still
+      occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to
+      see him, because he represented the only serious harm that (to her belief)
+      she had ever done in the world: he was the only person with an unsatisfied
+      claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she couldn&rsquo;t help it; and his
+      unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried with rage, after he had left
+      her, at&mdash;she hardly knew what: she tried to think it had been at his
+      want of consideration. He had come to her with his unhappiness when her
+      own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of
+      those pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there had been a
+      violence in the impression. There had been a violence at any rate in
+      something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own fit of weeping and in
+      that after-sense of the same which had lasted three or four days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first
+      year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless
+      subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who
+      was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to
+      relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even
+      a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s;
+      unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising
+      look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to
+      herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to
+      say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s
+      compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a
+      compensation for anything&mdash;least of all for having failed to marry
+      Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had&mdash;save
+      of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never
+      thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended his
+      business&mdash;that, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion
+      could take with him&mdash;it would be because it was an enterprising
+      thing, or good for the business; not in the least because he might hope it
+      would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of bareness and
+      bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory or in
+      apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social drapery
+      commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of human
+      contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never heard
+      from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this
+      impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from time to
+      time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston&mdash;her imagination was all
+      bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had thought
+      of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more than once
+      the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband about him&mdash;never
+      let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a reserve not dictated
+      in the early period by a want of confidence in Osmond, but simply by the
+      consideration that the young man&rsquo;s disappointment was not her secret but
+      his own. It would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to
+      another, and Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s affairs could have, after all, little interest
+      for Gilbert. When it had come to the point she had never written to him;
+      it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least she could do
+      was to let him alone. Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some
+      way nearer to him. It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might
+      have married him; even after the consequences of her actual union had
+      grown vivid to her that particular reflection, though she indulged in so
+      many, had not had the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself
+      in trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with which she
+      wished to set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed
+      to feel that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own
+      fault. She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her
+      peace with the world&mdash;to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came
+      back to her from time to time that there was an account still to be
+      settled with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it
+      to-day on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned
+      he was coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable
+      for him than for any one else to make out&mdash;since he <i>would</i> make
+      it out, as over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort&mdash;the
+      intimate disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he
+      had invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only
+      a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her
+      stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent
+      several days without coming to see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and
+      Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw
+      herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping her
+      conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been superficial&mdash;the
+      more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted
+      those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by persons less
+      interested than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty
+      a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as keen and quick and fresh as ever, and
+      as neat and bright and fair. Her remarkably open eyes, lighted like great
+      glazed railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had lost none
+      of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference. She was
+      by no means quite unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague.
+      Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at
+      once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a
+      reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly,
+      when she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now,
+      having already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn&rsquo;t for a moment
+      pretend that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to
+      do with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of
+      her independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations
+      to it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to come to Europe,&rdquo; she said to Isabel; &ldquo;it doesn&rsquo;t
+      seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at
+      home; this is much more important.&rdquo; It was not therefore with a sense of
+      doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
+      pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected
+      it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing all
+      about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be there. This
+      was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a perfect right to
+      be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after all a better
+      reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend
+      easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the other&rsquo;s fidelity. She
+      had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that
+      Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed
+      so happily as that. Isabel&rsquo;s satisfactions just now were few, but even if
+      they had been more numerous there would still have been something of
+      individual joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought
+      highly of Henrietta. She had made large concessions with regard to her,
+      and had yet insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable. It
+      was not her own triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the
+      relief of confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had
+      owned it, that she was not in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself
+      approached this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused
+      her to her face of being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she
+      was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could
+      speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m wretched,&rdquo; she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say
+      it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he do to you?&rdquo; Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were
+      enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does nothing. But he doesn&rsquo;t like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very hard to please!&rdquo; cried Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you leave
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t change that way,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, I should like to know? You won&rsquo;t confess that you&rsquo;ve made a
+      mistake. You&rsquo;re too proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether I&rsquo;m too proud. But I can&rsquo;t publish my mistake. I
+      don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s decent. I&rsquo;d much rather die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t think so always,&rdquo; said Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me
+      I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one&rsquo;s deeds. I married him
+      before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do
+      anything more deliberate. One can&rsquo;t change that way,&rdquo; Isabel repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>have</i> changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don&rsquo;t
+      mean to say you like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t like him. I can tell you, because I&rsquo;m weary
+      of my secret. But that&rsquo;s enough; I can&rsquo;t announce it on the housetops.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gave a laugh. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think you&rsquo;re rather too considerate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not of him that I&rsquo;m considerate&mdash;it&rsquo;s of myself!&rdquo; Isabel
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in Miss
+      Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a young
+      lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal roof. When
+      she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she would leave
+      her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered that he at least
+      had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta that as Osmond didn&rsquo;t
+      like her she couldn&rsquo;t invite her to dine, but they could easily see each
+      other in other ways. Isabel received Miss Stackpole freely in her own
+      sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to drive, face to face with Pansy,
+      who, bending a little forward, on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed
+      at the celebrated authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta
+      occasionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond
+      had a little look as if she should remember everything one said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      want to be remembered that way,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole declared; &ldquo;I consider that
+      my conversation refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your
+      stepdaughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers
+      and would bring them out some day against me.&rdquo; She could not teach herself
+      to think favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of
+      conversation, of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty,
+      unnatural and even uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have
+      liked her to urge a little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon
+      his receiving her, so that he might appear to suffer for good manners&rsquo; 
+      sake. Her immediate acceptance of his objections put him too much in the
+      wrong&mdash;it being in effect one of the disadvantages of expressing
+      contempt that you cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing
+      sympathy. Osmond held to his credit, and yet he held to his objections&mdash;all
+      of which were elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have
+      been that Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or
+      twice, so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
+      might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the moment,
+      however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was nothing
+      for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself off. It
+      was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife&rsquo;s friends; he
+      took occasion to call Isabel&rsquo;s attention to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make a
+      new collection,&rdquo; he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
+      visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the
+      remark of all brutal abruptness. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as if you had taken the trouble to
+      pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your
+      cousin I have always thought a conceited ass&mdash;besides his being the
+      most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it&rsquo;s insufferably tiresome that one
+      can&rsquo;t tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health
+      seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no
+      one else. If he&rsquo;s so desperately ill there&rsquo;s only one way to prove it; but
+      he seems to have no mind for that. I can&rsquo;t say much more for the great
+      Warburton. When one really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that
+      performance was something rare! He comes and looks at one&rsquo;s daughter as if
+      she were a suite of apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks out of
+      the windows, raps on the walls and almost thinks he&rsquo;ll take the place.
+      Will you be so good as to draw up a lease? Then, on the whole, he decides
+      that the rooms are too small; he doesn&rsquo;t think he could live on a third
+      floor; he must look out for a <i>piano nobile</i>. And he goes away after
+      having got a month&rsquo;s lodging in the poor little apartment for nothing.
+      Miss Stackpole, however, is your most wonderful invention. She strikes me
+      as a kind of monster. One hasn&rsquo;t a nerve in one&rsquo;s body that she doesn&rsquo;t
+      set quivering. You know I never have admitted that she&rsquo;s a woman. Do you
+      know what she reminds me of? Of a new steel pen&mdash;the most odious
+      thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes; aren&rsquo;t her letters, by
+      the way, on ruled paper? She thinks and moves and walks and looks exactly
+      as she talks. You may say that she doesn&rsquo;t hurt me, inasmuch as I don&rsquo;t
+      see her. I don&rsquo;t see her, but I hear her; I hear her all day long. Her
+      voice is in my ears; I can&rsquo;t get rid of it. I know exactly what she says,
+      and every inflexion of the tone in which she says it. She says charming
+      things about me, and they give you great comfort. I don&rsquo;t like at all to
+      think she talks about me&mdash;I feel as I should feel if I knew the
+      footman were wearing my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather
+      less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of which
+      the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let her friend
+      know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that she was unhappy,
+      though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he hoped to
+      give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice
+      in the street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were driving,
+      and he had a habit of looking straight in front of him, as if he proposed
+      to take in but one object at a time. Isabel could have fancied she had
+      seen him the day before; it must have been with just that face and step
+      that he had walked out of Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s door at the close of their last
+      interview. He was dressed just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel
+      remembered the colour of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar
+      look there was a strangeness in his figure too, something that made her
+      feel it afresh to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He
+      looked bigger and more overtopping than of old, and in those days he
+      certainly reached high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed
+      looked back after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a
+      face like a February sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the
+      latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States the
+      year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him
+      considerable attention. She didn&rsquo;t know how much he had enjoyed it, but
+      she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn&rsquo;t the same man
+      when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and shown
+      him that England wasn&rsquo;t everything. He had been very much liked in most
+      places, and thought extremely simple&mdash;more simple than the English
+      were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+      affected; she didn&rsquo;t know whether they meant that his simplicity was an
+      affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all
+      the chambermaids were farmers&rsquo; daughters&mdash;or all the farmers&rsquo; 
+      daughters were chambermaids&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t exactly remember which. He
+      hadn&rsquo;t seemed able to grasp the great school system; it had been really
+      too much for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of
+      everything&mdash;as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had
+      chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed really
+      fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one he had
+      visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest; he wanted to
+      do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled together from New
+      York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting cities on the route;
+      and whenever they started afresh he had wanted to know if they could go by
+      the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of geography&mdash;had an
+      impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was perpetually expecting
+      to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never to have heard of any river
+      in America but the Mississippi and was unprepared to recognise the
+      existence of the Hudson, though obliged to confess at last that it was
+      fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent some pleasant hours in the
+      palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream from the coloured man. He
+      could never get used to that idea&mdash;that you could get ice-cream in
+      the cars. Of course you couldn&rsquo;t, nor fans, nor candy, nor anything in the
+      English cars! He found the heat quite overwhelming, and she had told him
+      she indeed expected it was the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now
+      in England, hunting&mdash;&ldquo;hunting round&rdquo; Henrietta called it. These
+      amusements were those of the American red men; we had left that behind
+      long ago, the pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed
+      in England that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was
+      more in keeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to
+      join her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to
+      come over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond
+      of the ancient regime. They didn&rsquo;t agree about that, but that was what she
+      liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been swept
+      away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered on the
+      contrary one day when there were five American families, walking all
+      round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the subject
+      of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it now;
+      England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was
+      determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+      Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight. The
+      mystery about that other one had never been explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel a
+      note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be at
+      home at six o&rsquo;clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what he
+      was coming for&mdash;what good he expected to get of it. He had presented
+      himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who
+      would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel&rsquo;s hospitality,
+      however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in
+      appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at least that
+      she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had been misinformed.
+      But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not disappointed, as some
+      other men, she was sure, would have been; he had not come to Rome to look
+      for an opportunity. She never found out what he had come for; he offered
+      her no explanation; there could be none but the very simple one that he
+      wanted to see her. In other words he had come for his amusement. Isabel
+      followed up this induction with a good deal of eagerness, and was
+      delighted to have found a formula that would lay the ghost of this
+      gentleman&rsquo;s ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome for his amusement
+      this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared for amusement he had got
+      over his heartache. If he had got over his heartache everything was as it
+      should be and her responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he
+      took his recreation a little stiffly, but he had never been loose and easy
+      and she had every reason to believe he was satisfied with what he saw.
+      Henrietta was not in his confidence, though he was in hers, and Isabel
+      consequently received no side-light upon his state of mind. He was open to
+      little conversation on general topics; it came back to her that she had
+      said of him once, years before, &ldquo;Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he
+      doesn&rsquo;t talk.&rdquo; He spoke a good deal now, but he talked perhaps as little
+      as ever; considering, that is, how much there was in Rome to talk about.
+      His arrival was not calculated to simplify her relations with her husband,
+      for if Mr. Osmond didn&rsquo;t like her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon
+      his attention save as having been one of the first of them. There was
+      nothing for her to say of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather
+      meagre synthesis exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce
+      him to Gilbert; it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her
+      Thursday evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her
+      husband still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not
+      inviting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early; he
+      appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every now and
+      then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about him; she
+      thought he might know that she didn&rsquo;t know what to do with him. But she
+      couldn&rsquo;t call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was only
+      extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very different
+      from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with <i>him</i>. She
+      made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering herself
+      she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of women. He
+      never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any personal
+      questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed probable.
+      Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case he had an
+      irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of this principle
+      that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy to a
+      perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat with
+      coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry her,
+      and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would have been
+      an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which would strike
+      all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air. He declared he
+      liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn&rsquo;t easy at first, you had to
+      climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the top of the tower; but
+      when you got there you had a big view and felt a little fresh breeze.
+      Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and he gave Caspar Goodwood
+      the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that Mr. Goodwood thought better
+      of her husband than he had ever wished to; he had given her the impression
+      that morning in Florence of being inaccessible to a good impression.
+      Gilbert asked him repeatedly to dinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar
+      with him afterwards and even desired to be shown his collections. Gilbert
+      said to Isabel that he was very original; he was as strong and of as good
+      a style as an English portmanteau,&mdash;he had plenty of straps and
+      buckles which would never wear out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar
+      Goodwood took to riding on the Campagna and devoted much time to this
+      exercise; it was therefore mainly in the evening that Isabel saw him. She
+      bethought herself of saying to him one day that if he were willing he
+      could render her a service. And then she added smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the person in the world who has most right,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      given you assurances that I&rsquo;ve never given any one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill at
+      the Hôtel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr. Goodwood
+      had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow was; if she was
+      not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt. Caspar remembered
+      the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a man of
+      imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of a poor gentleman
+      who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the Hôtel de Paris and, on
+      being shown into the presence of the master of Gardencourt, found Miss
+      Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular change had in fact occurred
+      in this lady&rsquo;s relations with Ralph Touchett. She had not been asked by
+      Isabel to go and see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to come out
+      had immediately gone of her own motion. After this she had paid him a
+      daily visit&mdash;always under the conviction that they were great
+      enemies. &ldquo;Oh yes, we&rsquo;re intimate enemies,&rdquo; Ralph used to say; and he
+      accused her freely&mdash;as freely as the humour of it would allow&mdash;of
+      coming to worry him to death. In reality they became excellent friends,
+      Henrietta much wondering that she should never have liked him before.
+      Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had always done; he had never
+      doubted for a moment that she was an excellent fellow. They talked about
+      everything and always differed; about everything, that is, but Isabel&mdash;a
+      topic as to which Ralph always had a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr.
+      Bantling on the other hand proved a great resource; Ralph was capable of
+      discussing Mr. Bantling with Henrietta for hours. Discussion was
+      stimulated of course by their inevitable difference of view&mdash;Ralph
+      having amused himself with taking the ground that the genial ex-guardsman
+      was a regular Machiavelli. Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to
+      such a debate; but after he had been left alone with his host he found
+      there were various other matters they could take up. It must be admitted
+      that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted
+      all Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s merits in advance, but had no further remark to make
+      about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate
+      upon Mrs. Osmond&mdash;a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers
+      as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn&rsquo;t
+      bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond
+      anything to be done. There was always something to be done, for Goodwood,
+      and he did it in this case by repeating several times his visit to the
+      Hôtel de Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had
+      artfully disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an
+      occupation; she had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a
+      plan of making him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first
+      mild weather should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and
+      Mr. Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,
+      and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a
+      constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the
+      occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely
+      entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in one of
+      those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would cluster
+      round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel in these
+      days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more
+      perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent
+      there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, upon
+      her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster; for several
+      events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The Countess Gemini
+      arrived from Florence&mdash;arrived with her trunks, her dresses, her
+      chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the unholy legend of
+      the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been away somewhere,&mdash;no
+      one, not even Pansy, knew where,&mdash;reappeared in Rome and began to
+      write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame Merle returned
+      from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: &ldquo;What on earth did you
+      do with Lord Warburton?&rdquo; As if it were any business of hers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to
+      return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which he was
+      not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he mentioned
+      his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She forbore to
+      express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by his
+      sofa: &ldquo;I suppose you know you can&rsquo;t go alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no idea of doing that,&rdquo; Ralph answered. &ldquo;I shall have people with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by &lsquo;people&rsquo;? Servants whom you pay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Ralph jocosely, &ldquo;after all, they&rsquo;re human beings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there any women among them?&rdquo; Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven&rsquo;t a <i>soubrette</i>
+      in my employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta calmly, &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t go to England that way. You must
+      have a woman&rsquo;s care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a
+      good while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not had enough of it yet. I guess I&rsquo;ll go with you,&rdquo; said
+      Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go with me?&rdquo; Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know you don&rsquo;t like me, but I&rsquo;ll go with you all the same. It
+      would be better for your health to lie down again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. &ldquo;I like you very
+      much,&rdquo; he said in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t think that
+      by saying that you can buy me off. I&rsquo;ll go with you, and what is more I&rsquo;ll
+      take care of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good woman,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won&rsquo;t be easy.
+      But you had better go, all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she left him, Ralph said to her: &ldquo;Do you really mean to take care
+      of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I mean to try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!&rdquo; And it was perhaps a sign
+      of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he burst
+      into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent, such a
+      conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and renounced all
+      exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe under the
+      supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that the prospect
+      pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt even
+      impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to see his own
+      house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed to him he could
+      stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to die at home; it
+      was the only wish he had left&mdash;to extend himself in the large quiet
+      room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his eyes upon the
+      summer dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his visitor
+      that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back to
+      England. &ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; said Caspar, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I shall be a fifth wheel to
+      the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens&mdash;it&rsquo;s the golden age! You&rsquo;re all too kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kindness on my part is to her; it&rsquo;s hardly to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting that, <i>she&rsquo;s</i> kind,&rdquo; smiled Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get people to go with you? Yes, that&rsquo;s a sort of kindness,&rdquo; Goodwood
+      answered without lending himself to the joke. &ldquo;For myself, however,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with you
+      and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;d rather stay here than do either,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s really
+      no need of your coming. Henrietta&rsquo;s extraordinarily efficient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure of that. But I&rsquo;ve promised Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can easily get her to let you off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,
+      but that isn&rsquo;t the principal thing. The principal thing is that she wants
+      me to leave Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you see too much in it,&rdquo; Ralph suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bore her,&rdquo; Goodwood went on; &ldquo;she has nothing to say to me, so she
+      invented that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh then, if it&rsquo;s a convenience to her I certainly will take you with me.
+      Though I don&rsquo;t see why it should be a convenience,&rdquo; Ralph added in a
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Caspar Goodwood simply, &ldquo;she thinks I&rsquo;m watching her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watching her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trying to make out if she&rsquo;s happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s easy to make out,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s the most visibly happy woman
+      I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so; I&rsquo;m satisfied,&rdquo; Goodwood answered dryly. For all his dryness,
+      however, he had more to say. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been watching her; I was an old friend
+      and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was
+      what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself
+      what it amounts to. I&rsquo;ve seen,&rdquo; he continued with a harsh ring in his
+      voice, &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t want to see any more. I&rsquo;m now quite ready to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?&rdquo; Ralph rejoined. And
+      this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found it
+      proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at Miss
+      Stackpole&rsquo;s pension the visit which this lady had paid her in Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she remarked to the Countess.
+      &ldquo;I think it right you should know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house three
+      times a day. He has left traces of his passage!&rdquo; the Countess cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wished to marry your niece; that&rsquo;s why he came to the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: &ldquo;Is that the
+      story that Isabel tells? It isn&rsquo;t bad, as such things go. If he wishes to
+      marry my niece, pray why doesn&rsquo;t he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy the
+      wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I&rsquo;m gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;ll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn&rsquo;t wish to marry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn&rsquo;t
+      know she carried it so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you,&rdquo; said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that the
+      Countess was unpleasantly perverse. &ldquo;I really must stick to my point&mdash;that
+      Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
+      brother&rsquo;s capable of everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what your brother&rsquo;s capable of,&rdquo; said Henrietta with
+      dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it&rsquo;s her sending
+      him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought I
+      would make him faithless?&rdquo; the Countess continued with audacious
+      insistence. &ldquo;However, she&rsquo;s only keeping him, one can feel that. The house
+      is full of him there; he&rsquo;s quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces;
+      I&rsquo;m sure I shall see him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
+      which had made the fortune of her letters to the <i>Interviewer</i>,
+      &ldquo;perhaps he&rsquo;ll be more successful with you than with Isabel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
+      that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It had
+      always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were made
+      to understand each other. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care whether he understands me or not,&rdquo;
+       Henrietta declared. &ldquo;The great thing is that he shouldn&rsquo;t die in the
+      cars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t do that,&rdquo; Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      you want to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be alone,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be that so long as you&rsquo;ve so much company at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they&rsquo;re part of the comedy. You others are spectators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?&rdquo; Henrietta rather grimly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tragedy then if you like. You&rsquo;re all looking at me; it makes me
+      uncomfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re like the stricken deer,
+      seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of
+      helplessness!&rdquo; she broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not you I&rsquo;m speaking of; it&rsquo;s myself. It&rsquo;s too much, having come on
+      purpose, to leave you just as I find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t do that; you leave me much refreshed,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very mild refreshment&mdash;sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+      something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a solemn
+      one four years ago, and I&rsquo;ve succeeded so ill in keeping it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the greatest.
+      Leave your husband before the worst comes; that&rsquo;s what I want you to
+      promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst? What do you call the worst?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before your character gets spoiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean my disposition? It won&rsquo;t get spoiled,&rdquo; Isabel answered,
+      smiling. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m taking very good care of it. I&rsquo;m extremely struck,&rdquo; she
+      added, turning away, &ldquo;with the off-hand way in which you speak of a
+      woman&rsquo;s leaving her husband. It&rsquo;s easy to see you&rsquo;ve never had one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, &ldquo;nothing is
+      more common in our Western cities, and it&rsquo;s to them, after all, that we
+      must look in the future.&rdquo; Her argument, however, does not concern this
+      history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to
+      Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might
+      designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.
+      Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that
+      Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+      rid of them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low
+      tone, with a quick smile: &ldquo;My dear Ralph&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the
+      same way, jocosely, ingenuously: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen less of you than I might, but
+      it&rsquo;s better than nothing. And then I&rsquo;ve heard a great deal about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know from whom, leading the life you&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other
+      people speak of you. They always say you&rsquo;re &lsquo;charming,&rsquo; and that&rsquo;s so
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might have seen more of you certainly,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;But when one&rsquo;s
+      married one has so much occupation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fortunately I&rsquo;m not married. When you come to see me in England I shall
+      be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.&rdquo; He continued
+      to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded in making
+      the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to his term being
+      near, to the probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he
+      preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently
+      distinct without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had
+      been well enough for the earlier time, though about this, as about his
+      other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic. Isabel spoke of his
+      journey, of the stages into which he should divide it, of the precautions
+      he should take. &ldquo;Henrietta&rsquo;s my greatest precaution,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;The
+      conscience of that woman&rsquo;s sublime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly she&rsquo;ll be very conscientious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will be? She has been! It&rsquo;s only because she thinks it&rsquo;s her duty that
+      she goes with me. There&rsquo;s a conception of duty for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a generous one,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;and it makes me deeply ashamed.
+      I ought to go with you, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband wouldn&rsquo;t like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he wouldn&rsquo;t like it. But I might go, all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause
+      of disagreement between a lady and her husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I don&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; said Isabel simply&mdash;yet not very lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph understood well enough, however. &ldquo;I should think so, with all those
+      occupations you speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t that. I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as
+      if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+      deliberate&mdash;apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public
+      penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her words
+      simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this might be,
+      Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. &ldquo;Afraid of your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of myself!&rdquo; she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and
+      then added: &ldquo;If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty.
+      That&rsquo;s what women are expected to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; laughed Ralph; &ldquo;but to make up for it there&rsquo;s always some man
+      awfully afraid of some woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different turn.
+      &ldquo;With Henrietta at the head of your little band,&rdquo; she exclaimed abruptly,
+      &ldquo;there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear Isabel,&rdquo; Ralph answered, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s used to that. There is nothing
+      left for Mr. Goodwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They
+      stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been
+      my best friend,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for you that I wanted&mdash;that I wanted to live. But I&rsquo;m of no
+      use to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.
+      She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. &ldquo;If you
+      should send for me I&rsquo;d come,&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband won&rsquo;t consent to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I can arrange it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall keep that for my last pleasure!&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that
+      evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the first
+      to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert Osmond, who
+      almost always was present when his wife received. They sat down together,
+      and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed possessed with a
+      kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his legs crossed,
+      lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but not at all
+      lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the little sofa
+      creak beneath him. Osmond&rsquo;s face wore a sharp, aggressive smile; he was as
+      a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good news. He remarked to
+      Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him; he himself should
+      particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent men&mdash;they were
+      surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come back; there was
+      something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like himself, in
+      talking with a genuine outsider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very fond of Rome, you know,&rdquo; Osmond said; &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s nothing I
+      like better than to meet people who haven&rsquo;t that superstition. The modern
+      world&rsquo;s after all very fine. Now you&rsquo;re thoroughly modern and yet are not
+      at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If
+      they&rsquo;re the children of the future we&rsquo;re willing to die young. Of course
+      the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything
+      that&rsquo;s really new&mdash;not the mere pretence of it. There&rsquo;s nothing new,
+      unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms
+      that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of light. A revelation
+      of vulgarity! There&rsquo;s a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe is
+      really new; I don&rsquo;t think there ever was anything like it before. Indeed I
+      don&rsquo;t find vulgarity, at all, before the present century. You see a faint
+      menace of it here and there in the last, but to-day the air has grown so
+      dense that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we&rsquo;ve liked
+      you&mdash;!&rdquo; With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on
+      Goodwood&rsquo;s knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to say something extremely offensive and patronising, but you
+      must let me have the satisfaction of it. We&rsquo;ve liked you because&mdash;because
+      you&rsquo;ve reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
+      number of people like you&mdash;<i>à la bonne heure</i>! I&rsquo;m talking for
+      my wife as well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I speak for her? We&rsquo;re as united, you know, as the candlestick
+      and the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I&rsquo;ve
+      understood from you that your occupations have been&mdash;a&mdash;commercial?
+      There&rsquo;s a danger in that, you know; but it&rsquo;s the way you have escaped that
+      strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
+      fortunately my wife doesn&rsquo;t hear me. What I mean is that you might have
+      been&mdash;a&mdash;what I was mentioning just now. The whole American
+      world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you&rsquo;ve
+      something about you that saved you. And yet you&rsquo;re so modern, so modern;
+      the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
+      ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
+      usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
+      closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
+      odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what he was
+      about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness
+      not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Goodwood
+      had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he scarcely knew
+      where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew what Osmond was
+      talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and that idea spoke
+      louder to him than her husband&rsquo;s perfectly-pitched voice. He watched her
+      talking with other people and wondered when she would be at liberty and
+      whether he might ask her to go into one of the other rooms. His humour was
+      not, like Osmond&rsquo;s, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in his
+      consciousness of things. Up to this time he had not disliked Osmond
+      personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and
+      more than he had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would
+      naturally marry. His host had won in the open field a great advantage over
+      him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved
+      to underrate him on that account. He had not tried positively to think
+      well of him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even
+      in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had
+      happened, Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a
+      brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of
+      leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of
+      conversation. But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why
+      the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon <i>him</i>. It
+      made him suspect that he found some private entertainment in it, and it
+      ministered to a general impression that his triumphant rival had in his
+      composition a streak of perversity. He knew indeed that Osmond could have
+      no reason to wish him evil; he had nothing to fear from him. He had
+      carried off a supreme advantage and could afford to be kind to a man who
+      had lost everything. It was true that Goodwood had at times grimly wished
+      he were dead and would have liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of
+      knowing this, for practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of
+      appearing inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this
+      art in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first.
+      He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there
+      could be no better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in
+      his soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife&rsquo;s feelings as if he were
+      commissioned to answer for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this
+      evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even than
+      usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo
+      Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his
+      wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each of
+      them to say &ldquo;we&rdquo; as to say &ldquo;I&rdquo;. In all this there was an air of intention
+      that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect
+      for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s relations with her husband were none of
+      his business. He had no proof whatever that her husband misrepresented
+      her, and if he judged her by the surface of things was bound to believe
+      that she liked her life. She had never given him the faintest sign of
+      discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that she had lost her illusions,
+      but writing for the papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational. She was
+      too fond of early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been
+      much on her guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at him.
+      This indeed, it may be said for her, would have been quite against her
+      conscience. She had now seen the reality of Isabel&rsquo;s situation, and it had
+      inspired her with a just reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the
+      most useful form of assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers
+      with a sense of her wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep
+      interest in the state of Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s feelings, but she showed it at
+      present only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the
+      American journals, of which she received several by every post and which
+      she always perused with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she
+      cut out she placed in an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she
+      left with her own hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about
+      Isabel: hadn&rsquo;t he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus
+      not in the least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very
+      absence of authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the
+      harsh-ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care,
+      he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had
+      nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the
+      truth; apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she <i>were</i>
+      unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character she
+      had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome.
+      He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it
+      made him grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have
+      asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. There had been
+      no danger of her choosing one that would have kept him in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her
+      to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge that
+      he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no knowledge;
+      she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the old
+      bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his
+      throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
+      Osmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching
+      again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+      moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible
+      that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what
+      did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether she
+      loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without one&rsquo;s
+      gaining a straw one&rsquo;s self. &ldquo;You travel, by the by, with Ralph Touchett,&rdquo;
+       Osmond said. &ldquo;I suppose that means you&rsquo;ll move slowly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I shall do just as he likes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very accommodating. We&rsquo;re immensely obliged to you; you must
+      really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we feel.
+      Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than once as
+      if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it&rsquo;s worse than
+      an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it&rsquo;s a kind of
+      indelicacy. I wouldn&rsquo;t for the world be under such an obligation to
+      Touchett as he has been to&mdash;to my wife and me. Other people
+      inevitably have to look after him, and every one isn&rsquo;t so generous as
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing else to do,&rdquo; Caspar said dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond looked at him a moment askance. &ldquo;You ought to marry, and then you&rsquo;d
+      have plenty to do! It&rsquo;s true that in that case you wouldn&rsquo;t be quite so
+      available for deeds of mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you find that as a married man you&rsquo;re so much occupied?&rdquo; the young man
+      mechanically asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you see, being married&rsquo;s in itself an occupation. It isn&rsquo;t always
+      active; it&rsquo;s often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my
+      wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,
+      we walk, we drive&mdash;we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I
+      delight, to this hour, in my wife&rsquo;s conversation. If you&rsquo;re ever bored
+      take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that
+      case; but you&rsquo;ll never bore yourself. You&rsquo;ll always have something to say
+      to yourself&mdash;always have a subject of reflection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not bored,&rdquo; said Goodwood. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve plenty to think about and to say to
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than to say to others!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh. &ldquo;Where
+      shall you go next? I mean after you&rsquo;ve consigned Touchett to his natural
+      caretakers&mdash;I believe his mother&rsquo;s at last coming back to look after
+      him. That little lady&rsquo;s superb; she neglects her duties with a finish&mdash;!
+      Perhaps you&rsquo;ll spend the summer in England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;ve no plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy man! That&rsquo;s a little bleak, but it&rsquo;s very free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;m very free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free to come back to Rome I hope,&rdquo; said Osmond as he saw a group of new
+      visitors enter the room. &ldquo;Remember that when you do come we count on you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without his
+      having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several
+      associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy
+      with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
+      intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was
+      absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear
+      hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help
+      her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he
+      opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked to
+      the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather
+      self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he
+      often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera, and
+      it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to contain
+      himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to go, he
+      drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might not speak to
+      her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured himself was
+      empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found her self
+      absolutely prevented. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s impossible. People are saying
+      good-night, and I must be where they can see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall wait till they are all gone then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Ah, that will be delightful!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several people,
+      at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess Gemini, who
+      was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no consciousness
+      that the entertainment was over; she had still a little circle of
+      gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke into a united
+      laugh. Osmond had disappeared&mdash;he never bade good-bye to people; and
+      as the Countess was extending her range, according to her custom at this
+      period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a little
+      apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law would sound a lower note
+      and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I not say a word to you now?&rdquo; Goodwood presently asked her. She got
+      up immediately, smiling. &ldquo;Certainly, we&rsquo;ll go somewhere else if you like.&rdquo;
+       They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle, and for a
+      moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them spoke. Isabel
+      would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room slowly fanning
+      herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to wait for
+      him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the passion he had never
+      stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and made things swim
+      round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and blurred, and through the
+      heaving veil he felt her hover before him with gleaming eyes and parted
+      lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would have perceived her smile was
+      fixed and a trifle forced&mdash;that she was frightened at what she saw in
+      his own face. &ldquo;I suppose you wish to bid me goodbye?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t like it. I don&rsquo;t want to leave Rome,&rdquo; he answered
+      with almost plaintive honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can well imagine. It&rsquo;s wonderfully good of you. I can&rsquo;t tell you how
+      kind I think you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment more he said nothing. &ldquo;With a few words like that you make me
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come back some day,&rdquo; she brightly returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; I don&rsquo;t mean all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? I don&rsquo;t understand! But I said I&rsquo;d go, and I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo;
+       Goodwood added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back whenever you like,&rdquo; said Isabel with attempted lightness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for your cousin!&rdquo; Caspar broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you wished to tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I didn&rsquo;t want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he paused a moment, and then&mdash;&ldquo;what have you really made of your
+      life?&rdquo; he said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an
+      answer; but she said nothing, and he went on: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand, I can&rsquo;t
+      penetrate you! What am I to believe&mdash;what do you want me to think?&rdquo;
+       Still she said nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without
+      pretending to ease. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m told you&rsquo;re unhappy, and if you are I should like
+      to know it. That would be something for me. But you yourself say you&rsquo;re
+      happy, and you&rsquo;re somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You&rsquo;re completely
+      changed. You conceal everything; I haven&rsquo;t really come near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come very near,&rdquo; Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet I don&rsquo;t touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I&rsquo;ve always asked a great deal. Of course you won&rsquo;t tell me. I
+      shall never know if you can help it. And then it&rsquo;s none of my business.&rdquo;
+       He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
+      considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it
+      was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would
+      think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and
+      added a deep vibration to his low voice. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re perfectly inscrutable,
+      and that&rsquo;s what makes me think you&rsquo;ve something to hide. I tell you I
+      don&rsquo;t care a straw for your cousin, but I don&rsquo;t mean that I don&rsquo;t like
+      him. I mean that it isn&rsquo;t because I like him that I go away with him. I&rsquo;d
+      go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you should ask me
+      I&rsquo;d go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to leave the place? You
+      must have some reason for that; if you were as contented as you pretend
+      you are you wouldn&rsquo;t care. I&rsquo;d rather know the truth about you, even if
+      it&rsquo;s damnable, than have come here for nothing. That isn&rsquo;t what I came
+      for. I thought I shouldn&rsquo;t care. I came because I wanted to assure myself
+      that I needn&rsquo;t think of you any more. I haven&rsquo;t thought of anything else,
+      and you&rsquo;re quite right to wish me to go away. But if I must go, there&rsquo;s no
+      harm in my letting myself out for a single moment, is there? If you&rsquo;re
+      really hurt&mdash;if <i>he</i> hurts you&mdash;nothing I say will hurt
+      you. When I tell you I love you it&rsquo;s simply what I came for. I thought it
+      was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn&rsquo;t say it if I
+      didn&rsquo;t believe I should never see you again. It&rsquo;s the last time&mdash;let
+      me pluck a single flower! I&rsquo;ve no right to say that, I know; and you&rsquo;ve no
+      right to listen. But you don&rsquo;t listen; you never listen, you&rsquo;re always
+      thinking of something else. After this I must go, of course; so I shall at
+      least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can&rsquo;t
+      judge by your husband,&rdquo; he went on irrelevantly, almost incoherently; &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he tell
+      me that? What business is it of mine? When I say that to you, you look
+      strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you&rsquo;ve something to hide. It&rsquo;s
+      none of my business&mdash;very true. But I love you,&rdquo; said Caspar
+      Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which
+      they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve behaved so well; don&rsquo;t spoil it,&rdquo; she uttered softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one hears me. It&rsquo;s wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I love
+      you as I&rsquo;ve never loved you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t help it&mdash;of course not. You would if you could, but you
+      can&rsquo;t, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing&mdash;nothing,
+      that is, I shouldn&rsquo;t. But I do ask one sole satisfaction:&mdash;that you
+      tell me&mdash;that you tell me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I tell you what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether I may pity you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like that?&rdquo; Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something. I&rsquo;d
+      give my life to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes. They
+      rested a moment on his. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give your life to it; but give a thought to
+      it every now and then.&rdquo; And with that she went back to the Countess
+      Gemini.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the
+      evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,
+      and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.
+      Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability, and
+      to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been
+      mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord
+      Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel (whom,
+      to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first utterance had
+      been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she
+      appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t talk of him,&rdquo; said Isabel for answer; &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve heard so much
+      of him of late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and smiled
+      at the left corner of her mouth. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard, yes. But you must remember
+      that I&rsquo;ve not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be able to
+      congratulate Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How you say that! Don&rsquo;t you know I had set my heart on it?&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation of
+      good-humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to
+      watch the affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it&rsquo;s too late?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask Pansy,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall ask her what you&rsquo;ve said to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s part by her perceiving that her visitor&rsquo;s attitude was a critical
+      one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto; she had
+      never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling. But
+      apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since she now
+      had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation which even
+      her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had suffered a
+      disappointment which excited Isabel&rsquo;s surprise&mdash;our heroine having no
+      knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy&rsquo;s marriage; and she betrayed it
+      in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s alarm. More clearly than ever
+      before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not where,
+      in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong,
+      definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal,
+      the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny. She was nearer to her
+      than Isabel had yet discovered, and her nearness was not the charming
+      accident she had so long supposed. The sense of accident indeed had died
+      within her that day when she happened to be struck with the manner in
+      which the wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No
+      definite suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was enough to make
+      her view this friend with a different eye, to have been led to reflect
+      that there was more intention in her past behaviour than she had allowed
+      for at the time. Ah yes, there had been intention, there had been
+      intention, Isabel said to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long
+      pernicious dream. What was it that brought home to her that Madame Merle&rsquo;s
+      intention had not been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately
+      taken body and which married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by
+      her visitor&rsquo;s challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in
+      this challenge which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance;
+      a nameless vitality which she could see to have been absent from her
+      friend&rsquo;s professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been
+      unwilling to interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing
+      to interfere with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went
+      fast in casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several
+      years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+      strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle&rsquo;s interest was
+      identical with Osmond&rsquo;s: that was enough. &ldquo;I think Pansy will tell you
+      nothing that will make you more angry,&rdquo; she said in answer to her
+      companion&rsquo;s last remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in the least angry. I&rsquo;ve only a great desire to retrieve the
+      situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you; I don&rsquo;t understand you. It&rsquo;s all over; please let it
+      rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I&rsquo;ve nothing more
+      to say or to hear. I&rsquo;ve no doubt,&rdquo; Isabel added, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;ll be very happy
+      to discuss the subject with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn&rsquo;t
+      apply to me for information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t information I want. At bottom it&rsquo;s sympathy. I had set my heart
+      on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do&mdash;it satisfied
+      the imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean by that of course that I&rsquo;m not concerned. Of course not
+      directly. But when one&rsquo;s such an old friend one can&rsquo;t help having
+      something at stake. You forget how long I&rsquo;ve known Pansy. You mean, of
+      course,&rdquo; Madame Merle added, &ldquo;that <i>you</i> are one of the persons
+      concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; that&rsquo;s the last thing I mean. I&rsquo;m very weary of it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle hesitated a little. &ldquo;Ah yes, your work&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care what you say,&rdquo; said Isabel very gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your
+      husband judges you severely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+      bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle&rsquo;s informing her that
+      Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife that
+      struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was meant for
+      insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was
+      exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet.
+      What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was
+      the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his
+      thoughts. &ldquo;Should you like to know how I judge <i>him</i>?&rdquo; she asked at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, because you&rsquo;d never tell me. And it would be painful for me to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel
+      thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.
+      &ldquo;Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don&rsquo;t despair,&rdquo; she said abruptly,
+      with a desire that this should close their interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Madame Merle&rsquo;s expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only
+      gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the
+      air a faint, agreeable fragrance. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t despair; I feel encouraged. And
+      I didn&rsquo;t come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I know
+      you&rsquo;ll tell it if I ask you. It&rsquo;s an immense blessing with you that one
+      can count upon that. No, you won&rsquo;t believe what a comfort I take in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What truth do you speak of?&rdquo; Isabel asked, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own
+      movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to
+      please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite of
+      having lost a little of it,&rdquo; Madame Merle continued with a smile, &ldquo;to ask
+      such a question as that!&rdquo; She sat looking at her friend, to judge the
+      effect of her words, and then went on: &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t be heroic, don&rsquo;t be
+      unreasonable, don&rsquo;t take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in
+      speaking so. I don&rsquo;t know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven&rsquo;t
+      the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don&rsquo;t you
+      see how well it is that your husband should know it? It&rsquo;s true that he
+      doesn&rsquo;t appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract it; he
+      has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn&rsquo;t alter the fact
+      that it would make a difference in his view of his daughter&rsquo;s prospects to
+      know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord Warburton simply got tired
+      of the poor child, that&rsquo;s one thing, and it&rsquo;s a pity. If he gave her up to
+      please you it&rsquo;s another. That&rsquo;s a pity too, but in a different way. Then,
+      in the latter case, you&rsquo;d perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased&mdash;to
+      simply seeing your step-daughter married. Let him off&mdash;let us have
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and
+      apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew
+      pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her
+      visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was
+      not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. &ldquo;Who are you&mdash;what
+      are you?&rdquo; Isabel murmured. &ldquo;What have you to do with my husband?&rdquo; It was
+      strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as if she had loved
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then, you take it heroically! I&rsquo;m very sorry. Don&rsquo;t think, however,
+      that I shall do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you to do with me?&rdquo; Isabel went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes
+      from Isabel&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Everything!&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a
+      prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman&rsquo;s eyes seemed only a
+      darkness. &ldquo;Oh misery!&rdquo; she murmured at last; and she fell back, covering
+      her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave
+      that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married her. Before she
+      uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under
+      the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the
+      daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for
+      in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural
+      catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for
+      centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into
+      the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached
+      itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a
+      winter&rsquo;s day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could
+      almost smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large
+      Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot
+      easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply,
+      tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion.
+      But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where people had
+      suffered. This was what came to her in the starved churches, where the
+      marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a
+      companionship in endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of
+      long-unanswered prayers. There was no gentler nor less consistent heretic
+      than Isabel; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or
+      clustered candles, could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness
+      of these objects nor have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual
+      visitation. Pansy, as we know, was almost always her companion, and of
+      late the Countess Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to
+      their equipage; but she still occasionally found herself alone when it
+      suited her mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had
+      several resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the
+      low parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front
+      of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+      far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain, between,
+      which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After the departure
+      of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than usual; she carried
+      her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the other. Even when Pansy
+      and the Countess were with her she felt the touch of a vanished world. The
+      carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes
+      where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the hedges, or
+      waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while she
+      strolled further and further over the flower-freckled turf, or sat on a
+      stone that had once had a use and gazed through the veil of her personal
+      sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene&mdash;at the dense, warm
+      light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless
+      shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloud-shadows had the
+      lightness of a blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution not
+      to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this lady&rsquo;s
+      image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an almost
+      childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of
+      several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied.
+      She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best
+      of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. She
+      had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her
+      having flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success this
+      elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it was not wicked&mdash;in
+      the historic sense&mdash;to be even deeply false; for that was what Madame
+      Merle had been&mdash;deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel&rsquo;s Aunt Lydia had made
+      this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Isabel
+      had flattered herself at this time that she had a much richer view of
+      things, especially of the spontaneity of her own career and the nobleness
+      of her own interpretations, than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett.
+      Madame Merle had done what she wanted; she had brought about the union of
+      her two friends; a reflection which could not fail to make it a matter of
+      wonder that she should so much have desired such an event. There were
+      people who had the match-making passion, like the votaries of art for art;
+      but Madame Merle, great artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She
+      thought too ill of marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that
+      particular marriage but had not desired others. She had therefore had a
+      conception of gain, and Isabel asked herself where she had found her
+      profit. It took her naturally a long time to discover, and even then her
+      discovery was imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she
+      had seemed to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been
+      doubly affectionate after Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s death and after learning that her
+      young friend had been subject to the good old man&rsquo;s charity. She had found
+      her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in the more
+      refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young woman&rsquo;s
+      fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her closest
+      intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert occupied
+      this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with the
+      conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the least
+      sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money. Strange
+      to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought a good
+      deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular injury. This
+      was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying to herself that
+      the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman for her money
+      perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least he should let her
+      know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her money, her money would
+      now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let her go. Ah, if Mr.
+      Touchett&rsquo;s great charity would but help her to-day it would be blessed
+      indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame Merle had wished to
+      do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the boon must have lost its
+      warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in regard to his too zealous
+      benefactress, and what expression must they have found on the part of such
+      a master of irony? It is a singular, but a characteristic, fact that
+      before Isabel returned from her silent drive she had broken its silence by
+      the soft exclamation: &ldquo;Poor, poor Madame Merle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same afternoon
+      she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of
+      time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the
+      lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which we
+      once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that
+      apartment, towards six o&rsquo;clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his hostess
+      stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion commemorated
+      in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to its apparent
+      as to its real importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you&rsquo;re unhappy; I believe you like it,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say I was unhappy?&rdquo; Osmond asked with a face grave enough to
+      suggest that he might have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but you don&rsquo;t say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk about gratitude,&rdquo; he returned dryly. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t aggravate me,&rdquo;
+       he added in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white
+      hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to
+      the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. &ldquo;On your
+      side, don&rsquo;t try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trouble about them no more than I can help. I&rsquo;ve quite enough of my
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s because they&rsquo;re so delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at his
+      companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an expression
+      of fatigue. &ldquo;You do aggravate me,&rdquo; he remarked in a moment. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very
+      tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Eh moi donc!</i>&rdquo; cried Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With you it&rsquo;s because you fatigue yourself. With me it&rsquo;s not my own
+      fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I fatigue myself it&rsquo;s for you. I&rsquo;ve given you an interest. That&rsquo;s a
+      great gift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call it an interest?&rdquo; Osmond enquired with detachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve never looked better; you&rsquo;ve never been so agreeable, so
+      brilliant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn my brilliancy!&rdquo; he thoughtfully murmured. &ldquo;How little, after all,
+      you know me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t know you I know nothing,&rdquo; smiled Madame Merle. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve the
+      feeling of complete success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I shall not have that till I&rsquo;ve made you stop judging me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself
+      more too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond just hung fire. &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d express yourself less!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I&rsquo;ve never been a
+      chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to
+      say to you first. Your wife doesn&rsquo;t know what to do with herself,&rdquo; she
+      went on with a change of tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means
+      to carry out her ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was unable to show me any this morning,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;She
+      seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was
+      completely bewildered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better say at once that she was pathetic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, I don&rsquo;t want to encourage you too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one
+      foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. &ldquo;I should like to
+      know what&rsquo;s the matter with you,&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter&mdash;the matter&mdash;!&rdquo; And here Madame Merle stopped. Then
+      she went on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder
+      in a clear sky: &ldquo;The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able
+      to weep, and that I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good would it do you to weep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve dried your tears, that&rsquo;s something. But I&rsquo;ve seen you shed them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I believe you&rsquo;ll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a wolf.
+      I&rsquo;ve a great hope, I&rsquo;ve a great need, of that. I was vile this morning; I
+      was horrid,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably didn&rsquo;t
+      perceive it,&rdquo; Osmond answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn&rsquo;t help it; I
+      was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don&rsquo;t know.
+      You&rsquo;ve not only dried up my tears; you&rsquo;ve dried up my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not I then that am responsible for my wife&rsquo;s condition,&rdquo; Osmond
+      said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your
+      influence upon her. Don&rsquo;t you know the soul is an immortal principle? How
+      can it suffer alteration?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe at all that it&rsquo;s an immortal principle. I believe it can
+      perfectly be destroyed. That&rsquo;s what has happened to mine, which was a very
+      good one to start with; and it&rsquo;s you I have to thank for it. You&rsquo;re <i>very</i>
+      bad,&rdquo; she added with gravity in her emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this the way we&rsquo;re to end?&rdquo; Osmond asked with the same studied
+      coldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how we&rsquo;re to end. I wish I did&mdash;How do bad people end?&mdash;especially
+      as to their <i>common</i> crimes. You have made me as bad as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,&rdquo; said Osmond,
+      his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle&rsquo;s self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and she
+      was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the
+      pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile
+      betrayed a painful effort. &ldquo;Good enough for anything that I&rsquo;ve done with
+      myself? I suppose that&rsquo;s what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good enough to be always charming!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh God!&rdquo; his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+      freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to weep after all?&rdquo; Osmond asked; and on her remaining
+      motionless he went on: &ldquo;Have I ever complained to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her hands quickly. &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;ve taken your revenge otherwise&mdash;you
+      have taken it on <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling and
+      might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the
+      heavenly powers. &ldquo;Oh, the imagination of women! It&rsquo;s always vulgar, at
+      bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you haven&rsquo;t complained. You&rsquo;ve enjoyed your triumph too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather curious to know what you call my triumph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made your wife afraid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his
+      knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He
+      had an air of refusing to accept any one&rsquo;s valuation of anything, even of
+      time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him
+      at moments an irritating person to converse with. &ldquo;Isabel&rsquo;s not afraid of
+      me, and it&rsquo;s not what I wish,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;To what do you want to
+      provoke me when you say such things as that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought over all the harm you can do me,&rdquo; Madame Merle answered.
+      &ldquo;Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she
+      feared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I&rsquo;m not responsible
+      for that. I didn&rsquo;t see the use of your going to see her at all: you&rsquo;re
+      capable of acting without her. I&rsquo;ve not made you afraid of me that I can
+      see,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;how then should I have made her? You&rsquo;re at least as
+      brave. I can&rsquo;t think where you&rsquo;ve picked up such rubbish; one might
+      suppose you knew me by this time.&rdquo; He got up as he spoke and walked to the
+      chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them
+      for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which
+      it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then,
+      still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he pursued: &ldquo;You
+      always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the
+      real. I&rsquo;m much simpler than you think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re very simple.&rdquo; And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it&rsquo;s
+      only since your marriage that I&rsquo;ve understood you. I&rsquo;ve seen better what
+      you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be
+      very careful of that precious object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,&rdquo; said Osmond dryly as he put it
+      down. &ldquo;If you didn&rsquo;t understand me before I married it was cruelly rash of
+      you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself; I
+      thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked
+      that she should like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she should like you so much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should
+      adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never adored you,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you pretended to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,&rdquo; Madame
+      Merle went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife has declined&mdash;declined to do anything of the sort,&rdquo; said
+      Osmond. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy&rsquo;s
+      hardly for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tragedy&rsquo;s for me!&rdquo; Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long low
+      sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her
+      mantel-shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It appears that I&rsquo;m to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false
+      position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for our
+      comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn&rsquo;t like me, at least my
+      child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven&rsquo;t
+      a fault to find with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;if I had a child&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, &ldquo;The children of others
+      may be a great interest!&rdquo; he announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re more like a copy-book than I. There&rsquo;s something after all that
+      holds us together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?&rdquo; Osmond asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s the idea of the good I may do for you. It&rsquo;s that,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      pursued, &ldquo;that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be <i>my</i>
+      work,&rdquo; she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing
+      to its habit of smoothness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former
+      article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, &ldquo;On the whole, I think,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;you had better leave it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the
+      mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the
+      existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. &ldquo;Have I
+      been so vile all for nothing?&rdquo; she vaguely wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER L
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments
+      Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics
+      and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who
+      professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an
+      objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they
+      had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense, though
+      she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself the
+      apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired
+      to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day
+      in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a condition of
+      her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe
+      cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an
+      excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs of the ladies
+      of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering
+      information. It must be added that during these visits the Countess
+      forbade herself every form of active research; her preference was to sit
+      in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most interesting. It was
+      in this manner that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the
+      infinite regret of her niece, who&mdash;with all the respect that she owed
+      her&mdash;could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle and
+      enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble that her view of
+      the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be divined that she had a
+      secret hope that, once inside, her parents&rsquo; guest might be induced to
+      climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Countess announced her
+      willingness to undertake this feat&mdash;a mild afternoon in March when
+      the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three
+      ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her companions to
+      wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges
+      from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and where now the wild
+      flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she
+      felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an
+      intermission too, for the Countess often asked more from one&rsquo;s attention
+      than she gave in return; and Isabel believed that when she was alone with
+      her niece she let the dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of
+      the Arnide. She so remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her
+      undiscriminating aunt to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which
+      the custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half
+      in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great
+      blocks of travertine&mdash;the latent colour that is the only living
+      element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a
+      tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a
+      multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became
+      aware that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena,
+      had turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with a
+      certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before perceived
+      to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such an
+      attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and this
+      gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of speaking
+      to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied he drew
+      near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters she would
+      perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied
+      that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only give him
+      five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon a broken
+      block.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very soon told,&rdquo; said Edward Rosier. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sold all my bibelots!&rdquo;
+       Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had
+      told her he had had all his teeth drawn. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sold them by auction at the
+      Hôtel Drouot,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;The sale took place three days ago, and
+      they&rsquo;ve telegraphed me the result. It&rsquo;s magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the money instead&mdash;fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond
+      think me rich enough now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it for that you did it?&rdquo; Isabel asked gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what else in the world could it be? That&rsquo;s the only thing I think of.
+      I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn&rsquo;t stop for the sale; I
+      couldn&rsquo;t have seen them going off; I think it would have killed me. But I
+      put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you
+      I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my pocket, and he can&rsquo;t
+      say I&rsquo;m poor!&rdquo; the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll say now that you&rsquo;re not wise,&rdquo; said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond
+      had never said this before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier gave her a sharp look. &ldquo;Do you mean that without my bibelots I&rsquo;m
+      nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That&rsquo;s what they
+      told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn&rsquo;t seen
+      <i>her</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,&rdquo; said Isabel very kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that so sadly that it&rsquo;s the same as if you said I shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; And
+      he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had the
+      air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and is
+      full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful
+      suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons
+      still have the perversity to think him diminutive. &ldquo;I know what happened
+      here while I was away,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;What does Mr. Osmond expect after she
+      has refused Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;That she&rsquo;ll marry another nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What other nobleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One that he&rsquo;ll pick out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+      laughing at some one, but this time I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to laugh,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;I laugh very seldom. Now you had
+      better go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very safe!&rdquo; Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but it
+      evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather a loud
+      voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and looking all
+      round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Isabel
+      saw him change colour; there was more of an audience than he had
+      suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions had returned
+      from their excursion. &ldquo;You must really go away,&rdquo; she said quickly. &ldquo;Ah, my
+      dear lady, pity me!&rdquo; Edward Rosier murmured in a voice strangely at
+      variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then he added
+      eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by a happy
+      thought: &ldquo;Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I&rsquo;ve a great desire to be
+      presented to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at him a moment. &ldquo;She has no influence with her brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what a monster you make him out!&rdquo; And Rosier faced the Countess, who
+      advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps to the
+      fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in conversation
+      with a very pretty young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve kept your enamels!&rdquo; Isabel called as she left him. She
+      went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,
+      with lowered eyes. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go back to the carriage,&rdquo; she said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s getting late,&rdquo; Pansy returned more gently still. And she went
+      on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel, however,
+      allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had immediately
+      taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had removed his hat
+      and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself, while the
+      Countess&rsquo;s expressive back displayed to Isabel&rsquo;s eye a gracious
+      inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost to sight, for
+      Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage. Pansy, who faced
+      her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her lap; then she raised
+      them and rested them on Isabel&rsquo;s. There shone out of each of them a little
+      melancholy ray&mdash;a spark of timid passion which touched Isabel to the
+      heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over her soul, as she
+      compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal of the child with her
+      own dry despair. &ldquo;Poor little Pansy!&rdquo; she affectionately said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh never mind!&rdquo; Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then
+      there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. &ldquo;Did you show
+      your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?&rdquo; Isabel asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;re not tired, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, thank you, I&rsquo;m not tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman
+      to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently
+      returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not
+      to wait&mdash;she would come home in a cab!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a week after this lady&rsquo;s quick sympathies had enlisted themselves
+      with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found
+      Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her; she
+      got up from her low chair. &ldquo;Pardon my taking the liberty,&rdquo; she said in a
+      small voice. &ldquo;It will be the last&mdash;for some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,
+      frightened look. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going away!&rdquo; Isabel exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to the convent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the convent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round Isabel
+      and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment, perfectly
+      still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver of her little
+      body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel nevertheless
+      pressed her. &ldquo;Why are you going to the convent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl&rsquo;s better, every now and
+      then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the world, is
+      very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little seclusion&mdash;a
+      little reflexion.&rdquo; Pansy spoke in short detached sentences, as if she
+      could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph of
+      self-control: &ldquo;I think papa&rsquo;s right; I&rsquo;ve been so much in the world this
+      winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a
+      larger meaning than the girl herself knew. &ldquo;When was this decided?&rdquo; she
+      asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard nothing of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn&rsquo;t be too
+      much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine&rsquo;s to come for me at a
+      quarter past seven, and I&rsquo;m only to take two frocks. It&rsquo;s only for a few
+      weeks; I&rsquo;m sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who
+      used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being
+      educated. I&rsquo;m very fond of little girls,&rdquo; said Pansy with an effect of
+      diminutive grandeur. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m also very fond of Mother Catherine. I shall
+      be very quiet and think a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
+      &ldquo;Think of <i>me</i> sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, come and see me soon!&rdquo; cried Pansy; and the cry was very different
+      from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how
+      little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,
+      tender kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had
+      arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to
+      the drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and
+      this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss
+      of the head, &ldquo;<i>En voilà, ma chère, une pose!</i>&rdquo; But if it was an
+      affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could
+      only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed. It had
+      become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him that, strange
+      as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after he had come in,
+      to allude to his daughter&rsquo;s sudden departure: she spoke of it only after
+      they were seated at table. But she had forbidden herself ever to ask
+      Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a declaration, and there
+      was one that came very naturally. &ldquo;I shall miss Pansy very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of
+      flowers in the middle of the table. &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;I had
+      thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I
+      dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I
+      can make you understand. It doesn&rsquo;t matter; don&rsquo;t trouble yourself about
+      it. That&rsquo;s why I had not spoken of it. I didn&rsquo;t believe you would enter
+      into it. But I&rsquo;ve always had the idea; I&rsquo;ve always thought it a part of
+      the education of one&rsquo;s daughter. One&rsquo;s daughter should be fresh and fair;
+      she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present time
+      she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy&rsquo;s a little dusty, a
+      little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing
+      rabble that calls itself society&mdash;one should take her out of it
+      occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I
+      like to think of her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among
+      those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several
+      of them are noble. She will have her books and her drawing, she will have
+      her piano. I&rsquo;ve made the most liberal arrangements. There is to be nothing
+      ascetic; there&rsquo;s just to be a certain little sense of sequestration.
+      She&rsquo;ll have time to think, and there&rsquo;s something I want her to think
+      about.&rdquo; Osmond spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one
+      side, as if he were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone, however,
+      was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as putting a thing
+      into words&mdash;almost into pictures&mdash;to see, himself, how it would
+      look. He considered a while the picture he had evoked and seemed greatly
+      pleased with it. And then he went on: &ldquo;The Catholics are very wise after
+      all. The convent is a great institution; we can&rsquo;t do without it; it
+      corresponds to an essential need in families, in society. It&rsquo;s a school of
+      good manners; it&rsquo;s a school of repose. Oh, I don&rsquo;t want to detach my
+      daughter from the world,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to make her fix her
+      thoughts on any other. This one&rsquo;s very well, as <i>she</i> should take it,
+      and she may think of it as much as she likes. Only she must think of it in
+      the right way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it
+      indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her husband&rsquo;s
+      desire to be effective was capable of going&mdash;to the point of playing
+      theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not
+      understand his purpose, no&mdash;not wholly; but she understood it better
+      than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the whole
+      proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and
+      destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden
+      and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to mark the difference
+      between his sympathies and her own, and show that if he regarded his
+      daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be more and
+      more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective he
+      had succeeded; the incident struck a chill into Isabel&rsquo;s heart. Pansy had
+      known the convent in her childhood and had found a happy home there; she
+      was fond of the good sisters, who were very fond of her, and there was
+      therefore for the moment no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same
+      the girl had taken fright; the impression her father desired to make would
+      evidently be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had never faded
+      from Isabel&rsquo;s imagination, and as her thoughts attached themselves to this
+      striking example of her husband&rsquo;s genius&mdash;she sat looking, like him,
+      at the basket of flowers&mdash;poor little Pansy became the heroine of a
+      tragedy. Osmond wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his
+      wife found it hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain
+      relief presently, in hearing the high, strained voice of her
+      sister-in-law. The Countess too, apparently, had been thinking the thing
+      out, but had arrived at a different conclusion from Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very absurd, my dear Osmond,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to invent so many pretty
+      reasons for poor Pansy&rsquo;s banishment. Why don&rsquo;t you say at once that you
+      want to get her out of my way? Haven&rsquo;t you discovered that I think very
+      well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me <i>simpaticissimo</i>. He
+      has made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you&rsquo;ve
+      made up your mind that with those convictions I&rsquo;m dreadful company for
+      Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.
+      &ldquo;My dear Amy,&rdquo; he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece of
+      gallantry, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about your convictions, but if I
+      suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to banish
+      <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure
+      of her brother&rsquo;s hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received a
+      telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of
+      Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s authorship. &ldquo;Ralph cannot last many days,&rdquo; it ran, &ldquo;and if
+      convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only
+      if you&rsquo;ve not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good
+      deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to see
+      whether you&rsquo;ve found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there&rsquo;s no other
+      company.&rdquo; Isabel was prepared for this news, having received from
+      Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England with her
+      appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive, but she had
+      managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed,
+      which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She
+      added that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one,
+      inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly use, was quite as
+      ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she
+      had been obliged to surrender the field to Mrs. Touchett, who had just
+      returned from America and had promptly given her to understand that she
+      didn&rsquo;t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had written to her
+      aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical
+      condition and suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to
+      Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgement of this
+      admonition, and the only further news Isabel received from her was the
+      second telegram I have just quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it
+      into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband&rsquo;s study.
+      Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went
+      in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume
+      before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a
+      page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been
+      copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and
+      fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of
+      immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned
+      toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me for disturbing you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I come to your room I always knock,&rdquo; he answered, going on with his
+      work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin&rsquo;s dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don&rsquo;t believe that,&rdquo; said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a
+      magnifying glass. &ldquo;He was dying when we married; he&rsquo;ll outlive us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful
+      cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own
+      intention &ldquo;My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why must you go to Gardencourt?&rdquo; Osmond asked in the tone of impartial
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see Ralph before he dies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his
+      chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no
+      negligence. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see the need of it,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;He came to see
+      you here. I didn&rsquo;t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake.
+      But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him.
+      Now you tell me it&rsquo;s not to have been the last. Ah, you&rsquo;re not grateful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to be grateful for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from
+      his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife.
+      &ldquo;For my not having interfered while he was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you
+      didn&rsquo;t like it. I was very glad when he went away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him alone then. Don&rsquo;t run after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing.
+      &ldquo;I must go to England,&rdquo; she said, with a full consciousness that her tone
+      might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly obstinate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not like it if you do,&rdquo; Osmond remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I mind that? You won&rsquo;t like it if I don&rsquo;t. You like nothing I
+      do or don&rsquo;t do. You pretend to think I lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why you must go
+      then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give me an occasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit
+      some folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I disobeyed you?&rdquo; said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of
+      mildness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the most
+      deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt&rsquo;s telegram but three
+      minutes ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You calculate rapidly; it&rsquo;s a great accomplishment. I don&rsquo;t see why we
+      should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.&rdquo; And he stood there as if
+      he expected to see her withdraw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she never moved; she couldn&rsquo;t move, strange as it may seem; she still
+      wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary degree,
+      of making her feel this need. There was something in her imagination he
+      could always appeal to against her judgement. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve no reason for such a
+      wish,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve every reason for going. I can&rsquo;t tell you how
+      unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It&rsquo;s your own opposition
+      that&rsquo;s calculated. It&rsquo;s malignant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the
+      sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no
+      surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed his
+      wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to
+      draw her out. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the more intense then,&rdquo; he answered. And he added
+      almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel: &ldquo;This is a very
+      important matter.&rdquo; She recognised that; she was fully conscious of the
+      weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a
+      crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on.
+      &ldquo;You say I&rsquo;ve no reason? I have the very best. I dislike, from the bottom
+      of my soul, what you intend to do. It&rsquo;s dishonourable; it&rsquo;s indelicate;
+      it&rsquo;s indecent. Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I&rsquo;m under no
+      obligation to make concessions to him. I&rsquo;ve already made the very
+      handsomest. Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins
+      and needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I expected him
+      to go. I&rsquo;ve never liked him and he has never liked me. That&rsquo;s why you like
+      him&mdash;because he hates me,&rdquo; said Osmond with a quick, barely audible
+      tremor in his voice. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an ideal of what my wife should do and should
+      not do. She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my
+      deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin&rsquo;s nothing
+      to you; he&rsquo;s nothing to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about
+      <i>us</i>, but I assure you that <i>we</i>, <i>we</i>, Mrs. Osmond, is all
+      I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of
+      not doing so. I&rsquo;m not aware that we&rsquo;re divorced or separated; for me we&rsquo;re
+      indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any human creature, and I&rsquo;m
+      nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable proximity; it&rsquo;s one, at any rate,
+      of our own deliberate making. You don&rsquo;t like to be reminded of that, I
+      know; but I&rsquo;m perfectly willing, because&mdash;because&mdash;&rdquo; And he
+      paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say which would be very
+      much to the point. &ldquo;Because I think we should accept the consequences of
+      our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out
+      of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife&rsquo;s quick emotion; the
+      resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a
+      mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command, they constituted
+      a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on
+      his part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something
+      transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one&rsquo;s
+      country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious&mdash;the
+      observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling
+      as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet
+      separated in act. Isabel had not changed; her old passion for justice
+      still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her
+      husband&rsquo;s blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a
+      moment promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to
+      preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it
+      went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of
+      irreflective action&mdash;a joy to which she had so long been a stranger;
+      but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by
+      the blight of Osmond&rsquo;s touch. If she must renounce, however, she would let
+      him know she was a victim rather than a dupe. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;re a master of
+      the art of mockery,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How can you speak of an indissoluble union&mdash;how
+      can you speak of your being contented? Where&rsquo;s our union when you accuse
+      me of falsity? Where&rsquo;s your contentment when you have nothing but hideous
+      suspicion in your heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t live decently together!&rdquo; cried Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed we don&rsquo;t if you go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very little; that&rsquo;s nothing. I might do much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long
+      enough in Italy to catch this trick. &ldquo;Ah, if you&rsquo;ve come to threaten me I
+      prefer my drawing.&rdquo; And he walked back to his table, where he took up the
+      sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that if I go you&rsquo;ll not expect me to come back,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was not
+      designed. He looked at her a little, and then, &ldquo;Are you out of your mind?&rdquo;
+       he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can it be anything but a rupture?&rdquo; she went on; &ldquo;especially if all
+      you say is true?&rdquo; She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
+      rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down before his table. &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t argue with you on the
+      hypothesis of your defying me,&rdquo; he said. And he took up one of his little
+      brushes again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his
+      whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she
+      quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion, were all
+      dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed
+      her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any
+      weakness. On her way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini
+      standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a small
+      collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had an
+      open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page
+      which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of Isabel&rsquo;s step
+      she raised her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah my dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing
+      book to read! Everything here&rsquo;s of a dreariness&mdash;! Do you think this
+      would do me any good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without
+      reading or understanding it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t advise you. I&rsquo;ve had bad
+      news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess threw down her book. &ldquo;Ah, he was so simpatico. I&rsquo;m awfully
+      sorry for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would be sorrier still if you knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there to know? You look very badly,&rdquo; the Countess added. &ldquo;You
+      must have been with Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+      intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her
+      sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
+      embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady&rsquo;s
+      fluttering attention. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been with Osmond,&rdquo; she said, while the
+      Countess&rsquo;s bright eyes glittered at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure then he has been odious!&rdquo; the Countess cried. &ldquo;Did he say he was
+      glad poor Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s dying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said it&rsquo;s impossible I should go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess&rsquo;s mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she
+      already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to
+      Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then
+      there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a
+      moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,
+      picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After
+      all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had already
+      overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Isabel&rsquo;s trouble
+      to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel&rsquo;s trouble was deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had no
+      hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression of
+      her sister-in-law&rsquo;s eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous
+      expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the conditions
+      looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to England she
+      herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce
+      her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire
+      to hear that Isabel would go to England. &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s impossible for you, my
+      dear,&rdquo; she said caressingly. &ldquo;Why else are you rich and clever and good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why does Osmond say it&rsquo;s impossible?&rdquo; the Countess asked in a tone which
+      sufficiently declared that she couldn&rsquo;t imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew back;
+      she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately taken. But
+      she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. &ldquo;Because we&rsquo;re so happy
+      together that we can&rsquo;t separate even for a fortnight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, &ldquo;when I want to make a
+      journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may
+      appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is
+      certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily
+      to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the
+      great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as
+      this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one&rsquo;s
+      husband. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid&mdash;yes, I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; she said to herself more than
+      once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her
+      husband&mdash;his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even
+      her own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often
+      held her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when
+      Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them,
+      but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror
+      to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he
+      could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was
+      capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all
+      that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom,
+      uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank down on her
+      sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her. She
+      had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin lips and
+      her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She lived
+      assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now she was
+      leaning far out. &ldquo;I knocked,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;but you didn&rsquo;t answer me. So I
+      ventured in. I&rsquo;ve been looking at you for the past five minutes. You&rsquo;re
+      very unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but I don&rsquo;t think you can comfort me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give me leave to try?&rdquo; And the Countess sat down on the sofa
+      beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something communicative
+      and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have a deal to say, and it
+      occurred to Isabel for the first time that her sister-in-law might say
+      something really human. She made play with her glittering eyes, in which
+      there was an unpleasant fascination. &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she soon resumed, &ldquo;I
+      must tell you, to begin with, that I don&rsquo;t understand your state of mind.
+      You seem to have so many scruples, so many reasons, so many ties. When I
+      discovered, ten years ago, that my husband&rsquo;s dearest wish was to make me
+      miserable&mdash;of late he has simply let me alone&mdash;ah, it was a
+      wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel, you&rsquo;re not simple enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not simple enough,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I want you to know,&rdquo; the Countess declared&mdash;&ldquo;because
+      I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you&rsquo;ve guessed it.
+      But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you
+      shouldn&rsquo;t do as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you wish me to know?&rdquo; Isabel felt a foreboding that made her
+      heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this
+      alone was portentous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject. &ldquo;In
+      your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really
+      suspected?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don&rsquo;t know what you
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman with
+      such a pure mind!&rdquo; cried the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel slowly got up. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going to tell me something horrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can call it by whatever name you will!&rdquo; And the Countess rose also,
+      while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood a moment
+      in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even then, of
+      ugliness; after which she said: &ldquo;My first sister-in-law had no children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. &ldquo;Your first
+      sister-in-law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has been
+      married before! I&rsquo;ve never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it
+      mightn&rsquo;t be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have
+      done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died
+      childless. It wasn&rsquo;t till after her death that Pansy arrived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,
+      vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to
+      follow than she could see. &ldquo;Pansy&rsquo;s not my husband&rsquo;s child then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s&mdash;in perfection! But no one else&rsquo;s husband&rsquo;s. Some one
+      else&rsquo;s wife&rsquo;s. Ah, my good Isabel,&rdquo; cried the Countess, &ldquo;with you one must
+      dot one&rsquo;s i&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Whose wife&rsquo;s?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died&mdash;how long?&mdash;a dozen,
+      more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing
+      what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no
+      reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to
+      fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife&rsquo;s having died in
+      childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little
+      girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from
+      nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in
+      quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone,
+      one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but where she
+      was suddenly taken worse&mdash;fatally ill. The story passed,
+      sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody heeded,
+      as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew&mdash;without
+      researches,&rdquo; the Countess lucidly proceeded; &ldquo;as also, you&rsquo;ll understand,
+      without a word said between us&mdash;I mean between Osmond and me. Don&rsquo;t
+      you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle it?&mdash;that
+      is to settle <i>me</i> if I should say anything. I said nothing, right or
+      left&mdash;never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of me: on
+      my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all this time,
+      as I&rsquo;ve never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me, from the first,
+      that the child was my niece&mdash;from the moment she was my brother&rsquo;s
+      daughter. As for her veritable mother&mdash;!&rdquo; But with this Pansy&rsquo;s
+      wonderful aunt dropped&mdash;as, involuntarily, from the impression of her
+      sister-in-law&rsquo;s face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to look at
+      her than she had ever had to meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an
+      echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head. &ldquo;Why
+      have you told me this?&rdquo; she asked in a voice the Countess hardly
+      recognised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve been so bored with your not knowing. I&rsquo;ve been bored,
+      frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this time
+      I couldn&rsquo;t have managed! <i>Ça me depasse</i>, if you don&rsquo;t mind my saying
+      so, the things, all round you, that you&rsquo;ve appeared to succeed in not
+      knowing. It&rsquo;s a sort of assistance&mdash;aid to innocent ignorance&mdash;that
+      I&rsquo;ve always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that of
+      keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found
+      itself exhausted. It&rsquo;s not a black lie, moreover, you know,&rdquo; the Countess
+      inimitably added. &ldquo;The facts are exactly what I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea,&rdquo; said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner
+      that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I believed&mdash;though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred
+      to you that he was for six or seven years her lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Things <i>have</i> occurred to me, and perhaps that was
+      what they all meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about Pansy!&rdquo;
+       the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no idea, for me,&rdquo; Isabel went on, &ldquo;ever <i>definitely</i> took that
+      form.&rdquo; She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what
+      hadn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;And as it is&mdash;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to
+      have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She had
+      expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a
+      spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have been, as
+      a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister passage of
+      public history. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you recognise how the child could never pass for <i>her</i>
+      husband&rsquo;s?&mdash;that is with M. Merle himself,&rdquo; her companion resumed.
+      &ldquo;They had been separated too long for that, and he had gone to some far
+      country&mdash;I think to South America. If she had ever had children&mdash;which
+      I&rsquo;m not sure of&mdash;she had lost them. The conditions happened to make
+      it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a pinch), that Osmond
+      should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was dead&mdash;very true; but
+      she had not been dead too long to put a certain accommodation of dates out
+      of the question&mdash;from the moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn&rsquo;t
+      started; which was what they had to take care of. What was more natural
+      than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and for a world not troubling
+      about trifles, should have left behind her, <i>poverina</i>, the pledge of
+      her brief happiness that had cost her her life? With the aid of a change
+      of residence&mdash;Osmond had been living with her at Naples at the time
+      of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course left it for ever&mdash;the
+      whole history was successfully set going. My poor sister-in-law, in her
+      grave, couldn&rsquo;t help herself, and the real mother, to save <i>her</i>
+      skin, renounced all visible property in the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, poor, poor woman!&rdquo; cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It
+      was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction
+      from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the Countess
+      Gemini found only another discomfiture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you to pity her!&rdquo; she discordantly laughed. &ldquo;Yes
+      indeed, you have a way of your own&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have been false to his wife&mdash;and so very soon!&rdquo; said Isabel
+      with a sudden check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all that&rsquo;s wanting&mdash;that you should take up her cause!&rdquo; the
+      Countess went on. &ldquo;I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too
+      soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to me, to me&mdash;?&rdquo; And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard;
+      as if her question&mdash;though it was sufficiently there in her eyes&mdash;were
+      all for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you call
+      faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another woman&mdash;<i>such</i>
+      a lover as he had been, <i>cara mia</i>, between their risks and their
+      precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had passed
+      away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her own,
+      drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances so intense
+      that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may therefore imagine
+      what it was&mdash;when he couldn&rsquo;t patch it on conveniently to <i>any</i>
+      of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Isabel mechanically echoed, &ldquo;the whole past is between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,
+      they had kept it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a little. &ldquo;Why then did she want him to marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah my dear, that&rsquo;s her superiority! Because you had money; and because
+      she believed you would be good to Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor woman&mdash;and Pansy who doesn&rsquo;t like her!&rdquo; cried Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows
+      it; she knows everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will she know that you&rsquo;ve told me this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will depend upon whether you tell her. She&rsquo;s prepared for it, and do
+      you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that I
+      lie. Perhaps you do; don&rsquo;t make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only,
+      as it happens this time, I don&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ve told plenty of little idiotic fibs,
+      but they&rsquo;ve never hurt any one but myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sat staring at her companion&rsquo;s story as at a bale of fantastic
+      wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her feet.
+      &ldquo;Why did Osmond never marry her?&rdquo; she finally asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she had no money.&rdquo; The Countess had an answer for everything, and
+      if she lied she lied well. &ldquo;No one knows, no one has ever known, what she
+      lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I don&rsquo;t believe
+      Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn&rsquo;t have married him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can she have loved him then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I suppose,
+      she would have married him; but at that time her husband was living. By
+      the time M. Merle had rejoined&mdash;I won&rsquo;t say his ancestors, because he
+      never had any&mdash;her relations with Osmond had changed, and she had
+      grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,&rdquo; the Countess
+      went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically afterwards&mdash;&ldquo;she
+      <i>had</i> never had, what you might call any illusions of <i>intelligence</i>.
+      She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always been her idea. She
+      has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but she has never
+      succeeded. I don&rsquo;t call Madame Merle a success, you know. I don&rsquo;t know
+      what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very little to show.
+      The only tangible result she has ever achieved&mdash;except, of course,
+      getting to know every one and staying with them free of expense&mdash;has
+      been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did that, my dear; you
+      needn&rsquo;t look as if you doubted it. I&rsquo;ve watched them for years; I know
+      everything&mdash;everything. I&rsquo;m thought a great scatterbrain, but I&rsquo;ve
+      had enough application of mind to follow up those two. She hates me, and
+      her way of showing it is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When
+      people say I&rsquo;ve had fifteen lovers she looks horrified and declares that
+      quite half of them were never proved. She has been afraid of me for years,
+      and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false things people have said
+      about me. She has been afraid I&rsquo;d expose her, and she threatened me one
+      day when Osmond began to pay his court to you. It was at his house in
+      Florence; do you remember that afternoon when she brought you there and we
+      had tea in the garden? She let me know then that if I should tell tales
+      two could play at that game. She pretends there&rsquo;s a good deal more to tell
+      about me than about her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don&rsquo;t
+      care a fig what she may say, simply because I know <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t care a
+      fig. You can&rsquo;t trouble your head about me less than you do already. So she
+      may take her revenge as she chooses; I don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;ll frighten you
+      very much. Her great idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable&mdash;a
+      kind of full-blown lily&mdash;the incarnation of propriety. She has always
+      worshipped that god. There should be no scandal about Caesar&rsquo;s wife, you
+      know; and, as I say, she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one
+      reason she wouldn&rsquo;t marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy
+      people would put things together&mdash;would even see a resemblance. She
+      has had a terror lest the mother should betray herself. She has been
+      awfully careful; the mother has never done so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, the mother has done so,&rdquo; said Isabel, who had listened to all
+      this with a face more and more wan. &ldquo;She betrayed herself to me the other
+      day, though I didn&rsquo;t recognise her. There appeared to have been a chance
+      of Pansy&rsquo;s making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not
+      coming off she almost dropped the mask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s where she&rsquo;d dish herself!&rdquo; cried the Countess. &ldquo;She has failed
+      so dreadfully that she&rsquo;s determined her daughter shall make it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started at the words &ldquo;her daughter,&rdquo; which her guest threw off so
+      familiarly. &ldquo;It seems very wonderful,&rdquo; she murmured; and in this
+      bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
+      touched by the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t go and turn against the poor innocent child!&rdquo; the Countess went
+      on. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself have
+      liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she had
+      become yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
+      seeing me&mdash;!&rdquo; Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before that
+      she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That you
+      might take such a fancy to the child that you&rsquo;d do something for her.
+      Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really
+      extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,&rdquo; cried
+      the Countess, &ldquo;why did you ever inherit money?&rdquo; She stopped a moment as if
+      she saw something singular in Isabel&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me now that
+      you&rsquo;ll give her a dot. You&rsquo;re capable of that, but I would refuse to
+      believe it. Don&rsquo;t try to be too good. Be a little easy and natural and
+      nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; Isabel
+      said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much obliged to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you seem to be!&rdquo; cried the Countess with a mocking laugh. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      you are&mdash;perhaps you&rsquo;re not. You don&rsquo;t take it as I should have
+      thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should I take it?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.&rdquo; Isabel made no
+      answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve
+      always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke off&mdash;or
+      <i>he</i> did. But he has always been more for her than she has been for
+      him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that each
+      should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also do
+      everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know such a
+      thing as that. I know it by the way they&rsquo;ve behaved. Now see how much
+      better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but Osmond has
+      never lifted a little finger for <i>her</i>. She has worked for him,
+      plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found money
+      for him; and the end of it is that he&rsquo;s tired of her. She&rsquo;s an old habit;
+      there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn&rsquo;t miss her
+      if she were removed. And, what&rsquo;s more, to-day she knows it. So you needn&rsquo;t
+      be jealous!&rdquo; the Countess added humorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath; her
+      head was humming with new knowledge. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much obliged to you,&rdquo; she
+      repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: &ldquo;How do
+      you know all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel&rsquo;s expression
+      of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold stare, with which,
+      &ldquo;Let us assume that I&rsquo;ve invented it!&rdquo; she cried. She too, however,
+      suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel&rsquo;s arm, said with
+      the penetration of her sharp bright smile: &ldquo;Now will you give up your
+      journey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a
+      moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a
+      minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed
+      eyes and pale lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done wrong to speak&mdash;I&rsquo;ve made you ill!&rdquo; the Countess cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I must see Ralph!&rdquo; Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in the quick
+      passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of far-reaching,
+      infinite sadness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the Countess
+      had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with her maid, who
+      was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought (except of her
+      journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy; from her she
+      couldn&rsquo;t turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to
+      understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o&rsquo;clock to a
+      high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was
+      admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person.
+      Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come with Pansy to see
+      the sisters. She knew they were good women, and she saw that the large
+      rooms were clean and cheerful and that the well-used garden had sun for
+      winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, which affronted
+      and almost frightened her; not for the world would she have spent a night
+      there. It produced to-day more than before the impression of a
+      well-appointed prison; for it was not possible to pretend Pansy was free
+      to leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a new and
+      violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation was to make her
+      reach out a hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she went
+      to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The
+      parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a large
+      clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax flowers
+      under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the
+      walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than
+      like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment only
+      seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned at the
+      end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got up,
+      expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her extreme
+      surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect was
+      strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision that her
+      appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a
+      painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her
+      audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark things
+      seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the room. Her being
+      there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of handwritings, of
+      profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It made Isabel feel
+      faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot she would have been
+      quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to her; it seemed to her
+      indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to Madame Merle. In one&rsquo;s
+      relations with this lady, however, there were never any absolute
+      necessities; she had a manner which carried off not only her own
+      deficiencies but those of other people. But she was different from usual;
+      she came in slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel instantly perceived
+      that she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. For her too
+      the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken to treat it by the
+      light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar gravity; she pretended not
+      even to smile, and though Isabel saw that she was more than ever playing a
+      part it seemed to her that on the whole the wonderful woman had never been
+      so natural. She looked at her young friend from head to foot, but not
+      harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness rather, and an absence of
+      any air of allusion to their last meeting. It was as if she had wished to
+      mark a distinction. She had been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can leave us alone,&rdquo; she said to the portress; &ldquo;in five minutes this
+      lady will ring for you.&rdquo; And then she turned to Isabel, who, after noting
+      what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let her eyes
+      wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished never to
+      look at Madame Merle again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re surprised to find me here, and I&rsquo;m
+      afraid you&rsquo;re not pleased,&rdquo; this lady went on. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see why I should
+      have come; it&rsquo;s as if I had anticipated you. I confess I&rsquo;ve been rather
+      indiscreet&mdash;I ought to have asked your permission.&rdquo; There was none of
+      the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply and mildly; but
+      Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could not have told
+      herself with what intention it was uttered. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve not been sitting
+      long,&rdquo; Madame Merle continued; &ldquo;that is I&rsquo;ve not been long with Pansy. I
+      came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be
+      rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good for a
+      small girl; I know so little about small girls; I can&rsquo;t tell. At any rate
+      it&rsquo;s a little dismal. Therefore I came&mdash;on the chance. I knew of
+      course that you&rsquo;d come, and her father as well; still, I had not been told
+      other visitors were forbidden. The good woman&mdash;what&rsquo;s her name?
+      Madame Catherine&mdash;made no objection whatever. I stayed twenty minutes
+      with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not in the least conventual,
+      with a piano and flowers. She has arranged it delightfully; she has so
+      much taste. Of course it&rsquo;s all none of my business, but I feel happier
+      since I&rsquo;ve seen her. She may even have a maid if she likes; but of course
+      she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little black frock; she looks so
+      charming. I went afterwards to see Mother Catherine, who has a very good
+      room too; I assure you I don&rsquo;t find the poor sisters at all monastic.
+      Mother Catherine has a most coquettish little toilet-table, with something
+      that looked uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks
+      delightfully of Pansy; says it&rsquo;s a great happiness for them to have her.
+      She&rsquo;s a little saint of heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as
+      I was leaving Madame Catherine the portress came to say to her that there
+      was a lady for the signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked
+      her to let me go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly&mdash;I
+      must tell you that&mdash;and said it was her duty to notify the Mother
+      Superior; it was of such high importance that you should be treated with
+      respect. I requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her
+      how she supposed I would treat you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had
+      long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases and
+      gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel&rsquo;s ear,
+      though her eyes were absent from her companion&rsquo;s face. She had not
+      proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse in
+      her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle
+      modulation marked a momentous discovery&mdash;the perception of an
+      entirely new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had
+      guessed in the space of an instant that everything was at end between
+      them, and in the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why.
+      The person who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but
+      was a very different person&mdash;a person who knew her secret. This
+      discovery was tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most
+      accomplished of women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that
+      moment. Then the conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself
+      again and flowed on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only
+      because she had the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been
+      touched with a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the
+      alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her
+      not betraying herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her
+      voice refused to improve&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t help it&mdash;while she heard
+      herself say she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and
+      she was able only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large
+      clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have
+      been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and saw
+      before her the phantom of exposure&mdash;this in itself was a revenge,
+      this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a moment
+      during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with her back
+      half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side of the
+      window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she saw; she
+      saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. She saw, in
+      the crude light of that revelation which had already become a part of
+      experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in which it had
+      been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry staring fact that
+      she had been an applied handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient
+      as mere shaped wood and iron. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged
+      into her soul again; it was as if she felt on her lips the taste of
+      dishonour. There was a moment during which, if she had turned and spoken,
+      she would have said something that would hiss like a lash. But she closed
+      her eyes, and then the hideous vision dropped. What remained was the
+      cleverest woman in the world standing there within a few feet of her and
+      knowing as little what to think as the meanest. Isabel&rsquo;s only revenge was
+      to be silent still&mdash;to leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented
+      situation. She left her there for a period that must have seemed long to
+      this lady, who at last seated herself with a movement which was in itself
+      a confession of helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down
+      at her. Madame Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel&rsquo;s face.
+      She might see what she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never
+      accuse her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her
+      the opportunity to defend herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m come to bid Pansy good-bye,&rdquo; our young woman said at last. &ldquo;I go to
+      England to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to England to-night!&rdquo; Madame Merle repeated sitting there and looking
+      up at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ll feel that.&rdquo; Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance
+      to express sympathy. &ldquo;Do you go alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; without my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the general
+      sadness of things. &ldquo;Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I&rsquo;m sorry he&rsquo;s dying.
+      Shall you see his mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she has returned from America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have
+      changed,&rdquo; said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a
+      moment, then added: &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll see dear old Gardencourt again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not enjoy it much,&rdquo; Isabel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally&mdash;in your grief. But it&rsquo;s on the whole, of all the houses I
+      know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I
+      don&rsquo;t venture to send a message to the people,&rdquo; Madame Merle added; &ldquo;but I
+      should like to give my love to the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned away. &ldquo;I had better go to Pansy. I&rsquo;ve not much time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and
+      admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet
+      smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump white
+      hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she had
+      already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss
+      Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly
+      and said: &ldquo;It will be good for her to see you. I&rsquo;ll take you to her
+      myself.&rdquo; Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let me remain a little?&rdquo; this lady asked. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so good to be
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may remain always if you like!&rdquo; And the good sister gave a knowing
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long
+      staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean; so,
+      thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine
+      gently pushed open the door of Pansy&rsquo;s room and ushered in the visitor;
+      then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and
+      embraced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s glad to see you,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;it will do her good.&rdquo; And she
+      placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement to
+      seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. &ldquo;How does this dear child look?&rdquo;
+       she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks pale,&rdquo; Isabel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the pleasure of seeing you. She&rsquo;s very happy. <i>Elle éclaire la
+      maison</i>,&rdquo; said the good sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was perhaps
+      this that made her look pale. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very good to me&mdash;they think of
+      everything!&rdquo; she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to
+      accommodate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We think of you always&mdash;you&rsquo;re a precious charge,&rdquo; Madame Catherine
+      remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and
+      whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with a
+      leaden weight on Isabel&rsquo;s ears; it seemed to represent the surrender of a
+      personality, the authority of the Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid
+      her head in her stepmother&rsquo;s lap. So she remained some moments, while
+      Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and
+      looking about the room. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think I&rsquo;ve arranged it well? I&rsquo;ve
+      everything I have at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very pretty; you&rsquo;re very comfortable.&rdquo; Isabel scarcely knew what she
+      could say to her. On the one hand she couldn&rsquo;t let her think she had come
+      to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend to
+      rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to bid
+      you good-bye. I&rsquo;m going to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy&rsquo;s white little face turned red. &ldquo;To England! Not to come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know when I shall come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had no
+      right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he&rsquo;ll probably die. I wish to see
+      him,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I shall go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she
+      thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never
+      by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed them
+      deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel was sure;
+      and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands and wives who
+      were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet even in
+      thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle stepmother
+      as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have stood almost as
+      still as it would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great
+      picture in the convent chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at
+      each other. But as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity&rsquo;s
+      sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put away all
+      knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her own. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be very far
+      away,&rdquo; she presently went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,&rdquo; Isabel explained;
+      &ldquo;since so long as you&rsquo;re here I can&rsquo;t be called near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you can come and see me; though you&rsquo;ve not come very often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing with
+      me. I can&rsquo;t amuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not to be amused. That&rsquo;s not what papa wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it hardly matters whether I&rsquo;m in Rome or in England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not happy, Mrs. Osmond,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very. But it doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to
+      come out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish indeed you might.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t leave me here,&rdquo; Pansy went on gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. &ldquo;Will you come away
+      with me now?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy looked at her pleadingly. &ldquo;Did papa tell you to bring me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s my own proposal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he knew I was coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks I&rsquo;ve not had enough,&rdquo; said Pansy. &ldquo;But I have. The ladies are
+      very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some very
+      little ones&mdash;such charming children. Then my room&mdash;you can see
+      for yourself. All that&rsquo;s very delightful. But I&rsquo;ve had enough. Papa wished
+      me to think a little&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve thought a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that I must never displease papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew that before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but I know it better. I&rsquo;ll do anything&mdash;I&rsquo;ll do anything,&rdquo; said
+      Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into her
+      face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been
+      vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!
+      Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated
+      easily. She laid her hand on Pansy&rsquo;s as if to let her know that her look
+      conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl&rsquo;s momentary
+      resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only her tribute
+      to the truth of things. She didn&rsquo;t presume to judge others, but she had
+      judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no vocation for
+      struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of sequestration there was
+      something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her pretty head to authority and
+      only asked of authority to be merciful. Yes; it was very well that Edward
+      Rosier had reserved a few articles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. &ldquo;Good-bye then. I leave
+      Rome to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child&rsquo;s
+      face. &ldquo;You look strange, you frighten me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m very harmless,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you won&rsquo;t come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not. I can&rsquo;t tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won&rsquo;t leave me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. &ldquo;My dear child, what can I do
+      for you?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;but I&rsquo;m happier when I think of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can always think of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when you&rsquo;re so far. I&rsquo;m a little afraid,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you afraid of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of papa&mdash;a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not say that,&rdquo; Isabel observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll do everything they want. Only if you&rsquo;re here I shall do it more
+      easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel considered. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t desert you,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;Good-bye, my
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two sisters;
+      and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor to the top
+      of the staircase. &ldquo;Madame Merle has been here,&rdquo; she remarked as they went;
+      and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like Madame
+      Merle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, then stopped. &ldquo;You must never say that&mdash;that you
+      don&rsquo;t like Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a
+      reason for non-compliance. &ldquo;I never will again,&rdquo; she said with exquisite
+      gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it
+      appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which
+      Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she
+      reached the bottom the girl was standing above. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come back?&rdquo; she
+      called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I&rsquo;ll come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of
+      the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t go
+      in,&rdquo; said the good sister. &ldquo;Madame Merle&rsquo;s waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking if
+      there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment&rsquo;s reflexion
+      assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her
+      desire to avoid Pansy&rsquo;s other friend. Her companion grasped her arm very
+      gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said in French
+      and almost familiarly: &ldquo;<i>Eh bien, chère Madame, qu&rsquo;en pensez-vous?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We think it&rsquo;s enough,&rdquo; Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she
+      pushed open the door of the parlour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so
+      absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame
+      Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been
+      thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full
+      possession of her resources. &ldquo;I found I wished to wait for you,&rdquo; she said
+      urbanely. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not to talk about Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame
+      Merle&rsquo;s declaration she answered after a moment: &ldquo;Madame Catherine says
+      it&rsquo;s enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about
+      poor Mr. Touchett,&rdquo; Madame Merle added. &ldquo;Have you reason to believe that
+      he&rsquo;s really at his last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a
+      probability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to ask you a strange question,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;Are you
+      very fond of your cousin?&rdquo; And she gave a smile as strange as her
+      utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m very fond of him. But I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She just hung fire. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather hard to explain. Something has occurred
+      to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit of my
+      idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never guessed
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has done me many services.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> made me&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more
+      triumphantly: &ldquo;He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required to
+      make you a brilliant match. At bottom it&rsquo;s him you&rsquo;ve to thank.&rdquo; She
+      stopped; there was something in Isabel&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you. It was my uncle&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it was your uncle&rsquo;s money, but it was your cousin&rsquo;s idea. He brought
+      his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by
+      lurid flashes. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you say such things. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing but what I&rsquo;ve guessed. But I&rsquo;ve guessed that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with
+      her hand on the latch. Then she said&mdash;it was her only revenge: &ldquo;I
+      believed it was you I had to thank!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very unhappy, I know. But I&rsquo;m more so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle raised her eyes. &ldquo;I shall go to America,&rdquo; she quietly
+      remarked while Isabel passed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+      circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel
+      descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the arms,
+      as it were&mdash;or at any rate into the hands&mdash;of Henrietta
+      Stackpole. She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she
+      had not definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had
+      felt her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey
+      from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to
+      question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and
+      took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though
+      they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their
+      course through other countries&mdash;strange-looking, dimly-lighted,
+      pathless lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it
+      seemed, a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about;
+      but it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+      Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of memory,
+      of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their will, but
+      she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a logic of
+      their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now that she
+      was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much concerned her
+      and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play whist
+      with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual
+      relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before
+      her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand
+      trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver. She had
+      thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that they had been weighted
+      with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after all, for of what use was
+      it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of use to her to-day. All
+      purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the single
+      desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her
+      starting-point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary
+      solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come
+      back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it
+      would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were
+      thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to
+      give it all up and not know anything more&mdash;this idea was as sweet as
+      the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a
+      hot land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as good
+      as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply
+      with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that
+      she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the
+      receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret now&mdash;that was
+      all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance
+      was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so&mdash;well,
+      so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal
+      inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever it was
+      it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do
+      so in America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Isabel
+      no more; she only had an impression that she should never again see Madame
+      Merle. This impression carried her into the future, of which from time to
+      time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant years,
+      still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live, and these
+      intimations contradicted the spirit of the present hour. It might be
+      desirable to get quite away, really away, further away than little
+      grey-green England, but this privilege was evidently to be denied her.
+      Deep in her soul&mdash;deeper than any appetite for renunciation&mdash;was
+      the sense that life would be her business for a long time to come. And at
+      moments there was something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the
+      conviction. It was a proof of strength&mdash;it was a proof she should
+      some day be happy again. It couldn&rsquo;t be she was to live only to suffer;
+      she was still young, after all, and a great many things might happen to
+      her yet. To live only to suffer&mdash;only to feel the injury of life
+      repeated and enlarged&mdash;it seemed to her she was too valuable, too
+      capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think
+      so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable?
+      Wasn&rsquo;t all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn&rsquo;t it
+      much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It involved
+      then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but Isabel
+      recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long
+      future. She should never escape; she should last to the end. Then the
+      middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her
+      indifference closed her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid
+      she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,
+      looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished
+      to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She
+      rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an arrival in
+      London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, the strange,
+      livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous
+      fear and made her put her arm into her friend&rsquo;s. She remembered she had
+      once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle in which
+      there was something that touched her. She remembered how she walked away
+      from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, five years
+      before. She could not have done that to-day, and the incident came before
+      her as the deed of another person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too beautiful that you should have come,&rdquo; said Henrietta, looking at
+      her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the
+      proposition. &ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;if you hadn&rsquo;t; well, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo;
+       remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another
+      figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment she
+      recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little
+      apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about him
+      to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken&mdash;that of
+      abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their
+      embraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Mr. Bantling,&rdquo; said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring
+      much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!&rdquo; Henrietta
+      exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile&mdash;a
+      smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it lovely
+      she has come?&rdquo; Henrietta asked. &ldquo;He knows all about it,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;we
+      had quite a discussion. He said you wouldn&rsquo;t, I said you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you always agreed,&rdquo; Isabel smiled in return. She felt she could
+      smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling&rsquo;s brave eyes, that
+      he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to remember he
+      was an old friend of her cousin&mdash;that he understood, that it was all
+      right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a
+      beautiful blameless knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I always agree,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling. &ldquo;But she doesn&rsquo;t, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?&rdquo; Henrietta enquired. &ldquo;Your
+      young lady has probably remained at Calais.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never
+      found so interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with her while I go and see,&rdquo; Henrietta commanded, leaving the two
+      for a moment together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel
+      how it had been on the Channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,&rdquo; she said, to her companion&rsquo;s
+      obvious surprise. After which she added: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been to Gardencourt, I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now how do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you&mdash;except that you look like a person who has been to
+      Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I look awfully sad? It&rsquo;s awfully sad there, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,&rdquo; said
+      Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she should
+      never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed a
+      good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue, and
+      that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. &ldquo;You can ask Miss Stackpole,
+      you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see my cousin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been
+      there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he was
+      in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can&rsquo;t speak,&rdquo; Mr.
+      Bantling pursued. &ldquo;He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He was
+      just as clever as ever. It&rsquo;s awfully wretched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. &ldquo;Was
+      that late in the day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you&rsquo;d like to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don&rsquo;t think <i>she&rsquo;ll</i> let you go,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling. &ldquo;She
+      wants you to stop with her. I made Touchett&rsquo;s man promise to telegraph me
+      to-day, and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. &lsquo;Quiet and easy,&rsquo; 
+      that&rsquo;s what it says, and it&rsquo;s dated two o&rsquo;clock. So you see you can wait
+      till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m awfully tired. And I thank you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling, &ldquo;We were certain you would like the last news.&rdquo;
+       On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to
+      agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel&rsquo;s maid, whom she had caught in
+      the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of losing
+      herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress&rsquo;s luggage, so
+      that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station. &ldquo;You know you&rsquo;re
+      not to think of going to the country to-night,&rdquo; Henrietta remarked to her.
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter whether there&rsquo;s a train or not. You&rsquo;re to come straight
+      to me in Wimpole Street. There isn&rsquo;t a corner to be had in London, but
+      I&rsquo;ve got you one all the same. It isn&rsquo;t a Roman palace, but it will do for
+      a night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do whatever you wish,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come and answer a few questions; that&rsquo;s what I wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?&rdquo; Mr.
+      Bantling enquired jocosely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. &ldquo;I see you&rsquo;re in a
+      great hurry to get your own. You&rsquo;ll be at the Paddington Station to-morrow
+      morning at ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll come for mine,&rdquo; Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into a
+      cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street&mdash;to do her
+      justice there had been dinner enough&mdash;she asked those questions to
+      which she had alluded at the station. &ldquo;Did your husband make you a scene
+      about your coming?&rdquo; That was Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s first enquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I can&rsquo;t say he made a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t object then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you&rsquo;d call a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a very quiet conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. &ldquo;It must have been hellish,&rdquo;
+       she then remarked. And Isabel didn&rsquo;t deny that it had been hellish. But
+      she confined herself to answering Henrietta&rsquo;s questions, which was easy,
+      as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no new
+      information. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole at last, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only one criticism
+      to make. I don&rsquo;t see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I myself see now,&rdquo; Isabel replied. &ldquo;But I did then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve forgotten your reason perhaps you won&rsquo;t return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel waited a moment. &ldquo;Perhaps I shall find another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll certainly never find a good one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In default of a better my having promised will do,&rdquo; Isabel suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that&rsquo;s why I hate it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of it now. I&rsquo;ve a little time. Coming away was a
+      complication, but what will going back be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remember, after all, that he won&rsquo;t make you a scene!&rdquo; said
+      Henrietta with much intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will, though,&rdquo; Isabel answered gravely. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t be the scene of a
+      moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and then
+      Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested, announced
+      abruptly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been to stay with Lady Pensil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the invitation came at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was more natural than I think you know,&rdquo; said Henrietta, who fixed her
+      eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly: &ldquo;Isabel
+      Archer, I beg your pardon. You don&rsquo;t know why? Because I criticised you,
+      and yet I&rsquo;ve gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at least, was born on the
+      other side!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so
+      modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel&rsquo;s mind was not
+      possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with a
+      quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately
+      recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,
+      &ldquo;Henrietta Stackpole,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;are you going to give up your country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won&rsquo;t pretend to deny it; I look the fact in
+      the face. I&rsquo;m going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems very strange,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well yes, I suppose it does. I&rsquo;ve come to it little by little. I think I
+      know what I&rsquo;m doing; but I don&rsquo;t know as I can explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One can&rsquo;t explain one&rsquo;s marriage,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;And yours doesn&rsquo;t
+      need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn&rsquo;t a riddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he isn&rsquo;t a bad pun&mdash;or even a high flight of American humour. He
+      has a beautiful nature,&rdquo; Henrietta went on. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve studied him for many
+      years and I see right through him. He&rsquo;s as clear as the style of a good
+      prospectus. He&rsquo;s not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the
+      other hand he doesn&rsquo;t exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in
+      the United States.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re changed indeed! It&rsquo;s the first time I&rsquo;ve ever
+      heard you say anything against your native land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only say that we&rsquo;re too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after
+      all, isn&rsquo;t a vulgar fault. But I <i>am</i> changed; a woman has to change
+      a good deal to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll be very happy. You will at last&mdash;over here&mdash;see
+      something of the inner life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the key to the mystery,
+      I believe. I couldn&rsquo;t endure to be kept off. Now I&rsquo;ve as good a right as
+      any one!&rdquo; she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly diverted, but
+      there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta, after all, had
+      confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she had hitherto
+      regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a
+      disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was
+      subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had
+      not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+      marrying him&mdash;there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment,
+      to Isabel&rsquo;s sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A
+      little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was
+      original. But she didn&rsquo;t see how Henrietta could give up her country. She
+      herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her country as
+      it had been Henrietta&rsquo;s. She presently asked her if she had enjoyed her
+      visit to Lady Pensil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;she didn&rsquo;t know what to make of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was that very enjoyable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much so, because she&rsquo;s supposed to be a master mind. She thinks she
+      knows everything; but she doesn&rsquo;t understand a woman of my modern type. It
+      would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better or a little
+      worse. She&rsquo;s so puzzled; I believe she thinks it&rsquo;s my duty to go and do
+      something immoral. She thinks it&rsquo;s immoral that I should marry her
+      brother; but, after all, that isn&rsquo;t immoral enough. And she&rsquo;ll never
+      understand my mixture&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not so intelligent as her brother then,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;He appears
+      to have understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, he hasn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Miss Stackpole with decision. &ldquo;I really believe
+      that&rsquo;s what he wants to marry me for&mdash;just to find out the mystery
+      and the proportions of it. That&rsquo;s a fixed idea&mdash;a kind of
+      fascination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good in you to humour it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh well,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve something to find out too!&rdquo; And Isabel
+      saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She
+      was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington Station,
+      where she found herself, at ten o&rsquo;clock, in the company both of Miss
+      Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his perplexities
+      lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found out at least the
+      great point&mdash;that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting in initiative.
+      It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had been on his guard
+      against this deficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Henrietta has told me, and I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel said as she gave him
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you think it awfully odd,&rdquo; Mr. Bantling replied, resting on
+      his neat umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think it awfully odd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t think it so awfully odd as I do. But I&rsquo;ve always rather liked
+      striking out a line,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even quieter
+      than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small household,
+      and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that instead of
+      being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown into the
+      drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to her aunt.
+      She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to come to her.
+      She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared&mdash;as scared as
+      if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious things, watching
+      her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark and cold; the dusk
+      was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The house was perfectly
+      still&mdash;with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it had filled all the
+      place for days before the death of her uncle. She left the drawing-room
+      and wandered about&mdash;strolled into the library and along the gallery
+      of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep made an echo.
+      Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had seen years before;
+      it might have been only yesterday she had stood there. She envied the
+      security of valuable &ldquo;pieces&rdquo; which change by no hair&rsquo;s breadth, only grow
+      in value, while their owners lose inch by inch youth, happiness, beauty;
+      and she became aware that she was walking about as her aunt had done on
+      the day she had come to see her in Albany. She was changed enough since
+      then&mdash;that had been the beginning. It suddenly struck her that if her
+      Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just that way and found her alone,
+      everything might have been different. She might have had another life and
+      she might have been a woman more blest. She stopped in the gallery in
+      front of a small picture&mdash;a charming and precious Bonington&mdash;upon
+      which her eyes rested a long time. But she was not looking at the picture;
+      she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in Albany she
+      would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the big
+      uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as
+      bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a repository of
+      latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most undecorated
+      fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first time, if her
+      remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a
+      gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel&rsquo;s hot cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve kept you waiting because I&rsquo;ve been sitting with Ralph,&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Touchett said. &ldquo;The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her place.
+      He has a man who&rsquo;s supposed to look after him, but the man&rsquo;s good for
+      nothing; he&rsquo;s always looking out of the window&mdash;as if there were
+      anything to see! I didn&rsquo;t wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be
+      sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the
+      nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find I know it better even than I thought; I&rsquo;ve been walking
+      everywhere,&rdquo; Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn&rsquo;t move. But I&rsquo;m not sure that it&rsquo;s
+      always sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he see me? Can he speak to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. &ldquo;You can try him,&rdquo; was the
+      limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her
+      room. &ldquo;I thought they had taken you there; but it&rsquo;s not my house, it&rsquo;s
+      Ralph&rsquo;s; and I don&rsquo;t know what they do. They must at least have taken your
+      luggage; I don&rsquo;t suppose you&rsquo;ve brought much. Not that I care, however. I
+      believe they&rsquo;ve given you the same room you had before; when Ralph heard
+      you were coming he said you must have that one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he say anything else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, he doesn&rsquo;t chatter as he used!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett as she
+      preceded her niece up the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept in
+      since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous; Mrs.
+      Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. &ldquo;Is there really no
+      hope?&rdquo; our young woman asked as she stood before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;it has only been a beautiful one.&rdquo; Isabel found herself already
+      contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by that; there&rsquo;s no beauty without health.
+      That is a very odd dress to travel in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel glanced at her garment. &ldquo;I left Rome at an hour&rsquo;s notice; I took
+      the first that came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to be
+      their principal interest. I wasn&rsquo;t able to tell them&mdash;but they seemed
+      to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black
+      brocade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think I&rsquo;m more brilliant than I am; I&rsquo;m afraid to tell them the
+      truth,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;Lily wrote me you had dined with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she
+      should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been
+      expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to
+      America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn&rsquo;t go for my pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece, whom
+      she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this repast the
+      two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the melancholy
+      dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not to be so dry as
+      she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman&rsquo;s inexpressiveness, her
+      want of regret, of disappointment, came back to her. Unmistakeably she
+      would have found it a blessing to-day to be able to feel a defeat, a
+      mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she were not even missing
+      those enrichments of consciousness and privately trying&mdash;reaching out
+      for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet; the testimony of pain
+      or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other hand perhaps she was
+      afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all it might take her too
+      far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had come over her dimly that
+      she had failed of something, that she saw herself in the future as an old
+      woman without memories. Her little sharp face looked tragical. She told
+      her niece that Ralph had as yet not moved, but that he probably would be
+      able to see her before dinner. And then in a moment she added that he had
+      seen Lord Warburton the day before; an announcement which startled Isabel
+      a little, as it seemed an intimation that this personage was in the
+      neighbourhood and that an accident might bring them together. Such an
+      accident would not be happy; she had not come to England to struggle again
+      with Lord Warburton. She none the less presently said to her aunt that he
+      had been very kind to Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has something else to think of now,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett returned. And she
+      paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant. But
+      her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished to
+      gain a moment. &ldquo;Ah yes&mdash;the House of Lords and all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not thinking of the Lords; he&rsquo;s thinking of the ladies. At least
+      he&rsquo;s thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he&rsquo;s engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, to be married!&rdquo; Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.
+      Poor Ralph can&rsquo;t go to the wedding, though I believe it&rsquo;s to take place
+      very soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who&rsquo;s the young lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia&mdash;something of
+      that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;It must be a sudden decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just
+      been made public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her aunt
+      was watching her&mdash;looking for the signs of some imputed soreness, and
+      the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this kind
+      enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone almost of
+      relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that ladies, even
+      married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as an offence to
+      themselves. Isabel&rsquo;s first care therefore was to show that however that
+      might be in general she was not offended now. But meanwhile, as I say, her
+      heart beat faster; and if she sat for some moments thoughtful&mdash;she
+      presently forgot Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s observation&mdash;it was not because she
+      had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed half Europe; it halted,
+      panting, and even trembling a little, in the city of Rome. She figured
+      herself announcing to her husband that Lord Warburton was to lead a bride
+      to the altar, and she was of course not aware how extremely wan she must
+      have looked while she made this intellectual effort. But at last she
+      collected herself and said to her aunt: &ldquo;He was sure to do it some time or
+      other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the head.
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, you&rsquo;re beyond me!&rdquo; she cried suddenly. They went on with
+      their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was
+      all over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A
+      servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him to
+      leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her hands folded
+      on the edge of the table. &ldquo;I should like to ask you three questions,&rdquo; she
+      observed when the servant had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three are a great many.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do with less; I&rsquo;ve been thinking. They&rsquo;re all very good ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of. The best questions are the worst,&rdquo; Isabel
+      answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left
+      the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows, she
+      felt herself followed by her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever been sorry you didn&rsquo;t marry Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett
+      enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. &ldquo;No, dear aunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your believing me&rsquo;s an immense temptation,&rdquo; she declared, smiling still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A temptation to lie? I don&rsquo;t recommend you to do that, for when I&rsquo;m
+      misinformed I&rsquo;m as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don&rsquo;t mean to crow over
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my husband who doesn&rsquo;t get on with me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could have told him he wouldn&rsquo;t. I don&rsquo;t call that crowing over <i>you</i>,&rdquo;
+       Mrs. Touchett added. &ldquo;Do you still like Serena Merle?&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as I once did. But it doesn&rsquo;t matter, for she&rsquo;s going to America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To America? She must have done something very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made a convenience of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett, &ldquo;so she did of me! She does of every one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll make a convenience of America,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling again and
+      glad that her aunt&rsquo;s questions were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
+      dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
+      there, but after a while went away&mdash;the local doctor, who had
+      attended his father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a
+      day; he was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew
+      Hope, but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked
+      his mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further
+      need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew
+      that her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel&rsquo;s arrival Ralph gave no
+      sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised
+      himself and said he knew that she had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no one
+      had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in the dim
+      light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room. She told
+      the nurse she might go&mdash;she herself would sit with him for the rest
+      of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had moved
+      his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take it. But he
+      was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained perfectly
+      still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a long time&mdash;till
+      the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He might have passed
+      away while she looked at him; he was already the figure and pattern of
+      death. She had thought him far gone in Rome, and this was worse; there was
+      but one change possible now. There was a strange tranquillity in his face;
+      it was as still as the lid of a box. With this he was a mere lattice of
+      bones; when he opened his eyes to greet her it was as if she were looking
+      into immeasurable space. It was not till midnight that the nurse came
+      back; but the hours, to Isabel, had not seemed long; it was exactly what
+      she had come for. If she had come simply to wait she found ample occasion,
+      for he lay three days in a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and
+      at moments seemed to wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed
+      his eyes again, as if he too were waiting for something&mdash;for
+      something that certainly would come. He was so absolutely quiet that it
+      seemed to her what was coming had already arrived; and yet she never lost
+      the sense that they were still together. But they were not always
+      together; there were other hours that she passed in wandering through the
+      empty house and listening for a voice that was not poor Ralph&rsquo;s. She had a
+      constant fear; she thought it possible her husband would write to her. But
+      he remained silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the
+      Countess Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last&mdash;on the evening of the
+      third day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better to-night,&rdquo; he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless dimness
+      of her vigil; &ldquo;I think I can say something.&rdquo; She sank upon her knees
+      beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him not to make
+      an effort&mdash;not to tire himself. His face was of necessity serious&mdash;it
+      was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner apparently
+      had not lost a perception of incongruities. &ldquo;What does it matter if I&rsquo;m
+      tired when I&rsquo;ve all eternity to rest? There&rsquo;s no harm in making an effort
+      when it&rsquo;s the very last of all. Don&rsquo;t people always feel better just
+      before the end? I&rsquo;ve often heard of that; it&rsquo;s what I was waiting for.
+      Ever since you&rsquo;ve been here I thought it would come. I tried two or three
+      times; I was afraid you&rsquo;d get tired of sitting there.&rdquo; He spoke slowly,
+      with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice seemed to come from a
+      distance. When he ceased he lay with his face turned to Isabel and his
+      large unwinking eyes open into her own. &ldquo;It was very good of you to come,&rdquo;
+       he went on. &ldquo;I thought you would; but I wasn&rsquo;t sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not sure either till I came,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the
+      angel of death. It&rsquo;s the most beautiful of all. You&rsquo;ve been like that; as
+      if you were waiting for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for&mdash;for this. This
+      is not death, dear Ralph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for you&mdash;no. There&rsquo;s nothing makes us feel so much alive as to
+      see others die. That&rsquo;s the sensation of life&mdash;the sense that we
+      remain. I&rsquo;ve had it&mdash;even I. But now I&rsquo;m of no use but to give it to
+      others. With me it&rsquo;s all over.&rdquo; And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head
+      further, till it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own.
+      She couldn&rsquo;t see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear.
+      &ldquo;Isabel,&rdquo; he went on suddenly, &ldquo;I wish it were over for you.&rdquo; She answered
+      nothing; she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face.
+      He lay silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. &ldquo;Ah,
+      what is it you have done for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you did for me?&rdquo; she cried, her now extreme agitation half
+      smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
+      things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them
+      supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. &ldquo;You did
+      something once&mdash;you know it. O Ralph, you&rsquo;ve been everything! What
+      have I done for you&mdash;what can I do to-day? I would die if you could
+      live. But I don&rsquo;t wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you.&rdquo;
+       Her voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t lose me&mdash;you&rsquo;ll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be
+      nearer to you than I&rsquo;ve ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in
+      life there&rsquo;s love. Death is good&mdash;but there&rsquo;s no love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thanked you&mdash;I never spoke&mdash;I never was what I should
+      be!&rdquo; Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse
+      herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment,
+      became single and melted together into this present pain. &ldquo;What must you
+      have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I only know
+      to-day because there are people less stupid than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind people,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m glad to leave people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to pray
+      to him. &ldquo;Is it true&mdash;is it true?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True that you&rsquo;ve been stupid? Oh no,&rdquo; said Ralph with a sensible
+      intention of wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you made me rich&mdash;that all I have is yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t speak of that&mdash;that was not happy.&rdquo; Slowly he moved his
+      face toward her again, and they once more saw each other. &ldquo;But for that&mdash;but
+      for that&mdash;!&rdquo; And he paused. &ldquo;I believe I ruined you,&rdquo; he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he seemed
+      already so little of this world. But even if she had not had it she would
+      still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only knowledge that
+      was not pure anguish&mdash;the knowledge that they were looking at the
+      truth together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He married me for the money,&rdquo; she said. She wished to say everything; she
+      was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a little,
+      and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he raised
+      them in a moment, and then, &ldquo;He was greatly in love with you,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn&rsquo;t have married me if I had
+      been poor. I don&rsquo;t hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you to
+      understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that&rsquo;s all
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always understood,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you did, and I didn&rsquo;t like it. But now I like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t hurt me&mdash;you make me very happy.&rdquo; And as Ralph said this
+      there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again,
+      and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. &ldquo;I always understood,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;though it was so strange&mdash;so pitiful. You wanted to look
+      at life for yourself&mdash;but you were not allowed; you were punished for
+      your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;ve been punished,&rdquo; Isabel sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened to her a little, and then continued: &ldquo;Was he very bad about
+      your coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made it very hard for me. But I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over then between you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; I don&rsquo;t think anything&rsquo;s over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going back to him?&rdquo; Ralph gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I can&rsquo;t tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I
+      don&rsquo;t want to think&mdash;I needn&rsquo;t think. I don&rsquo;t care for anything but
+      you, and that&rsquo;s enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on
+      my knees, with you dying in my arms, I&rsquo;m happier than I have been for a
+      long time. And I want you to be happy&mdash;not to think of anything sad;
+      only to feel that I&rsquo;m near you and I love you. Why should there be pain&mdash;?
+      In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That&rsquo;s not the deepest
+      thing; there&rsquo;s something deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+      speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared
+      to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then
+      he murmured simply: &ldquo;You must stay here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to stay&mdash;as long as seems right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As seems right&mdash;as seems right?&rdquo; He repeated her words. &ldquo;Yes, you
+      think a great deal about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course one must. You&rsquo;re very tired,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired. You said just now that pain&rsquo;s not the deepest thing. No&mdash;no.
+      But it&rsquo;s very deep. If I could stay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me you&rsquo;ll always be here,&rdquo; she softly interrupted. It was easy to
+      interrupt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he went on, after a moment: &ldquo;It passes, after all; it&rsquo;s passing now.
+      But love remains. I don&rsquo;t know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I
+      shall find out. There are many things in life. You&rsquo;re very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very old,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll grow young again. That&rsquo;s how I see you. I don&rsquo;t believe&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t believe&mdash;&rdquo; But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She begged him to be quiet now. &ldquo;We needn&rsquo;t speak to understand each
+      other,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for
+      more than a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh Ralph, I&rsquo;m very happy now,&rdquo; she cried through her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And remember this,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that if you&rsquo;ve been hated you&rsquo;ve also
+      been loved. Ah but, Isabel&mdash;<i>adored</i>!&rdquo; he just audibly and
+      lingeringly breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my brother!&rdquo; she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that if
+      she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost with
+      which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled the
+      necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she
+      knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down without
+      undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast the night.
+      She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such waiting was
+      wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the night wore on
+      she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock, but at the time
+      the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up from her pillow as
+      abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant
+      that he was standing there&mdash;a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness
+      of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face&mdash;his kind
+      eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only
+      sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty passed through dark
+      corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the vague light
+      of a hall-window. Outside Ralph&rsquo;s door she stopped a moment, listening,
+      but she seemed to hear only the hush that filled it. She opened the door
+      with a hand as gentle as if she were lifting a veil from the face of the
+      dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting motionless and upright beside the
+      couch of her son, with one of his hands in her own. The doctor was on the
+      other side, with poor Ralph&rsquo;s further wrist resting in his professional
+      fingers. The two nurses were at the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took
+      no notice of Isabel, but the doctor looked at her very hard; then he
+      gently placed Ralph&rsquo;s hand in a proper position, close beside him. The
+      nurse looked at her very hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only
+      looked at what she had come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been
+      in life, and there was a strange resemblance to the face of his father,
+      which, six years before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went
+      to her aunt and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a
+      general thing neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment
+      to this one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and
+      dry-eyed; her acute white face was terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Aunt Lydia,&rdquo; Isabel murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and thank God you&rsquo;ve no child,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the
+      height of the London &ldquo;season,&rdquo; to take a morning train down to a quiet
+      station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which
+      stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this
+      edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself
+      at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself
+      had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It was
+      a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a
+      certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to
+      fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and
+      windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the
+      blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad,
+      since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he
+      was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were
+      tears in Isabel&rsquo;s eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She looked
+      through them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of nature, the
+      sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed heads of good friends.
+      Lord Warburton was there, and a group of gentlemen all unknown to her,
+      several of whom, as she afterwards learned, were connected with the bank;
+      and there were others whom she knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first,
+      with honest Mr. Bantling beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head
+      higher than the rest&mdash;bowing it rather less. During much of the time
+      Isabel was conscious of Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s gaze; he looked at her somewhat
+      harder than he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their
+      eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him;
+      she thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found
+      she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt he
+      had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that pleased
+      him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and something in his
+      attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex intention. She
+      wouldn&rsquo;t meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy in them; he
+      made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the little group he
+      disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to her&mdash;though
+      several spoke to Mrs. Touchett&mdash;was Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta
+      had been crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,
+      and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself
+      that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was
+      fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been greatly
+      in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had left her
+      husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting the hours of
+      her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive. He was not one
+      of the best husbands, but that didn&rsquo;t alter the case. Certain obligations
+      were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were quite independent of
+      the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel thought of her husband
+      as little as might be; but now that she was at a distance, beyond its
+      spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. There was a
+      penetrating chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade
+      of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her eyes,
+      trying not to think. She knew she must decide, but she decided nothing;
+      her coming itself had not been a decision. On that occasion she had simply
+      started. Osmond gave no sound and now evidently would give none; he would
+      leave it all to her. From Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very
+      simple: her father had told her not to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel&rsquo;s company, but offered her no assistance;
+      she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but with
+      perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs. Touchett
+      was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she managed to
+      extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion that, after
+      all, such things happened to other people and not to herself. Death was
+      disagreeable, but in this case it was her son&rsquo;s death, not her own; she
+      had never flattered herself that her own would be disagreeable to any one
+      but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than poor Ralph, who had left all
+      the commodities of life behind him, and indeed all the security; since the
+      worst of dying was, to Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s mind, that it exposed one to be
+      taken advantage of. For herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so
+      good as that. She made known to Isabel very punctually&mdash;it was the
+      evening her son was buried&mdash;several of Ralph&rsquo;s testamentary
+      arrangements. He had told her everything, had consulted her about
+      everything. He left her no money; of course she had no need of money. He
+      left her the furniture of Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books
+      and the use of the place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The
+      money produced by the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital
+      for poor persons suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this
+      portion of the will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his
+      property, which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in
+      various bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his
+      father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small
+      legacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them are extremely peculiar,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett; &ldquo;he has left
+      considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I
+      asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at
+      various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn&rsquo;t
+      like him, for he hasn&rsquo;t left you a penny. It was his opinion that you had
+      been handsomely treated by his father, which I&rsquo;m bound to say I think you
+      were&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The
+      pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one by one,
+      as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Lord
+      Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library? It sounds
+      like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Stackpole&mdash;&lsquo;in
+      recognition of her services to literature.&rsquo; Does he mean her following him
+      up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It contains a great many
+      rare and valuable books, and as she can&rsquo;t carry it about the world in her
+      trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course
+      at Christie&rsquo;s, and with the proceeds she&rsquo;ll set up a newspaper. Will that
+      be a service to literature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+      interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her
+      arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than
+      to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one of
+      the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She was
+      quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her
+      command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony in
+      the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes often
+      wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which looked down
+      the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest vehicle approach
+      the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in rather an uncomfortable
+      attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had a high standard of
+      courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under the circumstances,
+      that he should have taken the trouble to come down from London to call on
+      Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett he had come to see, and not
+      Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the validity of this thesis Isabel
+      presently stepped out of the house and wandered away into the park. Since
+      her arrival at Gardencourt she had been but little out of doors, the
+      weather being unfavourable for visiting the grounds. This evening,
+      however, was fine, and at first it struck her as a happy thought to have
+      come out. The theory I have just mentioned was plausible enough, but it
+      brought her little rest, and if you had seen her pacing about you would
+      have said she had a bad conscience. She was not pacified when at the end
+      of a quarter of an hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw
+      Mrs. Touchett emerge from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt
+      had evidently proposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search
+      of her. She was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance,
+      would have drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had
+      been seen and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at
+      Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she
+      observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his
+      hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons
+      apparently were silent; but Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s thin little glance, as she
+      directed it toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed
+      to say with cutting sharpness: &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the eminently amenable nobleman you
+      might have married!&rdquo; When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,
+      that was not what they said. They only said &ldquo;This is rather awkward, you
+      know, and I depend upon you to help me.&rdquo; He was very grave, very proper
+      and, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without a
+      smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile. He
+      looked extremely selfconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Touchett. &ldquo;He tells me he didn&rsquo;t know you were still here. I know he&rsquo;s an
+      old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I brought
+      him out to see for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back in time
+      for dinner,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s companion rather irrelevantly explained. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      so glad to find you&rsquo;ve not gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not here for long, you know,&rdquo; Isabel said with a certain eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose not; but I hope it&rsquo;s for some weeks. You came to England sooner
+      than&mdash;a&mdash;than you thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I came very suddenly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the
+      grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton
+      hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking
+      about her husband&mdash;rather confusedly&mdash;and then had checked
+      himself. He continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it
+      becoming in a place over which death had just passed, or for more personal
+      reasons. If he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate
+      that he had the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of
+      that. Isabel thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for
+      that was another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were
+      still here&mdash;if they had thought you would see them,&rdquo; Lord Warburton
+      went on. &ldquo;Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two? You
+      know there&rsquo;s always that old promise.&rdquo; And his lordship coloured a little
+      as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more familiar
+      air. &ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;m not right in saying that just now; of course you&rsquo;re not
+      thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters
+      are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days; and if you could come
+      then&mdash;as you say you&rsquo;re not to be very long in England&mdash;I would
+      see that there should be literally no one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be there
+      with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you extremely,&rdquo; she contented herself with saying; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I
+      hardly know about Whitsuntide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have your promise&mdash;haven&rsquo;t I?&mdash;for some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked at
+      her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was that&mdash;as
+      had happened before&mdash;she felt sorry for him. &ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t
+      miss your train,&rdquo; she said. And then she added: &ldquo;I wish you every
+      happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. &ldquo;Ah yes,
+      6.40; I haven&rsquo;t much time, but I&rsquo;ve a fly at the door. Thank you very
+      much.&rdquo; It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having
+      reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. &ldquo;Good-bye,
+      Mrs. Osmond; good-bye.&rdquo; He shook hands with her, without meeting her eyes,
+      and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to them. With
+      her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him
+      move with long steps across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very sure he&rsquo;s to be married?&rdquo; Isabel asked of her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and he
+      accepted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo;&mdash;while her aunt returned to the
+      house and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it up, but she still thought of it&mdash;thought of it while she
+      strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the acres
+      of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a rustic
+      bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object
+      recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor even that
+      she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something important had
+      happened to her&mdash;that the place had an air of association. Then she
+      remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before, when a
+      servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar Goodwood
+      informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had
+      read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing that he
+      should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an interesting,
+      bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have something to say to
+      her. She wouldn&rsquo;t sit down on it now&mdash;she felt rather afraid of it.
+      She only stood before it, and while she stood the past came back to her in
+      one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are
+      visited at odd hours. The effect of this agitation was a sudden sense of
+      being very tired, under the influence of which she overcame her scruples
+      and sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was restless and
+      unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen her there,
+      you would have admired the justice of the former epithet, you would at
+      least have allowed that at this moment she was the image of a victim of
+      idleness. Her attitude had a singular absence of purpose; her hands,
+      hanging at her sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her
+      eyes gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her to the
+      house; the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early and had tea at an
+      indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position she could not have
+      told you; but the twilight had grown thick when she became aware that she
+      was not alone. She quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then
+      saw what had become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar
+      Goodwood, who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on
+      the unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to
+      her in the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised
+      her of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started
+      forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked
+      like violence, but felt like&mdash;she knew not what, he grasped her by
+      the wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he
+      had not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was
+      something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he had
+      looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present it was
+      worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to her&mdash;beside
+      her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to her
+      that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took
+      but an instant, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning
+      her eyes upon her visitant. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve frightened me,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;but if I did a little, no matter. I came
+      from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn&rsquo;t come here directly.
+      There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took a fly that was
+      there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I don&rsquo;t know who he
+      was, but I didn&rsquo;t want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So
+      I&rsquo;ve been waiting and walking about. I&rsquo;ve walked all over, and I was just
+      coming to the house when I saw you here. There was a keeper, or someone,
+      who met me; but that was all right, because I had made his acquaintance
+      when I came here with your cousin. Is that gentleman gone? Are you really
+      alone? I want to speak to you.&rdquo; Goodwood spoke very fast; he was as
+      excited as when they had parted in Rome. Isabel had hoped that condition
+      would subside; and she shrank into herself as she perceived that, on the
+      contrary, he had only let out sail. She had a new sensation; he had never
+      produced it before; it was a feeling of danger. There was indeed something
+      really formidable in his resolution. She gazed straight before her; he,
+      with a hand on each knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face.
+      The twilight seemed to darken round them. &ldquo;I want to speak to you,&rdquo; he
+      repeated; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve something particular to say. I don&rsquo;t want to trouble you&mdash;as
+      I did the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I
+      couldn&rsquo;t help it; I knew I was wrong. But I&rsquo;m not wrong now; please don&rsquo;t
+      think I am,&rdquo; he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment into
+      entreaty. &ldquo;I came here to-day for a purpose. It&rsquo;s very different. It was
+      vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She couldn&rsquo;t have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or
+      because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she
+      listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep
+      into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and it
+      was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. &ldquo;How can you help
+      me?&rdquo; she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had said
+      seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By inducing you to trust me. Now I know&mdash;to-day I know. Do you
+      remember what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But
+      to-day I know on good authority; everything&rsquo;s clear to me to-day. It was a
+      good thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,
+      a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He
+      explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of your
+      family and he left you&mdash;so long as you should be in England&mdash;to
+      my care,&rdquo; said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. &ldquo;Do you know
+      what he said to me the last time I saw him&mdash;as he lay there where he
+      died? He said: &lsquo;Do everything you can for her; do everything she&rsquo;ll let
+      you.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel suddenly got up. &ldquo;You had no business to talk about me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not&mdash;why not, when we talked in that way?&rdquo; he demanded,
+      following her fast. &ldquo;And he was dying&mdash;when a man&rsquo;s dying it&rsquo;s
+      different.&rdquo; She checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was
+      listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that
+      last time. That had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had
+      an idea, which she scented in all her being. &ldquo;But it doesn&rsquo;t matter!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem of
+      her garment. &ldquo;If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have known
+      all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin&rsquo;s funeral to see
+      what&rsquo;s the matter with you. You can&rsquo;t deceive me any more; for God&rsquo;s sake
+      be honest with a man who&rsquo;s so honest with you. You&rsquo;re the most unhappy of
+      women, and your husband&rsquo;s the deadliest of fiends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned on him as if he had struck her. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s
+      necessary to defend him. But I won&rsquo;t say another word against him; I&rsquo;ll
+      speak only of you,&rdquo; Goodwood added quickly. &ldquo;How can you pretend you&rsquo;re
+      not heart-broken? You don&rsquo;t know what to do&mdash;you don&rsquo;t know where to
+      turn. It&rsquo;s too late to play a part; didn&rsquo;t you leave all that behind you
+      in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too&mdash;what it would
+      cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it will&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he flared almost into anger: &ldquo;give me one word of truth! When I know such
+      a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you? What
+      would you think of me if I should stand still and see you go back to your
+      reward? &lsquo;It&rsquo;s awful, what she&rsquo;ll have to pay for it!&rsquo;&mdash;that&rsquo;s what
+      Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn&rsquo;t I? He was such a near
+      relation!&rdquo; cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d sooner
+      have been shot than let another man say those things to me; but he was
+      different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got home&mdash;when
+      he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I understand all about it:
+      you&rsquo;re afraid to go back. You&rsquo;re perfectly alone; you don&rsquo;t know where to
+      turn. You can&rsquo;t turn anywhere; you know that perfectly. Now it is
+      therefore that I want you to think of <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To think of &lsquo;you&rsquo;?&rdquo; Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The
+      idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed
+      large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had
+      been a comet in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade you
+      to trust me,&rdquo; Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining eyes.
+      &ldquo;Why should you go back&mdash;why should you go through that ghastly
+      form?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get away from you!&rdquo; she answered. But this expressed only a little of
+      what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had
+      believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert,
+      at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of
+      the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the
+      very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced open
+      her set teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that he
+      would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was
+      perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it
+      all out. &ldquo;I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you&rsquo;ll only for
+      once listen to me. It&rsquo;s too monstrous of you to think of sinking back into
+      that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It&rsquo;s you
+      that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t we be happy&mdash;when it&rsquo;s here before us, when it&rsquo;s so easy?
+      I&rsquo;m yours for ever&mdash;for ever and ever. Here I stand; I&rsquo;m as firm as a
+      rock. What have you to care about? You&rsquo;ve no children; that perhaps would
+      be an obstacle. As it is you&rsquo;ve nothing to consider. You must save what
+      you can of your life; you mustn&rsquo;t lose it all simply because you&rsquo;ve lost a
+      part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of
+      the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the
+      world. We&rsquo;ve nothing to do with all that; we&rsquo;re quite out of it; we look
+      at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next is
+      nothing; it&rsquo;s the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman
+      deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life&mdash;in
+      going down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer,
+      and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under
+      the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that has
+      the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+      question is between ourselves&mdash;and to say that is to settle it! Were
+      we born to rot in our misery&mdash;were we born to be afraid? I never knew
+      <i>you</i> afraid! If you&rsquo;ll only trust me, how little you will be
+      disappointed! The world&rsquo;s all before us&mdash;and the world&rsquo;s very big. I
+      know something about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were
+      pressing something that hurt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world&rsquo;s very small,&rdquo; she said at random; she had an immense desire to
+      appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say something;
+      but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never seemed so
+      large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form of a mighty
+      sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here
+      was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she
+      believed everything he said; but she believed just then that to let him
+      take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying. This
+      belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself
+      sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order
+      to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, be mine as I&rsquo;m yours!&rdquo; she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly
+      given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,
+      through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the metaphysicians
+      say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest of it, were in her
+      own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of this. &ldquo;Do me the
+      greatest kindness of all,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I beseech you to go away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t say that. Don&rsquo;t kill me!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. &ldquo;As you love
+      me, as you pity me, leave me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt
+      his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like white
+      lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was
+      extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard
+      manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his
+      figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with
+      this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water
+      following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned
+      she was free. She never looked about her; she only darted from the spot.
+      There were lights in the windows of the house; they shone far across the
+      lawn. In an extraordinarily short time&mdash;for the distance was
+      considerable&mdash;she had moved through the darkness (for she saw
+      nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about
+      her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She had
+      not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very straight path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in
+      Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.
+      He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened
+      and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and
+      jacket; she was on the point of going out. &ldquo;Oh, good-morning,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I
+      was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good
+      deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. &ldquo;Pray
+      what led you to suppose she was here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she had
+      come to London. He believed she was to come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Miss Stackpole held him&mdash;with an intention of perfect kindness&mdash;in
+      suspense. &ldquo;She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this morning
+      she started for Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the
+      doorstep. &ldquo;Oh, she started&mdash;?&rdquo; he stammered. And without finishing
+      his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn&rsquo;t
+      otherwise move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out
+      her hand and grasped his arm. &ldquo;Look here, Mr. Goodwood,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;just
+      you wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On which he looked up at her&mdash;but only to guess, from her face, with
+      a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him
+      with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his
+      life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now
+      the key to patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
diff --git a/2834.txt b/2834.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6751c86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2834.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12586 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portrait of a Lady
+       Volume 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Posting Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2834]
+Release Date: September, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+VOLUME II (of II)
+
+
+By Henry James
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his
+friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they
+had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying
+them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when
+he had obtained his admittance--it was one of the secondary
+theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act
+had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After
+scanning two or three tiers of boxes he perceived in one of the largest
+of these receptacles a lady whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was
+seated facing the stage and partly screened by the curtain of the box;
+and beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They
+appeared to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their
+companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the relative
+coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on the interesting
+pair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the harmony. At
+last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and this accident determined
+him. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper
+regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his
+hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.
+
+"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely
+and want company," was Ralph's greeting.
+
+"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted."
+
+"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want me. Then
+Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice--Miss
+Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either.
+The opera's very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like
+peacocks. I feel very low."
+
+"You had better go home," Lord Warburton said without affectation.
+
+"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over
+her."
+
+"She seems to have plenty of friends."
+
+"Yes, that's why I must watch," said Ralph with the same large
+mock-melancholy.
+
+"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me."
+
+"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about."
+
+Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to a
+friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer
+temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr.
+Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before and who, after he
+came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in
+the subjects of allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor
+that Miss Archer had, in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a
+slight exaltation; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing,
+quickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been
+mistaken on this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence
+of mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to
+indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties. Poor
+Lord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him,
+formally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with
+such arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of
+reparation--preparation? Her voice had tricks of sweetness, but why play
+them on HIM? The others came back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera
+began again. The box was large, and there was room for him to remain
+if he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an
+hour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows
+on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from
+his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young
+lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was
+another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord
+Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however;
+after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said
+nothing to detain him, but it didn't prevent his being puzzled again.
+Why should she mark so one of his values--quite the wrong one--when she
+would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was
+angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+Verdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and
+walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic
+streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under
+the stars.
+
+"What's the character of that gentleman?" Osmond asked of Isabel after
+he had retired.
+
+"Irreproachable--don't you see it?"
+
+"He owns about half England; that's his character," Henrietta remarked.
+"That's what they call a free country!"
+
+"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!" said Gilbert Osmond.
+
+"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human beings?"
+cried Miss Stackpole. "He owns his tenants and has thousands of them.
+It's pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me.
+I don't insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences."
+
+"It seems to me you own a human being or two," Mr. Bantling suggested
+jocosely. "I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me."
+
+"Lord Warburton's a great radical," Isabel said. "He has very advanced
+opinions."
+
+"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a gigantic
+iron fence, some thirty miles round," Henrietta announced for the
+information of Mr. Osmond. "I should like him to converse with a few of
+our Boston radicals."
+
+"Don't they approve of iron fences?" asked Mr. Bantling.
+
+"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were
+talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass."
+
+"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?" Osmond went on,
+questioning Isabel.
+
+"Well enough for all the use I have for him."
+
+"And how much of a use is that?"
+
+"Well, I like to like him."
+
+"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!" said Osmond.
+
+"No"--she considered--"keep that for liking to DISlike."
+
+"Do you wish to provoke me then," Osmond laughed, "to a passion for
+HIM?"
+
+She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a
+disproportionate gravity. "No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I should ever
+dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate," she more easily
+added, "is a very nice man."
+
+"Of great ability?" her friend enquired.
+
+"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks."
+
+"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking. How
+detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be clever and
+handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your
+high favour! That's a man I could envy."
+
+Isabel considered him with interest. "You seem to me to be always
+envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to
+destroy the people--I only want to BE them. You see it would destroy
+only myself."
+
+"You'd like to be the Pope?" said Isabel.
+
+"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But
+why"--Osmond reverted--"do you speak of your friend as poor?"
+
+"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they've
+hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness," said Ralph,
+joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so
+transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
+
+"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows
+as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+
+"It serves him right if you have," said Henrietta while the curtain rose
+for the ballet.
+
+Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four
+hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she
+encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the
+lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come
+in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert
+Osmond had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase,
+entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her
+alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery.
+"And I'm leaving Rome," he added. "I must bid you goodbye." Isabel,
+inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps
+because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was
+thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret,
+but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which
+made him look at her rather unlightedly. "I'm afraid you'll think me
+very 'volatile.' I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop."
+
+"Oh no; you could easily change your mind."
+
+"That's what I have done."
+
+"Bon voyage then."
+
+"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me," said his lordship quite
+dismally.
+
+"Not in the least. But I hate partings."
+
+"You don't care what I do," he went on pitifully.
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "Ah," she said, "you're not keeping your
+promise!"
+
+He coloured like a boy of fifteen. "If I'm not, then it's because I
+can't; and that's why I'm going."
+
+"Good-bye then."
+
+"Good-bye." He lingered still, however. "When shall I see you again?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: "Some
+day after you're married."
+
+"That will never be. It will be after you are."
+
+"That will do as well," she smiled.
+
+"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye."
+
+They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the
+shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of
+these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their
+beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence.
+It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of
+Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude;
+which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on
+the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially,
+because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The
+golden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so
+vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw
+a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows
+of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made
+them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm
+of their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their
+absent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would
+sound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the
+polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all
+before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater
+because she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,
+her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional
+tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and
+then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At
+the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance
+of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands
+behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. "I'm
+surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.
+
+"So I have--the best." And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
+
+"Do you call them better company than an English peer?"
+
+"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago." She got up, speaking with
+intention a little dryly.
+
+Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest
+of his question. "I'm afraid that what I heard the other evening is
+true: you're rather cruel to that nobleman."
+
+Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. "It's not true. I'm
+scrupulously kind."
+
+"That's exactly what I mean!" Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such
+happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was
+fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and
+now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example
+of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of
+taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in
+his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert
+Osmond had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so
+much for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for
+its solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing
+him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of
+such conduct as Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he might
+marry should have done something of that sort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly
+qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond's personal
+merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of
+that gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond
+spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended
+by affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have
+seen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which
+perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman was
+obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His
+good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his
+production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of
+a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man
+could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost
+applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would
+never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a
+knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what
+he called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too
+precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she
+had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as
+smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he
+was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing
+days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow
+irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the
+small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with
+everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at
+once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,
+going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to
+which he prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he
+showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining
+to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of
+life by a tribute to the muse.
+
+He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have
+admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the
+fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his
+spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever
+been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was
+simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human
+heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
+irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded
+himself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not been
+spoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed before I die
+I shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt to reason as if
+"earning" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and
+might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his
+career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here
+and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,
+some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had
+been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that
+is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional
+effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The
+desire to have something or other to show for his "parts"--to show
+somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went
+on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected
+him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs
+of beer to advertise what one could "stand." If an anonymous drawing on
+a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this
+peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as
+from the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of
+style. His "style" was what the girl had discovered with a little help;
+and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world
+without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing FOR him,
+and he would not have waited in vain.
+
+Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young
+lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave
+Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other
+views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was
+very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know
+she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had
+done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as
+his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the
+cool shadow of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten
+days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.
+It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This
+exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our
+friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was
+to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the
+girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful
+American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable
+staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in
+travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages
+several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making
+arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a
+wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;
+the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the
+pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and
+painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly
+to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,
+bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,
+presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in
+her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient
+to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink
+tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale
+rosiness over the scene.
+
+"You say you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.
+
+"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the
+world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what
+you choose; you can roam through space."
+
+"Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it on the
+way."
+
+"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a
+parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on
+your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see
+you when you're tired and satiated," Osmond added in a moment. "I shall
+prefer you in that state."
+
+Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. "You turn
+things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,
+without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--you think them
+ridiculous."
+
+"Where do you find that?"
+
+She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the
+paper-knife. "You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about
+as if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put
+into my power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. You
+think it bold and ungraceful."
+
+"I think it beautiful," said Osmond. "You know my opinions--I've treated
+you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one ought
+to make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;
+but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be
+trying to do with your own."
+
+She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world is bad,
+is stupid art."
+
+"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good."
+
+"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me," she went
+on.
+
+Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their
+conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had
+seen it before. "You have one!"
+
+"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."
+
+"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries
+I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old
+lacquer?"
+
+"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.
+
+"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong in
+your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it into your
+head."
+
+"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should
+have the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything and I
+know nothing."
+
+"The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond.
+"Besides," he added as if it were a point to be made, "I don't know
+everything."
+
+Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she
+was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased
+her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have
+likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress
+overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages
+or historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That
+most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a
+reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done
+the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were
+a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be
+as well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure wore
+already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from
+which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the
+breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this
+strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better
+not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the
+greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a
+pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her
+silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. "Go
+everywhere," he said at last, in a low, kind voice; "do everything; get
+everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant."
+
+"What do you mean by being triumphant?"
+
+"Well, doing what you like."
+
+"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things
+one likes is often very tiresome."
+
+"Exactly," said Osmond with his quiet quickness. "As I intimated just
+now, you'll be tired some day." He paused a moment and then he went on:
+"I don't know whether I had better not wait till then for something I
+want to say to you."
+
+"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when
+I'm tired," Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+
+"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe,
+though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'"
+
+"Not even when I lose my temper?"
+
+"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful." Osmond
+spoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great moments to see."
+
+"If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.
+
+"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very
+seriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
+bent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to say to you," he went on at
+last, looking up, "is that I find I'm in love with you."
+
+She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"
+
+"Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes to her.
+"No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must
+say it now." She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped
+herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this
+situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the
+critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply
+respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. "I'm
+absolutely in love with you."
+
+He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke
+for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time
+they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow
+the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have said
+which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful
+and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,
+morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she
+had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. "Oh don't say
+that, please," she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread
+of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread
+great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have
+banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,
+that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there
+like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to
+begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
+
+"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said Osmond. "I've
+too little to offer you. What I have--it's enough for me; but it's not
+enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages
+of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it
+can't offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It
+gives me pleasure, I assure you," he went on, standing there before her,
+considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken
+up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,
+refined, slightly ravaged face. "It gives me no pain, because it's
+perfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most important woman in
+the world."
+
+Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking
+she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an
+expression of any such complacency. "You don't offend me; but you
+ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,
+troubled." "Incommoded," she heard herself saying that, and it struck
+her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
+
+"I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. But
+if it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave
+something that I may not be ashamed of."
+
+"I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm not
+overwhelmed," said Isabel with rather a pale smile. "I'm not too
+troubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome to-morrow."
+
+"Of course I don't agree with you there."
+
+"I don't at all KNOW you," she added abruptly; and then she coloured as
+she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord
+Warburton.
+
+"If you were not going away you'd know me better."
+
+"I shall do that some other time."
+
+"I hope so. I'm very easy to know."
+
+"No, no," she emphatically answered--"there you're not sincere. You're
+not easy to know; no one could be less so."
+
+"Well," he laughed, "I said that because I know myself. It may be a
+boast, but I do."
+
+"Very likely; but you're very wise."
+
+"So are you, Miss Archer!" Osmond exclaimed.
+
+"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had
+better go. Good-night."
+
+"God bless you!" said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed
+to surrender. After which he added: "If we meet again you'll find me as
+you leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same."
+
+"Thank you very much. Good-bye."
+
+There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go of
+his own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. "There's one thing more.
+I haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you
+must do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like to
+ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and
+it's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry
+to leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes."
+
+"She doesn't even wish it!" Isabel broke out strangely.
+
+Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match
+these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: "Ah well, it's
+proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper;
+I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't
+know me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for
+propriety."
+
+"You're not conventional?" Isabel gravely asked.
+
+"I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm
+convention itself. You don't understand that?" And he paused a moment,
+smiling. "I should like to explain it." Then with a sudden, quick,
+bright naturalness, "Do come back again," he pleaded. "There are so many
+things we might talk about."
+
+She stood there with lowered eyes. "What service did you speak of just
+now?"
+
+"Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at
+the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my
+ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much," said Gilbert
+Osmond gently.
+
+"It will be a great pleasure to me to go," Isabel answered. "I'll tell
+her what you say. Once more good-bye."
+
+On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood
+a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of
+deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with
+folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not
+diminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something
+that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but
+here, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke
+down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can
+only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether
+natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last
+vague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked
+ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the
+winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and
+Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought
+very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried
+his companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's
+preference--hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme
+of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little
+trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling's aid. Isabel was
+to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs.
+Touchett's departure, and she determined to devote the last of these
+to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for
+a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame
+Merle's. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the
+point of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle
+in the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that
+country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, "forever")
+seemed to Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense
+crenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious
+privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had
+asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention that he had
+also made her a declaration of love.
+
+"Ah, comme cela se trouve!" Madame Merle exclaimed. "I myself have been
+thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I
+go off."
+
+"We can go together then," Isabel reasonably said: "reasonably" because
+the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had
+prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like
+it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic
+sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
+
+That personage finely meditated. "After all, why should we both go;
+having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?"
+
+"Very good; I can easily go alone."
+
+"I don't know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome
+bachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!"
+
+Isabel stared. "When Mr. Osmond's away what does it matter?"
+
+"They don't know he's away, you see."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify."
+
+"If you were going why shouldn't I?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman."
+
+"Granting all that, you've not promised."
+
+"How much you think of your promises!" said the elder woman in mild
+mockery.
+
+"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?"
+
+"You're right," Madame Merle audibly reflected. "I really think you wish
+to be kind to the child."
+
+"I wish very much to be kind to her."
+
+"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have
+come if you hadn't. Or rather," Madame Merle added, "DON'T tell her. She
+won't care."
+
+As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
+way which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
+meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
+this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
+the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
+quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
+the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose
+that she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly
+done? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which
+in the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had
+time to explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts
+of things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming
+at the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr.
+Osmond's drawing-room; the little girl was "practising," and Isabel was
+pleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately
+came in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's
+house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an
+hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the
+pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but
+conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel's affairs
+that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her;
+she had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower
+of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our
+admiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned;
+and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
+was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding,
+as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her,
+up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not
+really all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection
+of self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father's visitor,
+or was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that
+Isabel spent in Mr. Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows
+had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there,
+through an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a
+gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her interview
+with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this
+question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure white surface,
+successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor
+talent--only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a
+friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new
+frock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching withal, and she could
+be felt as an easy victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to
+resist, no sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,
+easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where to
+cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had asked leave
+to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy gave her judgement on
+several works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her occupations, her
+father's intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the propriety
+of supplying the information so distinguished a guest would naturally
+expect.
+
+"Please tell me," she said, "did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.
+Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education;
+it isn't finished yet, you know. I don't know what they can do with me
+more; but it appears it's far from finished. Papa told me one day he
+thought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the
+convent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa's
+not rich, and I should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for
+me, because I don't think I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough,
+and I have no memory. For what I'm told, yes--especially when it's
+pleasant; but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who
+was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when she
+was fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to make a dot. You
+don't say it in English? I hope it isn't wrong; I only mean they wished
+to keep the money to marry her. I don't know whether it is for that that
+papa wishes to keep the money--to marry me. It costs so much to marry!"
+Pansy went on with a sigh; "I think papa might make that economy. At
+any rate I'm too young to think about it yet, and I don't care for any
+gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like
+to marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of some
+strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might
+think, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always been
+principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you
+must not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I'm very sorry,
+and he'll be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best.
+That's not a great compliment, for there are not many people. It was
+very kind of you to come to-day--so far from your house; for I'm really
+as yet only a child. Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When
+did YOU give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know
+how old you are, but I don't know whether it's right to ask. At the
+convent they told us that we must never ask the age. I don't like to do
+anything that's not expected; it looks as if one had not been properly
+taught. I myself--I should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left
+directions for everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off
+that side I go into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not
+to get scorched. I always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful.
+In Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I
+practise three hours. I don't play very well. You play yourself? I wish
+very much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea that I should
+hear good music. Madame Merle has played for me several times; that's
+what I like best about Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall
+never have facility. And I've no voice--just a small sound like the
+squeak of a slate-pencil making flourishes."
+
+Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down
+to the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white
+hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child
+good-bye, held her close, looked at her long. "Be very good," she said;
+"give pleasure to your father."
+
+"I think that's what I live for," Pansy answered. "He has not much
+pleasure; he's rather a sad man."
+
+Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it
+almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged
+her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in
+her head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say
+to Pansy about her father; there were things it would have given her
+pleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner
+became conscious of these things than her imagination was hushed with
+horror at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of
+this she would have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where
+he might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed
+state. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She
+rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a
+moment, still holding her small companion, drawing the child's sweet
+slimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obliged
+to confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in
+talking of Gilbert Osmond to this innocent, diminutive creature who
+was so near him. But she said no other word; she only kissed Pansy once
+again. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that
+opened on the court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather
+wistfully beyond. "I may go no further. I've promised papa not to pass
+this door."
+
+"You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable."
+
+"I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?"
+
+"Not for a long time, I'm afraid."
+
+"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl," said Pansy, "but
+I shall always expect you." And the small figure stood in the high, dark
+doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
+the brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider dazzle as it
+opened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval
+sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this
+interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is
+engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after
+her return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the
+incidents just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the
+smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses,
+and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have
+suggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open,
+and though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the
+garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
+warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her
+hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest.
+Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not
+be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should
+pass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through
+the garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She wished
+rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judge
+by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave
+she found herself, and positively more weighted, as by the experience of
+the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged,
+she would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and
+was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the
+frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the measure
+of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She
+flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal
+more of life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If
+her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead
+of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have
+evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have
+been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been
+projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for
+instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's
+wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her
+relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought
+her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and
+tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had
+been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing
+the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies
+in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet,
+even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so
+that while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to
+a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in
+the month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an
+Alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade
+of great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as
+might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had
+afterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with
+costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel,
+who in these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done,
+in a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her
+handkerchief.
+
+Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and
+wonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined
+her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these
+speculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as
+he had always done before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or
+mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law might have done
+or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently
+various. At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young
+woman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for
+instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the
+corner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the
+girl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies. On
+the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the
+probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession of
+fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her
+to offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but
+scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than
+Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being
+somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.
+Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she
+appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs.
+Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of such
+achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had
+expected of Isabel--to give it form and body. Isabel could have done
+as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her
+husband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe
+which the society of that city might not offer her. We know ourselves
+that Isabel had made conquests--whether inferior or not to those she
+might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to
+decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that
+I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories
+public. She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, nor
+had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond's state of mind; and she had had
+no better reason for her silence than that she didn't wish to speak.
+It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of
+romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she
+would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing
+of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career
+a strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's
+silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the
+frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very
+often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost her
+courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as
+inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it
+added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+
+Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching
+its height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver
+things than spending the winter in Paris--Paris had sides by which it
+so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her close
+correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She
+had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and
+wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform
+at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the
+departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her
+children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale;
+she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of
+what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something
+that was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest
+moment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers.
+She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow
+had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and
+she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away;
+she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative
+child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and
+made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked
+back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could
+do whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the
+present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back
+from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon
+had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked
+weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long
+way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive
+enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order
+to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging
+policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle
+of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the
+London streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops,
+the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That
+evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start
+in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching
+at Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by
+Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that
+of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground.
+Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in
+the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from
+the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a
+fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and
+Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Bantling that
+he would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to
+apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt
+replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,
+were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt
+in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one
+"would" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the
+idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank,
+but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She
+easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she
+took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than
+formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext
+for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had
+not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a
+fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should
+make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her
+friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been
+consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two
+ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months
+in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in
+these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among
+the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose
+and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled
+rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup
+after cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess
+circulating incognita, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel's
+invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl's
+uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have
+been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however,
+had no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking
+pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which
+was patroness and which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on
+acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend,
+who had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an
+intimacy of three months Isabel felt she knew her better; her character
+had revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed
+her promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a
+consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related
+from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so
+far as it concerned the late M. Merle, a positive adventurer, she might
+say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years
+before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who
+knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in
+startling and lamentable incidents that her companion wondered a person
+so eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in
+life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable
+insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical,
+carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed
+and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much
+as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted;
+it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer,
+condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once
+said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the "old, old"
+world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of
+a different moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up
+under other stars.
+
+She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course
+the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our
+young woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at
+the shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth,
+that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this
+conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an
+occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had
+raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for
+the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might,
+in certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in
+decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had
+not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain;
+and there were evidently things in the world of which it was not
+advantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since
+it so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, "Heaven forgive
+her, she doesn't understand me!" Absurd as it may seem this discovery
+operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was
+even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the
+light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence;
+but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence.
+Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases
+to grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point of
+equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection,
+in other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other.
+However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for
+her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been.
+I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids
+in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the
+broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point
+designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these
+emotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt
+and Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival
+Gilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during
+which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose
+house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he
+should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.
+Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long
+before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on
+this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin
+was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day
+to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was
+prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood
+at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any
+of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,
+but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,
+and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she
+should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What
+he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing
+in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction
+doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked
+in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,
+and as if she were "worth more" for it, like some curious piece in an
+antiquary's collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
+apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
+tray. "Let the gentleman come in," she said, and continued to gaze out
+of the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had
+heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she
+looked round.
+
+Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to
+foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered
+a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel's
+we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to
+her critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight,
+strong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke
+positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor
+weakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same
+voluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in
+it of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled
+hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This
+gave Isabel time to make a reflexion: "Poor fellow, what great things
+he's capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his
+splendid force! What a pity too that one can't satisfy everybody!" It
+gave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: "I can't tell
+you how I hoped you wouldn't come!"
+
+"I've no doubt of that." And he looked about him for a seat. Not only
+had he come, but he meant to settle.
+
+"You must be very tired," said Isabel, seating herself, and generously,
+as she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+
+"No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?"
+
+"Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?"
+
+"Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.
+These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral."
+
+"That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury
+me!" And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their
+situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly
+clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all
+this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she
+was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked
+at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such
+a want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on
+her as a physical weight.
+
+"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I
+could!" he candidly declared.
+
+"I thank you immensely."
+
+"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man."
+
+"That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a real
+conviction. "If you're not happy yourself others have yet a right to
+be."
+
+"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so.
+I don't mind anything you can say now--I don't feel it. The cruellest
+things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you've
+done I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall
+feel all my life."
+
+Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,
+in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over
+propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than
+touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave
+her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure
+of this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. "When did
+you leave New York?"
+
+He threw up his head as if calculating. "Seventeen days ago."
+
+"You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains."
+
+"I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had been
+able."
+
+"It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood," she coldly smiled.
+
+"Not to you--no. But to me."
+
+"You gain nothing that I see."
+
+"That's for me to judge!"
+
+"Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself." And then, to
+change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.
+He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of
+Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young
+lady had been with him just before he left America. "She came to see
+you?" Isabel then demanded.
+
+"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I
+had got your letter."
+
+"Did you tell her?" Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+
+"Oh no," said Caspar Goodwood simply; "I didn't want to do that. She'll
+hear it quick enough; she hears everything."
+
+"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me," Isabel
+declared, trying to smile again.
+
+Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. "I guess she'll come right
+out," he said.
+
+"On purpose to scold me?"
+
+"I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly."
+
+"I'm glad you tell me that," Isabel said. "I must prepare for her."
+
+Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,
+raising them, "Does she know Mr. Osmond?" he enquired.
+
+"A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to
+please Henrietta," she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar
+if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn't
+say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To
+which she made answer that she didn't know yet. "I can only say it will
+be soon. I've told no one but yourself and one other person--an old
+friend of Mr. Osmond's."
+
+"Is it a marriage your friends won't like?" he demanded.
+
+"I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my friends."
+
+He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,
+doing it quite without delicacy. "Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert
+Osmond?"
+
+"Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable
+man. He's not in business," said Isabel. "He's not rich; he's not known
+for anything in particular."
+
+She disliked Mr. Goodwood's questions, but she said to herself that she
+owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor
+Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at
+her. "Where does he come from? Where does he belong?"
+
+She had never been so little pleased with the way he said "belawng." "He
+comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy."
+
+"You said in your letter he was American. Hasn't he a native place?"
+
+"Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy."
+
+"Has he never gone back?"
+
+"Why should he go back?" Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. "He has
+no profession."
+
+"He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the United
+States?"
+
+"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simple--he contents
+himself with Italy."
+
+"With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and
+no appearance of trying to make an epigram. "What has he ever done?" he
+added abruptly.
+
+"That I should marry him? Nothing at all," Isabel replied while her
+patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. "If he had done
+great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;
+I'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to take an interest in him.
+You can't."
+
+"I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean in
+the least that he's a perfect nonentity. You think he's grand, you think
+he's great, though no one else thinks so."
+
+Isabel's colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion,
+and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render
+perceptions she had never taken for fine. "Why do you always come back
+to what others think? I can't discuss Mr. Osmond with you."
+
+"Of course not," said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air
+of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were
+nothing else that they might discuss.
+
+"You see how little you gain," she accordingly broke out--"how little
+comfort or satisfaction I can give you."
+
+"I didn't expect you to give me much."
+
+"I don't understand then why you came."
+
+"I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are."
+
+"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later
+we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been
+pleasanter for each of us than this."
+
+"Waited till after you're married? That's just what I didn't want to do.
+You'll be different then."
+
+"Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You'll see."
+
+"That will make it all the worse," said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+
+"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in order to
+help you to resign yourself."
+
+"I shouldn't care if you did!"
+
+Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the
+window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round
+her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again
+and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just
+quitted. "Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That's better for
+you perhaps than for me."
+
+"I wished to hear the sound of your voice," he said.
+
+"You've heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet."
+
+"It gives me pleasure, all the same." And with this he got up. She had
+felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in
+Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She
+had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his
+messenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better
+pleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy
+implications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights,
+reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change
+her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed;
+and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor's
+remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that
+irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart
+beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself
+that she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the
+wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness
+to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a
+little. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no
+propriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden
+horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an
+opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him
+a month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her
+engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire
+to defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Isabel's part to
+desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile
+held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which
+she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused
+her: "I've not deceived you! I was perfectly free!"
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Caspar.
+
+"I gave you full warning that I'd do as I chose."
+
+"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner
+that I pretty well believed it."
+
+She considered this an instant. "No one can be more surprised than
+myself at my present intention."
+
+"You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe
+it," Caspar went on. "I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I
+remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and
+that's partly why I came."
+
+"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done. There's
+no mistake whatever."
+
+"I saw that as soon as I came into the room."
+
+"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?" she asked with a
+certain fierceness.
+
+"I should like it better than this."
+
+"You're very selfish, as I said before."
+
+"I know that. I'm selfish as iron."
+
+"Even iron sometimes melts! If you'll be reasonable I'll see you again."
+
+"Don't you call me reasonable now?"
+
+"I don't know what to say to you," she answered with sudden humility.
+
+"I shan't trouble you for a long time," the young man went on. He made
+a step towards the door, but he stopped. "Another reason why I came was
+that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having
+changed your mind."
+
+Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. "In explanation? Do you think
+I'm bound to explain?"
+
+He gave her one of his long dumb looks. "You were very positive. I did
+believe it."
+
+"So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?"
+
+"No, I suppose not. Well," he added, "I've done what I wished. I've seen
+you."
+
+"How little you make of these terrible journeys," she felt the poverty
+of her presently replying.
+
+"If you're afraid I'm knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be
+at your ease about it." He turned away, this time in earnest, and no
+hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.
+
+At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. "I shall leave
+Florence to-morrow," he said without a quaver.
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it!" she answered passionately. Five minutes
+after he had gone out she burst into tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had
+vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this
+expression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;
+Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She
+had an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact
+public before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about
+it. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a
+somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more;
+she waited till Mrs. Touchett came into the drawing-room before the
+mid-day breakfast, and then she began. "Aunt Lydia, I've something to
+tell you."
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. "You
+needn't tell me; I know what it is."
+
+"I don't know how you know."
+
+"The same way that I know when the window's open--by feeling a draught.
+You're going to marry that man."
+
+"What man do you mean?" Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+
+"Madame Merle's friend--Mr. Osmond."
+
+"I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the
+principal thing he's known by?"
+
+"If he's not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done for
+him!" cried Mrs. Touchett. "I shouldn't have expected it of her; I'm
+disappointed."
+
+"If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement
+you're greatly mistaken," Isabel declared with a sort of ardent
+coldness.
+
+"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman's
+having had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your
+attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she
+hadn't put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he
+was not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him."
+
+"He has taken a great deal for himself!" cried Isabel with a voluntary
+laugh.
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. "I think he must, after all, to have
+made you like him so much."
+
+"I thought he even pleased YOU."
+
+"He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him."
+
+"Be angry with me, not with him," said the girl.
+
+"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this
+that you refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr. Osmond, since
+others have done so?"
+
+"Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There's
+nothing OF him," Mrs. Touchett explained.
+
+"Then he can't hurt me," said Isabel.
+
+"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings,
+you should know."
+
+"I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?"
+
+"What YOU will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as
+they go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your partnership
+you'll bring everything."
+
+"Is it that Mr. Osmond isn't rich? Is that what you're talking about?"
+Isabel asked.
+
+"He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such
+things and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very precious.
+Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some
+other reason."
+
+Isabel hesitated a little. "I think I value everything that's valuable.
+I care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a
+little."
+
+"Give it to him then; but marry some one else."
+
+"His name's good enough for me," the girl went on. "It's a very pretty
+name. Have I such a fine one myself?"
+
+"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen
+American names. Do you marry him out of charity?"
+
+"It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my duty
+to explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So please don't
+remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can't
+talk about it."
+
+"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of
+intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle."
+
+"You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very
+considerate."
+
+"It was not considerate--it was convenient," said Mrs. Touchett. "But I
+shall talk to Madame Merle."
+
+"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good
+friend to me."
+
+"Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me."
+
+"What has she done to you?"
+
+"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your
+engagement."
+
+"She couldn't have prevented it."
+
+"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she
+could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I
+didn't understand that she would play two at the same time."
+
+"I don't know what part she may have played to you," Isabel said;
+"that's between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and
+devoted."
+
+"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me
+she was watching you only in order to interpose."
+
+"She said that to please you," the girl answered; conscious, however, of
+the inadequacy of the explanation.
+
+"To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased
+to-day?"
+
+"I don't think you're ever much pleased," Isabel was obliged to reply.
+"If Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by
+insincerity?"
+
+"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you
+were marching away, and she was really beating the drum."
+
+"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and
+even if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have tried to stop me."
+
+"No, but some one else would."
+
+"Whom do you mean?" Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.
+Touchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained
+her gaze rather than returned it. "Would you have listened to Ralph?"
+
+"Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond."
+
+"Ralph doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much
+for you."
+
+"I know he does," said Isabel; "and I shall feel the value of it now,
+for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason."
+
+"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,
+and he argued the other way."
+
+"He did it for the sake of argument," the girl smiled. "You don't accuse
+him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?"
+
+"He never pretended he'd prevent it."
+
+"I'm glad of that!" cried Isabel gaily. "I wish very much," she
+presently added, "that when he comes you'd tell him first of my
+engagement."
+
+"Of course I'll mention it," said Mrs. Touchett. "I shall say nothing
+more to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others."
+
+"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the
+announcement should come from you than from me."
+
+"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!" And on this the aunt
+and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her
+word, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence,
+however, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an
+hour before.
+
+"From an old friend--an American gentleman," Isabel said with a colour
+in her cheek.
+
+"An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman who
+calls at ten o'clock in the morning."
+
+"It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+evening."
+
+"Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?"
+
+"He only arrived last night."
+
+"He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?" Mrs. Touchett cried.
+"He's an American gentleman truly."
+
+"He is indeed," said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what
+Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+
+Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.
+Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed
+at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of
+his health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been
+shocked by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten
+how ill he looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she
+wondered if he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed
+to living with an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to
+conventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently
+complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural
+oddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and
+still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper
+and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the
+exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was
+altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of
+relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; his
+hands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he shambled and stumbled and
+shuffled in a manner that denoted great physical helplessness. It was
+perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than
+ever as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his own
+disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well indeed with
+Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness marking his
+view of a world in which the reason for his own continued presence was
+past finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness
+had become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; they
+struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be
+charming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had
+hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed
+not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him
+from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of
+being exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful;
+he had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to
+consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally
+sick. Such had been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she
+had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal
+she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always had
+a dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth more to the
+giver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no great sensibility
+to feel that poor Ralph's tenure of life was less elastic than it should
+be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he had all the illumination
+of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.
+
+Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,
+and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now
+promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was
+not pleased with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of
+her affection for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not
+even prepared, or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for
+it would be his privilege--it would be indeed his natural line--to find
+fault with any step she might take toward marriage. One's cousin always
+pretended to hate one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it
+was a part of one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Ralph was
+nothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things
+being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any
+one, it would be absurd to regard as important that her choice should
+square with his views. What were his views after all? He had pretended
+to believe she had better have married Lord Warburton; but this was
+only because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted
+him Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the
+opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a
+marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only
+give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had
+other employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the
+care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must
+have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing.
+After three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman
+wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through
+the form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily
+believe that during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo
+Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had
+literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even more
+sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked
+and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the
+world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the
+house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden
+of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head
+thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the
+heart; he had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could
+he say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it?
+To attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the attempt should
+succeed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the
+man to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only
+in the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
+damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and to
+dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor protest with hope.
+Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that the affianced pair were
+daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself
+little at Palazzo Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere,
+as she was free to do after their engagement had been made public. She
+had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt
+for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved,
+and she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
+during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young lady,
+joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a while
+through the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
+luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
+instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed
+beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this
+moment could not have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over
+it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious
+caves. Ralph was sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a
+statue of Terpsichore--a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated
+draperies in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his
+attitude suggested at first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light
+footstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turning away she
+stood for a moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his
+eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his
+own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference she
+was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to brood
+over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the languor of
+his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the property
+inherited from his father--the fruit of eccentric arrangements of
+which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told Isabel, now
+encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to
+have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence;
+he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank
+than in the state of Patagonia.
+
+"I'm sorry I waked you," Isabel said; "you look too tired."
+
+"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you."
+
+"Are you tired of that?"
+
+"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never arrive."
+
+"What do you wish to arrive at?" she put to him, closing her parasol.
+
+"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your
+engagement."
+
+"Don't think too much of it," she lightly returned.
+
+"Do you mean that it's none of my business?"
+
+"Beyond a certain point, yes."
+
+"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me
+wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you."
+
+"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent."
+
+"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now," Ralph said.
+He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at
+her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against
+his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands
+laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable;
+he hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she
+was usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to
+utter a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. "I
+think I've hardly got over my surprise," he went on at last. "You were
+the last person I expected to see caught."
+
+"I don't know why you call it caught."
+
+"Because you're going to be put into a cage."
+
+"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you," she answered.
+
+"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of."
+
+"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm satisfied
+that I'm doing well."
+
+"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty
+beyond everything. You wanted only to see life."
+
+"I've seen it," said Isabel. "It doesn't look to me now, I admit, such
+an inviting expanse."
+
+"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view
+of it and wanted to survey the whole field."
+
+"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose a
+corner and cultivate that."
+
+"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible.
+I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that
+you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me
+off my guard."
+
+"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew
+nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your
+guard, however," Isabel asked, "what would you have done?"
+
+"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'"
+
+"Wait for what?"
+
+"Well, for a little more light," said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,
+while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+
+"Where should my light have come from? From you?"
+
+"I might have struck a spark or two."
+
+Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay
+upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her
+expression was not conciliatory. "You're beating about the bush, Ralph.
+You wish to say you don't like Mr. Osmond, and yet you're afraid."
+
+"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to wound HIM,
+yes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of him. If you marry
+him it won't be a fortunate way for me to have spoken."
+
+"IF I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?"
+
+"Of course that seems to you too fatuous."
+
+"No," said Isabel after a little; "it seems to me too touching."
+
+"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me."
+
+She stroked out her long gloves again. "I know you've a great affection
+for me. I can't get rid of that."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince
+you how intensely I want you to do well."
+
+"And how little you trust me!"
+
+There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. "I
+trust you, but I don't trust him," said Ralph.
+
+She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. "You've said it now,
+and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by it."
+
+"Not if you're just."
+
+"I'm very just," said Isabel. "What better proof of it can there be than
+that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the matter with me, but
+I'm not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought
+to be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn't think so. He wants me to know
+everything; that's what I like him for. You've nothing to gain, I know
+that. I've never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have
+much reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice;
+you've often done so. No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your
+wisdom," she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a
+kind of contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be
+just; it touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a
+creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a
+moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had
+said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse,
+as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that
+direction. "I see you've some special idea; I should like very much to
+hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange
+thing to argue about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that
+if you expect to dissuade me you may give it up. You'll not move me
+an inch; it's too late. As you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be
+pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will be in your own
+thoughts. I shall never reproach you."
+
+"I don't think you ever will," said Ralph. "It's not in the least the
+sort of marriage I thought you'd make."
+
+"What sort of marriage was that, pray?"
+
+"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I
+had a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for that type."
+
+"What's the matter with Mr. Osmond's type, if it be one? His being
+so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him," the girl
+declared. "What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all."
+
+"Yes," Ralph said, "I know him very little, and I confess I haven't
+facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can't help
+feeling that you're running a grave risk."
+
+"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as mine."
+
+"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he
+would."
+
+Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her
+cousin. "I don't think I understand you," she said at last coldly. "I
+don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance."
+
+Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped
+into her face. "Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that
+one's husband should be of importance to one's self!"
+
+Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking
+he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,
+resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an
+air of the most respectful deliberation.
+
+"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean," he presently said. He felt
+agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he
+wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively
+gentle.
+
+Isabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. "In everything
+that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may
+be nobler natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.
+Osmond's is the finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting
+enough, and clever enough. I'm far more struck with what he has and what
+he represents than with what he may lack."
+
+"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future," Ralph
+observed without answering this; "I had amused myself with planning out
+a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You
+were not to come down so easily or so soon."
+
+"Come down, you say?"
+
+"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to
+me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light,
+over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud--a
+missile that should never have reached you--and straight you drop to
+the ground. It hurts me," said Ralph audaciously, "hurts me as if I had
+fallen myself!"
+
+The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face. "I
+don't understand you in the least," she repeated. "You say you amused
+yourself with a project for my career--I don't understand that.
+Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you're doing it at my
+expense."
+
+Ralph shook his head. "I'm not afraid of your not believing that I've
+had great ideas for you."
+
+"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?" she pursued.
+
+"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now. There's
+nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she likes," said
+poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+
+"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my
+dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a
+more active, larger, freer sort of nature." Ralph hesitated, then added:
+"I can't get over the sense that Osmond is somehow--well, small." He had
+uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would
+flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of
+considering.
+
+"Small?" She made it sound immense.
+
+"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!"
+
+"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that," said
+Isabel. "It makes one more sure to respect others."
+
+Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+
+"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation to
+things--to others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."
+
+"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's excellent."
+
+"He's the incarnation of taste," Ralph went on, thinking hard how he
+could best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without putting
+himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished
+to describe him impersonally, scientifically. "He judges and measures,
+approves and condemns, altogether by that."
+
+"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite."
+
+"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as
+his bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite
+one--ruffled?"
+
+"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's."
+
+At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. "Ah, that's
+wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in
+that way--you were meant for something better than to keep guard over
+the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!"
+
+Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment
+looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult.
+But "You go too far," she simply breathed.
+
+"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love you!"
+
+Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden
+wish to strike him off. "Ah then, you're not disinterested!"
+
+"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph quickly, forcing a
+smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more
+than he intended.
+
+Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the
+garden; but after a little she turned back to him. "I'm afraid your talk
+then is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it--but it doesn't
+matter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible I should; I've only
+tried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to you for attempting to
+explain," she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just
+sprung up had already subsided. "It's very good of you to try to warn
+me, if you're really alarmed; but I won't promise to think of what
+you've said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it
+yourself; you've done your duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain
+to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could." She
+paused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph
+observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of
+concession. "I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it
+justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not important--no,
+he's not important; he's a man to whom importance is supremely
+indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call him 'small,' then
+he's as small as you please. I call that large--it's the largest thing
+I know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I'm going to
+marry," Isabel repeated. "I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr.
+Osmond; he's not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would
+seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and
+coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any
+one but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer you once
+for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage--what
+they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one ambition--to be free to
+follow out a good feeling. I had others once, but they've passed away.
+Do you complain of Mr. Osmond because he's not rich? That's just what I
+like him for. I've fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful
+for it as to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and
+kneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing than
+he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a man who has
+borne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond
+has never scrambled nor struggled--he has cared for no worldly prize. If
+that's to be narrow, if that's to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm
+not frightened by such words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry
+that you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm
+surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see
+one--you might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows
+everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest,
+highest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea. It's a pity, but
+I can't help it; it regards you more than me." Isabel paused a moment,
+looking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a sentiment which
+contradicted the careful calmness of her manner--a mingled sentiment,
+to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of
+having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness
+and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said
+nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly
+solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. "What
+sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?" she asked suddenly.
+"You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one
+touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in
+one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother
+has never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding
+with Lord Warburton, and she's horrified at my contenting myself with a
+person who has none of his great advantages--no property, no title,
+no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor
+brilliant belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these
+things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very
+cultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious proprietor."
+
+Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said
+merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of
+the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself
+to the weight of his total impression--the impression of her ardent good
+faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was
+dismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that,
+having invented a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not
+for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as
+honours. Ralph remembered what he had said to his father about wishing
+to put it into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He
+had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor
+Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with
+a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion,
+and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the
+house. Ralph walked beside her, and they passed into the court together
+and reached the big staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused,
+turning on him a face of elation--absolutely and perversely of
+gratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct
+clearer to her. "Shall you not come up to breakfast?" she asked.
+
+"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry."
+
+"You ought to eat," said the girl; "you live on air."
+
+"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another
+mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that
+if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how
+I feel to-day."
+
+"Do you think I'm in trouble?"
+
+"One's in trouble when one's in error."
+
+"Very well," said Isabel; "I shall never complain of my trouble to you!"
+And she moved up the staircase.
+
+Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with
+his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and
+made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the
+Florentine sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse
+to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The
+discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin
+made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was
+simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming
+to Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to
+throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she
+married to please herself. One did other things to please other people;
+one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction
+was confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was
+in love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright
+days, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his
+hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief
+impression produced on Isabel's spirit by this criticism was that the
+passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the
+loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever
+known before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope
+that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her
+not having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of
+anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out, too late,
+on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would certainly
+console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from
+her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she
+was not sorry to display her contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk
+about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for
+a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her not to marry
+at all--that was what it really meant--because he was amused with the
+spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made
+him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
+flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the
+more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little
+free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident,
+in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert
+Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She
+tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious,
+almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed
+and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed
+virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's
+right was always made of the wrong of some one else.
+
+The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted
+meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on
+his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of
+men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however,
+made him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten
+and dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he
+never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance--which
+presented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions.
+He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him
+a present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live
+with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness
+be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired
+the air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than
+a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one's
+thought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought
+reproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred
+it to be freshened in the reproduction even as "words" by music. His
+egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this
+lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a
+plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give
+a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served
+dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he
+could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew
+perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little
+favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so
+completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary
+to express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one
+morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. "It's the difference in our
+fortune they don't like," he said. "They think I'm in love with your
+money."
+
+"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?" Isabel asked. "How do you
+know what they think?"
+
+"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett
+the other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I
+should have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you
+rich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course
+when a poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations.
+I don't mind them; I only care for one thing--for your not having
+the shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask nothing
+think--I'm not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so
+concerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I
+have taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend
+I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's
+yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow,
+but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've
+sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life
+tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than
+most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their
+business to suspect--that of your family; it's proper on the whole they
+should. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.
+Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to
+be thankful for life and love." "It has made me better, loving you," he
+said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser and easier and--I won't
+pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want
+a great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them.
+Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself
+I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to
+have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really
+satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when
+one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the
+lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and
+finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it
+properly I see it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't tell you
+how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer afternoon
+awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day--with a golden haze,
+and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light,
+the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and which you
+love to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've
+got what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We've the faculty
+of admiration and several capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're
+not mean, we're not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness.
+You're remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor
+child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's
+all soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring."
+
+They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal
+of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live
+for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had
+been a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy
+should be a party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old
+acquaintance and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her
+a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire
+for unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense
+that life was vacant without some private duty that might gather one's
+energies to a point. She had told Ralph she had "seen life" in a year
+or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of
+that of observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations,
+her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient
+conviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed
+in a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away
+numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the
+situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the
+stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the
+fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be
+of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she
+could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was
+giving.
+
+He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--Pansy who
+was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she
+would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who
+held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to
+go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore
+a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her.
+She found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the
+end of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an
+appeal for approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance
+had the personal touch that the child's affectionate nature craved.
+She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on
+them--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render,
+part of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the
+childish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new
+relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. "She doesn't
+know," he said to Isabel; "she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly
+natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good
+friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's
+the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think;
+I've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've
+brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way."
+
+He was very fond, in all things, of the "old way"; that had struck
+Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. "It occurs to me that
+you'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told her," she
+said. "You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she
+may be jealous."
+
+"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I
+should like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will
+come into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be."
+
+Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it
+somehow appeared, of Pansy's innocence--her own appreciation of it being
+more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told
+her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter,
+who had made such a pretty little speech--"Oh, then I shall have a
+beautiful sister!" She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not
+cried, as he expected.
+
+"Perhaps she had guessed it," said Isabel.
+
+"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
+would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her
+good manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for
+yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person."
+
+The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither
+Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
+in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
+that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
+visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
+ushered into the Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her
+aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,
+who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+company. It was Isabel's view that the little girl might have given
+lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified
+this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself
+while they waited together for the Countess. Her father's decision, the
+year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive
+the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her
+theory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+
+"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him," said this
+excellent woman's pupil. "It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very
+well."
+
+"You think I shall suit YOU?"
+
+"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will
+suit each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're not so
+quiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you're more quiet than many
+others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's
+always in motion, in agitation--to-day especially; you'll see when she
+comes in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders,
+but I suppose there's no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a
+delightful companion for papa."
+
+"For you too, I hope," Isabel said.
+
+"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself
+think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I
+think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be
+my model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be
+very feeble. I'm very glad for papa--he needed something more than
+me. Without you I don't see how he could have got it. You'll be my
+stepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be
+cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me.
+I'm not afraid at all."
+
+"My good little Pansy," said Isabel gently, "I shall be ever so kind to
+you." A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need
+it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+
+"Very well then, I've nothing to fear," the child returned with her
+note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to
+suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
+
+Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini
+was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room
+with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead
+and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite.
+She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of
+turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand
+before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to
+a composition of figures already sketched in. "If you expect me to
+congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care
+if I do or not; I believe you're supposed not to care--through being so
+clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell
+fibs; I never tell them unless there's something rather good to be
+gained. I don't see what's to be gained with you--especially as you
+wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any more than I make paper
+flowers or flouncey lampshades--I don't know how. My lampshades would be
+sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very
+glad for my own sake that you're to marry Osmond; but I won't pretend
+I'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way
+you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and
+original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family.
+Our family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and
+my mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne.
+But we're dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up.
+I've great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to
+talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think
+they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose
+Pansy oughtn't to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me
+for--to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing what
+horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had
+designs on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the
+strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be
+disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was
+enchanted for myself; and after all I'm very selfish. By the way, you
+won't respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate.
+I should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the same, we shall be
+better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and
+see you, though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with
+Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not afraid
+of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you
+won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair,
+and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you can
+stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go
+out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir."
+
+"Let her stay, please," said Isabel. "I would rather hear nothing that
+Pansy may not!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of
+pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third
+floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame
+Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face
+and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room
+and requested the favour of his name. "Mr. Edward Rosier," said the
+young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
+
+The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an
+ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered
+that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of
+several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits
+he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this
+charming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him
+which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary
+sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at
+Saint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to
+pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the
+household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,
+he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare
+his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go
+down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under
+bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if
+he were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in
+the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr.
+Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it
+on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the
+young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might
+expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in
+November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the
+brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had
+at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to
+a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain
+to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably
+finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece.
+He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have
+thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the
+bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose
+taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate.
+That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods
+would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame
+Merle's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every
+style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He
+had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then "By
+Jove, she has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured. The
+room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression
+of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved.
+Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over
+the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with
+princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before
+the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce
+attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately,
+as if he were smelling it.
+
+"It's old Venetian," she said; "it's rather good."
+
+"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it."
+
+"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation."
+
+"Ah, but I can't wear mine," smiled the visitor.
+
+"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear."
+
+His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. "You've some very
+good things."
+
+"Yes, but I hate them."
+
+"Do you want to get rid of them?" the young man quickly asked.
+
+"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!"
+
+"I love my things," said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his
+recognitions. "But it's not about them, nor about yours, that I came
+to talk to you." He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: "I
+care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!"
+
+Madame Merle opened wide eyes. "Did you come to tell me that?"
+
+"I came to ask your advice."
+
+She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her
+large white hand. "A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice."
+
+"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a
+man in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But never so much as
+this time--really never so much. I should like particularly to know what
+you think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Osmond I'm not--well,
+a real collector's piece."
+
+"Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms
+folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+
+"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There
+will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to
+believe her father will consent."
+
+"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in
+rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize."
+
+"You've been very kind to me," said the young man. "That's why I came."
+
+"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare
+now, and there's no telling what one may get by it." With which the
+left-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression to the joke.
+
+But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently
+strenuous. "Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!"
+
+"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me
+if I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I
+must tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of Pansy Osmond."
+
+"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her
+family, and I thought you might have influence."
+
+Madame Merle considered. "Whom do you call her family?"
+
+"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere."
+
+"Mr. Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed
+a member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying
+her."
+
+"I'm sorry for that," said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. "I
+think Mrs. Osmond would favour me."
+
+"Very likely--if her husband doesn't."
+
+He raised his eyebrows. "Does she take the opposite line from him?"
+
+"In everything. They think quite differently."
+
+"Well," said Rosier, "I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business.
+She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Yes, she's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves
+her as if she were her own mother."
+
+"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor
+child," said Madame Merle. "Have you declared your sentiments?"
+
+"Never!" cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. "Never till I've
+assured myself of those of the parents."
+
+"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the
+proprieties."
+
+"I think you're laughing at me," the young man murmured, dropping back
+in his chair and feeling his small moustache. "I didn't expect that of
+you, Madame Merle."
+
+She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.
+"You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and
+the best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think."
+
+"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for
+that," said Ned Rosier.
+
+"I'm glad, after all, that you've told me," Madame Merle went on. "Leave
+it to me a little; I think I can help you."
+
+"I said you were the person to come to!" her visitor cried with prompt
+elation.
+
+"You were very clever," Madame Merle returned more dryly. "When I say I
+can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a
+little if it is."
+
+"I'm awfully decent, you know," said Rosier earnestly. "I won't say I've
+no faults, but I'll say I've no vices."
+
+"All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call
+vices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What have you got
+besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?"
+
+"I've a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a year.
+With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an
+income."
+
+"Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you
+live."
+
+"Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris."
+
+Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. "It wouldn't be famous; you'd
+have to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken."
+
+"We don't want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything
+pretty it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can
+afford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but
+muslin--without the sprig," said Rosier reflectively.
+
+"Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to you at
+any rate for that theory."
+
+"It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into it.
+She understands all that; that's why I love her."
+
+"She's a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely graceful.
+But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing."
+
+Rosier scarce demurred. "I don't in the least desire that he should. But
+I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man."
+
+"The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do
+something."
+
+"For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!" Madame Merle
+exclaimed with a laugh.
+
+"I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond," Madame Merle went on, "will probably prefer to keep her
+money for her own children."
+
+"Her own children? Surely she has none."
+
+"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago,
+six months after his birth. Others therefore may come."
+
+"I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid woman."
+
+Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. "Ah, about her there's much to
+be said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out that you're a
+parti. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.
+
+"Pardon me, I think it may be," said Rosier quite lucidly.
+
+"You'll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!"
+
+"I think you underrate me."
+
+"You're not so innocent as that? Seriously," said Madame Merle,
+"of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a
+combination to be considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at, but
+there might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline
+to believe he can do better."
+
+"HE can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do better
+than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know," Rosier added
+eagerly.
+
+"She does--I know it."
+
+"Ah," cried the young man, "I said you were the person to come to."
+
+"But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her," Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+"In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say, we're
+an innocent couple. How did YOU know it?"
+
+"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find
+out for you."
+
+Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. "You say that rather coldly.
+Don't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be."
+
+"I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages."
+
+"Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"Gardez-vous-en bien!" And Madame Merle was on her feet. "Don't set her
+going, or you'll spoil everything."
+
+Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess HAD been
+after all the right person to come to. "I don't think I understand
+you. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to
+succeed."
+
+"Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the
+better, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her new. But don't
+for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband
+may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you
+not to multiply points of difference between them."
+
+Poor Rosier's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand
+of Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste
+for proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which
+he concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner's "best
+set" came to his assistance. "I don't see that I'm bound to consider Mr.
+Osmond so very much!" he exclaimed. "No, but you should consider HER.
+You say you're an old friend. Would you make her suffer?"
+
+"Not for the world."
+
+"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few
+soundings."
+
+"Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I'm in love."
+
+"Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to heed
+what I say?"
+
+"You're very kind; I'll be very good," the young man promised. "But I'm
+afraid Mr. Osmond's pretty hard," he added in his mild voice as he went
+to the door.
+
+Madame Merle gave a short laugh. "It has been said before. But his wife
+isn't easy either."
+
+"Ah, she's a splendid woman!" Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.
+He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was
+already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he
+had given Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself
+in spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond's home. He reflected
+constantly on what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his
+mind the impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her
+de confiance, as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been
+precipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had
+incurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had
+known Madame Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her
+a delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for
+assuming that she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms,
+gracefully arranged as these members might be to receive her. She had
+indeed shown him benevolence, and she was a person of consideration
+among the girl's people, where she had a rather striking appearance
+(Rosier had more than once wondered how she managed it) of being
+intimate without being familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these
+advantages. There was no particular reason why she should take trouble
+for him; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Rosier felt
+rather a fool when he thought of his having appealed to her on the
+ground that she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had
+appeared to say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his
+bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or three
+of the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss
+Osmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say
+so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like
+her to believe it.
+
+It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond's,
+Mrs. Osmond having an "evening"--she had taken the Thursday of each
+week--when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of
+civility. The object of Mr. Rosier's well-regulated affection dwelt in
+a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure
+overlooking a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese
+Palace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived--a palace by Roman measure,
+but a dungeon to poor Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of
+evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious
+father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in
+a kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name,
+which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which
+was mentioned in "Murray" and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague
+survey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio
+in the piano nobile and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the
+wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain
+gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he
+could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered
+into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on
+settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this
+habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour enough,
+and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels
+he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details
+of the cornice had quite the grand air. But Rosier was haunted by the
+conviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up
+there to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of
+being thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There
+was one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he
+found himself in Mrs. Osmond's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which
+were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very
+strong in "good things." It was a taste of Osmond's own--not at all of
+hers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when,
+after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even
+better "French" than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit
+that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman
+should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of
+her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a
+large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed
+a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his
+greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.
+Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.
+For "advice" read "cash," he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert
+Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season
+confirmed his most cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may
+freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented
+himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls
+of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really
+yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme
+seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about
+for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted
+a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took
+everything comfortable for granted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a
+concave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here
+Mrs. Osmond usually sat--though she was not in her most customary place
+to-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about
+the fire. The room was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it
+contained the larger things and--almost always--an odour of flowers.
+Pansy on this occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the
+resort of younger visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before
+the chimney, leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up
+and was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were
+talking together; but he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an
+expression, frequent with them, that seemed to represent them as engaged
+with objects more worth their while than the appearances actually
+thrust upon them. Rosier, coming in unannounced, failed to attract his
+attention; but the young man, who was very punctilious, though he was
+even exceptionally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he
+had come to see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put out his
+left hand, without changing his attitude.
+
+"How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about."
+
+"Never fear; I shall find her," said Rosier cheerfully.
+
+Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so
+efficiently looked at. "Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn't like
+it," he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there,
+but she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or
+would come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond,
+having a fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly
+resentful, and where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of
+being quite in the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without
+help, and then in a moment, "I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte
+to-day," he said.
+
+Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his
+boot-sole, "I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!" he returned.
+
+"I hope you're not losing your interest?"
+
+"In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest."
+
+Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. "You're not
+thinking of parting with a--a piece or two?"
+
+"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier," said
+Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
+
+"Ah, you want to keep, but not to add," Rosier remarked brightly.
+
+"Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match."
+
+Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of
+assurance. "Ah, well, I have!" was all he could murmur; and he knew
+his murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the
+adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She
+was dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had
+said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought
+of her and the terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his
+admiration. Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it
+was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for
+authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that
+secret of a "lustre" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering,
+which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him
+to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such
+tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her
+youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost
+something of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately
+taken exception--she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all
+events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the
+picture of a gracious lady. "You see I'm very regular," he said. "But
+who should be if I'm not?"
+
+"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in
+tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady."
+
+"Ah, please, what young lady?" Rosier was immensely obliging; but this
+was not what he had come for.
+
+"She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to." Rosier
+hesitated a moment. "Can't Mr. Osmond speak to her? He's within six feet
+of her."
+
+Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. "She's not very lively, and he doesn't like
+dull people."
+
+"But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!"
+
+"I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so obliging."
+
+"No, he's not--to me." And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+
+"That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+
+"So I tell him," she said, still smiling.
+
+"You see I want some tea," Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
+
+"That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady."
+
+"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple
+truth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, turning away, "I can't help you there!"
+
+Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink,
+whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in
+making to Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken
+the spirit of his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable
+of occupying this young man's mind for a considerable time. At last,
+however, he became--comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little
+what promises he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to
+abandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy
+Osmond, who had given him the tea for his companion--Pansy was as fond
+as ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her. Into this mild
+colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his
+small sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at
+first not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at
+Florence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the
+Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked together of matters
+sacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at
+nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the
+part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree
+the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style;
+and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart
+attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it--very much as if it
+were lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have
+been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was
+not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted.
+Only he called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed
+were happy enough. "No, she's unique--she's absolutely unique," he used
+to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he
+have admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had
+the style of a little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye.
+It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression
+in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only
+looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier,
+who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her
+charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish
+prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked
+him--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him
+feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he
+had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect jeune fille, and
+one couldn't make of a jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing
+light on such a point. A jeune fille was what Rosier had always dreamed
+of--a jeune fille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that
+this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had
+never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she
+had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An American jeune
+fille--what could be better than that? She would be frank and gay, and
+yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men,
+nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Rosier
+could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of
+hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but
+he was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were
+the most sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he
+entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of greater
+importance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of the house.
+There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been placed on his
+guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the warning to Pansy;
+it would not have been part of his policy to let her know that a
+prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he WAS in love
+with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions of
+circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant
+by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely
+he himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl
+in so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her
+mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that
+she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter
+departed together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be
+virtually alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before;
+he had never been alone with a jeune fille. It was a great moment; poor
+Rosier began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond
+the one in which they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and
+lighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty
+all the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow;
+there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very
+temple of authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture;
+he was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of
+stretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other
+maiden had left them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on
+the far side of the room. For a little it occurred to him that she was
+frightened--too frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured
+him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed
+for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and
+look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He
+had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was
+of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he
+didn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He
+therefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
+
+"Certainly, you may go," said Pansy; "and if you like I'll show you."
+She was not in the least frightened.
+
+"That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind," Rosier
+murmured.
+
+They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it
+seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. "It's not for
+winter evenings; it's more for summer," she said. "It's papa's taste; he
+has so much."
+
+He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He
+looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation.
+"Doesn't Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature," said Pansy--"and
+for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows
+everything."
+
+Rosier was silent a little. "There's one thing I'm sure he knows!" he
+broke out presently. "He knows that when I come here it's, with all
+respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who's so charming--it's
+really," said the young man, "to see you!"
+
+"To see me?" And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+
+"To see you; that's what I come for," Rosier repeated, feeling the
+intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+
+Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not
+needed to make her face more modest. "I thought it was for that."
+
+"And it was not disagreeable to you?"
+
+"I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me," said Pansy.
+
+"I was afraid of offending you."
+
+"You don't offend me," the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel
+had kissed her.
+
+"You like me then, Pansy?" Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
+
+"Yes--I like you."
+
+They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock
+was perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from
+without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him
+the very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her
+hand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted,
+still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something
+ineffably passive. She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now
+anything might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting
+for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever;
+but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree.
+Rosier felt that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his
+heart she would submit without a murmur, would rest there without a
+question. It was true that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow
+Empire salottino. She had known it was for her he came, and yet like
+what a perfect little lady she had carried it off!
+
+"You're very dear to me," he murmured, trying to believe that there was
+after all such a thing as hospitality.
+
+She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. "Did you say
+papa knows?"
+
+"You told me just now he knows everything."
+
+"I think you must make sure," said Pansy.
+
+"Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of YOU!" Rosier murmured in her ear;
+whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of
+consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
+
+The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame
+Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.
+How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for
+she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor
+dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the
+audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very
+tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest
+thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more
+striking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master
+of the house. There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these
+two--they always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the
+commonplace--and then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked
+if little Mr. Rosier had come this evening.
+
+"He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared," Osmond said.
+
+"And where's Pansy?"
+
+"In the other room. There are several people there."
+
+"He's probably among them," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Do you wish to see him?" Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
+
+Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the
+eighth of a note. "Yes, I should like to say to him that I've told you
+what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly."
+
+"Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more--which is exactly
+what I don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal."
+
+"But you don't hate it."
+
+"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this
+evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's a great
+bore. There's no hurry."
+
+"I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over."
+
+"No, don't do that. He'll hang on."
+
+"If I discourage him he'll do the same."
+
+"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain--which would be
+exceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold his tongue and go
+in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a
+donkey."
+
+"Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?"
+
+"Oh, he's a nuisance--with his eternal majolica."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. "He's a gentleman,
+he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand
+francs!"
+
+"It's misery--'genteel' misery," Osmond broke in. "It's not what I've
+dreamed of for Pansy."
+
+"Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her."
+
+"Do you believe him?" Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+
+"Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't
+suppose you consider that that matters."
+
+"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has
+thought of him."
+
+"That opinion's more convenient," said Madame Merle quietly.
+
+"Has she told you she's in love with him?"
+
+"For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?" Madame Merle
+added in a moment.
+
+Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other
+knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his long, fine
+forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and gazed a while
+before him. "This kind of thing doesn't find me unprepared. It's what I
+educated her for. It was all for this--that when such a case should come
+up she should do what I prefer."
+
+"I'm not afraid that she'll not do it."
+
+"Well then, where's the hitch?"
+
+"I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of
+Mr. Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful."
+
+"I can't keep him. Keep him yourself."
+
+"Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day."
+Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing
+about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit
+to interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the
+last words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out
+of the adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a
+few steps and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her
+father.
+
+"He has spoken to her," Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+
+Her companion never turned his head. "So much for your belief in his
+promises. He ought to be horsewhipped."
+
+"He intends to confess, poor little man!"
+
+Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. "It
+doesn't matter," he murmured, turning away.
+
+Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner
+of unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was not more
+intimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly
+smile.
+
+"You're very late," the young creature gently said.
+
+"My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be."
+
+Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward
+Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it
+off his mind, "I've spoken to her!" he whispered.
+
+"I know it, Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Did she tell you?"
+
+"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come
+and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five." She was severe, and in
+the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of
+contempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
+
+He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor
+the place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking
+with an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady
+was Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. "You
+said just now you wouldn't help me," he began to Mrs. Osmond. "Perhaps
+you'll feel differently when you know--when you know--!"
+
+Isabel met his hesitation. "When I know what?"
+
+"That she's all right."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Well, that we've come to an understanding."
+
+"She's all wrong," said Isabel. "It won't do."
+
+Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
+testified to his sense of injury. "I've never been treated so," he said.
+"What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually
+considered. I could have married twenty times."
+
+"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once,
+comfortably," Isabel added, smiling kindly. "You're not rich enough for
+Pansy."
+
+"She doesn't care a straw for one's money."
+
+"No, but her father does."
+
+"Ah yes, he has proved that!" cried the young man.
+
+Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
+ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
+to look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of miniatures, which were neatly
+arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
+seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
+certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used
+to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such
+a fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
+searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire
+was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to
+Isabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a
+rude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of
+him.
+
+"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago," he
+began. "But you must remember my situation."
+
+"I don't remember what you said," she answered coldly.
+
+"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me."
+
+She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: "It's not
+that I won't; I simply can't!" Her manner was almost passionate.
+
+"If you COULD, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save
+as an angel."
+
+"The inducement's great," said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he
+afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the
+eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow
+that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked,
+and he took himself off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let
+him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop
+there till something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher
+expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his
+daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if
+one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that
+tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be
+a miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy
+her father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by
+precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a
+sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of
+itself--it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own
+situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world,
+and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly
+declared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had learned that
+lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert
+Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter
+dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have
+anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+
+"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn't like it at
+all," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!"
+
+"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the
+house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to
+me."
+
+"As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?"
+
+"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,
+but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I'll see
+that she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take
+it quietly."
+
+Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was
+advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to
+Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he
+went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual,
+was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so
+that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+
+"I'm glad that you can take a hint," Pansy's father said, slightly
+closing his keen, conscious eyes.
+
+"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be."
+
+"You took it? Where did you take it?"
+
+It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
+asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. "Madame Merle
+gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you
+declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain
+my wishes to you." And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.
+
+"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
+Madame Merle?"
+
+"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had
+seemed to me to know you very well."
+
+"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond.
+
+"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
+hope."
+
+Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my
+daughter."
+
+"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to
+marry her?"
+
+"I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
+which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
+
+"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't
+marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
+more."
+
+"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
+loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+
+"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken."
+
+"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
+his eyes to his boot-toes.
+
+"I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+exasperation.
+
+As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
+some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
+had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: "I think she has no
+recollection of having given it."
+
+They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
+uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again
+to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a
+gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the
+Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter
+smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face
+and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.
+
+"You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that expressed
+more than Osmond's.
+
+"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you."
+
+Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as
+usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond
+in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously
+indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your husband's awfully
+cold-blooded."
+
+She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. "You can't
+expect every one to be as hot as yourself."
+
+"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his
+daughter?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Don't you take any interest?" Rosier demanded with his sense that she
+too was irritating.
+
+For a moment she answered nothing; then, "No!" she said abruptly and
+with a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
+
+"Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?"
+
+"In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there."
+
+Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by
+intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely
+given to her occupation. "What on earth has he done to her?" he asked
+again imploringly. "He declares to me she has given me up."
+
+"She has not given you up," Isabel said in a low tone and without
+looking at him.
+
+"Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think
+proper!"
+
+He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware
+that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had
+just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good
+looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. "Isabel,"
+said her husband, "I bring you an old friend."
+
+Mrs. Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's,
+not perfectly confident. "I'm very happy to see Lord Warburton," she
+said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been
+interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He
+had a quick impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn't notice what he did.
+
+Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe
+him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or
+a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her,
+was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey
+eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and
+attestation strictly sincere. He was "heavier" than of yore and looked
+older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.
+
+"I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said; "I've but just
+arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost
+no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on
+Thursdays."
+
+"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England," Osmond
+remarked to his wife.
+
+"It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly
+flattered," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,"
+Osmond went on.
+
+"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you
+four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a
+long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?" his lordship
+asked of his hostess. "It was in the Capitol, in the first room."
+
+"I remember that myself," said Osmond. "I was there at the time."
+
+"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry
+that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never
+cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here," her
+old friend went on to Isabel, "and I assure you I've often thought of
+you. It must be a charming place to live in," he added with a look,
+round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the
+dim ghost of his old ruefulness.
+
+"We should have been glad to see you at any time," Osmond observed with
+propriety.
+
+"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a
+month ago I really supposed my travels over."
+
+"I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had already,
+with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what
+meeting him again meant for her.
+
+"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
+blank."
+
+"Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared to
+think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so
+conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more
+nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It
+was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a
+deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good
+deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. "I'll leave you and
+Mrs. Osmond together," he added. "You have reminiscences into which I
+don't enter."
+
+"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!" Lord Warburton called after him, as
+he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation
+of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the
+deepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious.
+"I'm really very glad to see you."
+
+"It's very pleasant. You're very kind."
+
+"Do you know that you're changed--a little?"
+
+She just hesitated. "Yes--a good deal."
+
+"I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the
+better?"
+
+"I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to YOU," she bravely
+returned.
+
+"Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't
+be something to show for it." They sat down and she asked him about
+his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He
+answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments
+she saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his
+whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without
+chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel
+felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was
+certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or
+like her at least, to know him for such. "There's something I must tell
+you without more delay," he resumed. "I've brought Ralph Touchett with
+me."
+
+"Brought him with you?" Isabel's surprise was great.
+
+"He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed."
+
+"I'll go to see him," she immediately said.
+
+"That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen
+much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a
+little more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton."
+
+"I'm as fond of Ralph as ever," Isabel answered. "But why has he come to
+Rome?" The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
+
+"Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined
+to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England,
+indoors, in what he called an artificial climate."
+
+"Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him
+three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has
+been getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He
+smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed;
+the house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it
+into his head to start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did
+the doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know,
+is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea
+that it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania.
+He said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself
+comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I wanted
+him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea
+and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish,
+I made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as--what do you call it
+in America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph's very moderate now. We
+left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He
+can't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the
+cold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human
+help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some
+sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my
+saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to
+decide on going to America."
+
+Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. "My
+aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When
+the date comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Ralph had
+been dying."
+
+"I sometimes think he IS dying," Lord Warburton said.
+
+Isabel sprang up. "I'll go to him then now."
+
+He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his
+words. "I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day,
+in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching
+Rome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago,
+when I bade him goodnight, he told me he was very tired, but very happy.
+Go to him in the morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was
+coming here; I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I
+remembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very
+Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here, and let
+you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he
+said he hadn't written to you." There was no need of Isabel's declaring
+that she would act upon Lord Warburton's information; she looked, as she
+sat there, like a winged creature held back. "Let alone that I wanted to
+see you for myself," her visitor gallantly added.
+
+"I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild," she said.
+"I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt."
+
+"He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company."
+
+"You went to see him; you've been extremely kind."
+
+"Oh dear, I had nothing to do," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one
+speaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name
+in the Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence.
+You're apparently as wild a radical as ever."
+
+"I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.
+Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way
+from London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me
+the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal
+appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him
+yet."
+
+Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from
+asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived
+that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject--he had a
+conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say
+to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she
+was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old,
+such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted
+and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new
+trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live
+with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her
+and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was
+not a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to
+punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice
+to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a
+good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation
+of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never
+fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She
+gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free
+to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course
+spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even
+went so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly
+time. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her
+marriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond's
+acquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other
+occasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her
+history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing he
+implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very
+much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short
+pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a
+person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of
+guesses--
+
+"Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?"
+
+Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her
+almost as the accent of comedy. "Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell
+you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't see why not."
+
+"I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy."
+
+"You've got an awfully good house."
+
+"Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my husband's."
+
+"You mean he has arranged it?"
+
+"Yes, it was nothing when we came."
+
+"He must be very clever."
+
+"He has a genius for upholstery," said Isabel.
+
+"There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a
+taste of your own."
+
+"I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never
+propose anything."
+
+"Do you mean you accept what others propose?"
+
+"Very willingly, for the most part."
+
+"That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something."
+
+"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small
+ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you
+to some of these people."
+
+"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young
+lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face."
+
+"The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter."
+
+"Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!"
+
+"You must make her acquaintance."
+
+"In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here." He ceased
+to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs.
+Osmond. "Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?" he
+presently went on. "You seem to me, after all, very much the same."
+
+"And yet I find it a great change to be married," said Isabel with mild
+gaiety.
+
+"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't
+gone in for that."
+
+"It rather surprises me."
+
+"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry," he
+added more simply.
+
+"It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising--after which she
+reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the
+person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the
+pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having
+contributed then to the facility.
+
+Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's
+tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she
+asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
+
+"He's an English lord," said Rosier. "I don't know more."
+
+"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea."
+
+"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you."
+
+"Don't speak so loud every one will hear," said Pansy.
+
+"They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only
+thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil."
+
+"It has just been filled; the servants never know!"--and she sighed with
+the weight of her responsibility.
+
+"Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean
+what you said a week ago."
+
+"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean
+what I say to you."
+
+"He told me you had forgotten me."
+
+"Ah no, I don't forget," said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed
+smile.
+
+"Then everything's just the very same?"
+
+"Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe."
+
+"What has he done to you?"
+
+"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he
+forbade me to marry you."
+
+"You needn't mind that."
+
+"Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa."
+
+"Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?"
+
+She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;
+then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. "I love you just as
+much."
+
+"What good will that do me?"
+
+"Ah," said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, "I don't know that."
+
+"You disappoint me," groaned poor Rosier.
+
+She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. "Please
+don't talk any more."
+
+"Is this to be all my satisfaction?"
+
+"Papa said I was not to talk with you."
+
+"Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!"
+
+"I wish you'd wait a little," said the girl in a voice just distinct
+enough to betray a quaver.
+
+"Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away."
+
+"I'll not give you up--oh no!" Pansy went on.
+
+"He'll try and make you marry some one else."
+
+"I'll never do that."
+
+"What then are we to wait for?"
+
+She hesitated again. "I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help us." It
+was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
+
+"She won't help us much. She's afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of your father, I suppose."
+
+Pansy shook her little head. "She's not afraid of any one. We must have
+patience."
+
+"Ah, that's an awful word," Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.
+Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his
+hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the
+carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about
+him and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her
+little curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had
+introduced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett
+should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done
+before that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardly
+prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we
+know, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him
+to resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That
+discussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather than
+the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out her
+engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.
+No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph's opinion of
+Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they
+managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a
+difference, as Ralph often said to himself--there was a difference. She
+had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had
+gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care;
+and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should
+justify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was
+of the sort that women remember best. As Osmond's wife she could never
+again be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity
+she expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had
+attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the
+other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he
+should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed
+his cousin's marriage, Ralph's prevision of the future; and if his
+meditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom
+of health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed)
+beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united
+to Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the month of
+June. He learned from his mother that Isabel at first had thought of
+celebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity was
+what she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spite
+of Osmond's professed willingness to make a journey of any length, that
+this characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by the
+nearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore at
+the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only of
+Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That
+severity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the result
+of the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on the
+occasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle
+had been invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had
+written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not been
+invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by Mr.
+Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but
+she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle's, intimating
+that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been
+present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe had
+taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel
+in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too
+freely--her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject
+of it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. "It
+isn't in the least that you've married--it is that you have married
+HIM," she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen,
+much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few of
+his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe,
+however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the
+moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he
+took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon
+the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.
+Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she
+had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the
+Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for
+her masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband's
+not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even
+wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense
+of humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herself
+looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing
+to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond had thought their
+alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in
+common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow tourist was simply the most
+vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.
+Against this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an
+ardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his
+wife's tastes. Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to
+know people who were as different as possible from herself. "Why
+then don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?" Osmond
+had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her
+washerwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.
+
+Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that
+had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her
+residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been
+joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him
+to England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she
+couldn't induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at
+San Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but
+late in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.
+It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face
+with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She
+had written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing
+he wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of her
+life, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she was
+making the best of it. Mrs. Touchett had not the imagination that
+communes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy with
+her niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to
+be living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still
+remained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It
+had given her no pleasure to think of Isabel's establishment, which she
+was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, she
+rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best always to minimise
+the contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond, who made her
+think of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these days; but Mrs.
+Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talked
+of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person
+of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett had
+undergone a perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, without
+circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame
+Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one
+worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,
+for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of
+irritation--Madame Merle now took a very high tone and declared that
+this was an accusation from which she couldn't stoop to defend herself.
+She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only
+too simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel
+was not eager to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated
+visits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top
+and he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to
+herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown
+dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event--she was
+unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any part
+in it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly
+protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude,
+and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming
+seasons, that Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many months
+in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had
+done her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But
+Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite
+in her dignity.
+
+Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in
+this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the
+girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the
+game. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would
+always wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in
+her union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should
+fall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he
+had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in
+order to know Isabel's real situation. At present, however, she neither
+taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was
+justified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There was
+something fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was
+not an expression, Ralph said--it was a representation, it was even an
+advertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a
+sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she
+could say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred
+six months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning.
+She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken
+of as having a "charming position." He observed that she produced the
+impression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among
+many people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not open
+to every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people
+were not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain
+magnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive
+it; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even
+to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in
+all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel had
+no faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as having
+a great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, of
+fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to be
+bored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, to
+explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain
+of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was
+much less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness of
+development on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There was
+a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her
+experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even
+spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage.
+Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care so
+much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight
+in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked
+so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a
+crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she
+appeared now to think there was nothing worth people's either differing
+about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was
+greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had
+gained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a
+brilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence
+to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten
+her? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent
+head sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become
+quite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to
+represent something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself;
+and he could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond.
+"Good heavens, what a function!" he then woefully exclaimed. He was lost
+in wonder at the mystery of things.
+
+He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He
+saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated,
+animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had
+material to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects
+were deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the
+motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior
+with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense
+of exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every
+other, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold
+originality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom
+Isabel had attributed a superior morality. "He works with superior
+material," Ralph said to himself; "it's rich abundance compared with his
+former resources." Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never--to his
+own sense--been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the
+guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for
+the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was
+its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only
+measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,
+and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything
+he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the
+lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived
+so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his
+accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on
+his hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His
+solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his
+bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present
+to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was
+not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's
+curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,
+ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most
+directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this
+case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,
+who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found
+a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had
+suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little
+sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.
+It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
+theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this
+period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in
+the least as an enemy.
+
+For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
+had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.
+He was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on
+this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
+asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
+climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
+the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;
+but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in
+the presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward
+the end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond's making it of small ease to
+his wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not
+jealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But
+he made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was
+still left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his
+suspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he
+had deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had been
+constantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She had
+decided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation had been
+better than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous
+stroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, and
+was so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk
+been highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The
+reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and
+the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept
+Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of
+the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet
+satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose
+that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what her
+husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and
+he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had held
+good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of
+his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an
+air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,
+unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been
+before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant
+land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal
+of the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she
+should find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord
+Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+
+She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert
+Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for
+him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,
+at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought
+after all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together
+after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had
+left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,
+which he instantly removed from his lips.
+
+"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?"
+
+"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa, all
+shamelessly.
+
+"Do you mean you'll return to England?"
+
+"Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome."
+
+"Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough."
+
+"It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been."
+
+Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying
+to see it. "You've been better than you were on the journey, certainly.
+I wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand your
+condition. I recommend you to try Sicily."
+
+"I can't try," said poor Ralph. "I've done trying. I can't move further.
+I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I
+don't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, like
+Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades."
+
+"What the deuce then did you come for?" his lordship enquired.
+
+"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't
+matter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've swallowed
+all climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single cousin in
+Sicily--much less a married one."
+
+"Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?"
+
+"I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond
+will bury me. But I shall not die here."
+
+"I hope not." Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. "Well,
+I must say," he resumed, "for myself I'm very glad you don't insist on
+Sicily. I had a horror of that journey."
+
+"Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you
+in my train."
+
+"I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone."
+
+"My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,"
+Ralph cried.
+
+"I should have gone with you and seen you settled," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man."
+
+"Then I should have come back here."
+
+"And then you'd have gone to England."
+
+"No, no; I should have stayed."
+
+"Well," said Ralph, "if that's what we are both up to, I don't see where
+Sicily comes in!"
+
+His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking
+up, "I say, tell me this," he broke out; "did you really mean to go to
+Sicily when we started?"
+
+"Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you come
+with me quite--platonically?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad."
+
+"I suspect we've each been playing our little game."
+
+"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here
+a while."
+
+"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
+Affairs."
+
+"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing."
+
+"I think you've forgotten what you came for," said Ralph.
+
+"Perhaps I have," his companion answered rather gravely.
+
+These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
+absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
+without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
+There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
+recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival
+in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same
+half-diffident, half-confident silence.
+
+"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," Lord
+Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+
+"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help
+it."
+
+"What then does Mrs. Osmond think?" Ralph's friend demanded. "I've not
+told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go
+with me to Catania. She's capable of that."
+
+"In your place I should like it."
+
+"Her husband won't like it."
+
+"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to
+mind his likings. They're his affair."
+
+"I don't want to make any more trouble between them," said Ralph.
+
+"Is there so much already?"
+
+"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make
+the explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."
+
+"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop
+here?"
+
+"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
+then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop
+and defend her."
+
+"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!" Lord Warburton began with
+a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him.
+"Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," he
+observed instead.
+
+Ralph for a short time answered nothing. "It's true that my defensive
+powers are small," he returned at last; "but as my aggressive ones are
+still smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At
+any rate," he added, "there are things I'm curious to see."
+
+"You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?"
+
+"I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested in Mrs.
+Osmond."
+
+"So am I. But not as I once was," Lord Warburton added quickly. This was
+one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.
+
+"Does she strike you as very happy?" Ralph enquired, emboldened by this
+confidence.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other night
+she was happy."
+
+"Ah, she told YOU, of course," Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+
+"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she
+might have complained to."
+
+"Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she HAS
+done--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all. She's very
+careful."
+
+"She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of YOUR duty."
+
+"Ah no," said Lord Warburton gravely; "none!"
+
+"Permit me to ask," Ralph went on, "whether it's to bring out the fact
+that you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very civil to the
+little girl?"
+
+Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,
+looking at it hard. "Does that strike you as very ridiculous?"
+
+"Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her."
+
+"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of
+that age has pleased me more."
+
+"She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine."
+
+"Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty years."
+
+"My dear Warburton," said Ralph, "are you serious?"
+
+"Perfectly serious--as far as I've got."
+
+"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how cheered-up old
+Osmond will be!"
+
+His companion frowned. "I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose for
+his daughter to please HIM."
+
+"He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same."
+
+"He's not so fond of me as that," said his lordship.
+
+"As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that
+people needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you.
+Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that
+they loved me."
+
+Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general
+axioms--he was thinking of a special case. "Do you judge she'll be
+pleased?"
+
+"The girl herself? Delighted, surely."
+
+"No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Ralph looked at him a moment. "My dear fellow, what has she to do with
+it?"
+
+"Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Very true--very true." And Ralph slowly got up. "It's an interesting
+question--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her." He stood there
+a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. "I
+hope, you know, that you're very--very sure. The deuce!" he broke off.
+"I don't know how to say it."
+
+"Yes, you do; you know how to say everything."
+
+"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's merits
+her being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?"
+
+"Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton angrily, "for what do you
+take me?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady
+having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had
+spent six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a
+winter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and
+gave countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less
+inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the
+past only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of
+the sunniest niches of the Pincian--an apartment which often stood
+empty--this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a
+danger which Isabel at one period had been much inclined to deplore.
+Familiarity had modified in some degree her first impression of Madame
+Merle, but it had not essentially altered it; there was still much
+wonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it
+was a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the social
+battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished
+steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more
+and more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with
+disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own
+ideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Isabel, who
+knew also that under an appearance of extreme self-control her
+highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was
+mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the way she kept
+going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of
+life were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew
+older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days
+when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness
+what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old habit had
+been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly-perceived
+possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As a younger person
+she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation to the other:
+there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Merle had
+suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she
+lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel
+would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant
+friend had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had
+become aware more than before of the advantage of being like that--of
+having made one's self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
+
+But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed
+acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again
+a continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done
+since her marriage; but by this time Isabel's needs and inclinations
+had considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she
+would have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this
+lady's clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself,
+and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself
+beaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an
+ornament to any circle; but was she--would she be--of use to others
+in periods of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her
+friend--this indeed Isabel had always thought--was to imitate her, to be
+as firm and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,
+considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside
+her own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which
+had virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was
+almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear
+of being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion
+that she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the
+vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge--had
+never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle's conduct, to her
+perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always "quiet."
+But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the
+Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a
+little. That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent.
+She remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other
+interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and
+his little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not
+after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of
+their affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was
+wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid
+as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+
+"I MUST be on my guard," she said; "I might so easily, without
+suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my
+intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew
+your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you
+were a silly woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I
+know that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I'm determined not
+to get into trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made
+before one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your
+husband I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't
+likely I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractive than I
+was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't
+belong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection; you'd simply say I
+was forgetting certain differences. I'm determined not to forget them.
+Certainly a good friend isn't always thinking of that; one doesn't
+suspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in
+the least; but I suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself
+uncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently
+prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however,
+that if you were to be jealous--that's the form it would take--I should
+be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be your
+husband's."
+
+Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory that
+Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had
+at first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's
+marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was the
+work of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of
+the eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt's complaint had
+been not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had
+brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such
+guilt would not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make
+a crime of Madame Merle's having been the producing cause of the most
+important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just
+before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a
+time when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the
+tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If
+Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had
+been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly
+straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert
+Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less
+convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk,
+this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. "Don't you like
+Madame Merle?" Isabel had once said to him. "She thinks a great deal of
+you."
+
+"I'll tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. "I liked her once
+better than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of it.
+She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; it makes
+for relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much;
+it seems to bring her back. She'll come back in plenty of time."
+
+Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late,
+I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime,
+if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel's feelings were
+also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as
+acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind,
+whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as
+thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a
+hand in Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not
+so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and
+Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would
+not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an
+immediate horror at having made it. "Whatever happens to me let me not
+be unjust," she said; "let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them
+upon others!" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious
+apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make
+and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something
+irritating--there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat
+discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there
+was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of
+fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had
+just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little
+what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to
+explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert? The idea just then
+suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible;
+it would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner
+one of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so
+wise that she might have been pretending to know Isabel better than
+Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in
+resolutions--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had
+they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day.
+It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been
+summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should
+not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had
+a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously
+discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to
+pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its
+disappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as the pleasure to
+be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed
+her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was
+impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever
+a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a
+free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself.
+There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and
+chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to
+repair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it.
+One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second
+one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a
+certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been
+right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
+
+One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel
+came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
+determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for
+Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure
+and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her
+life that had the rightness of the young creature's attachment or
+the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft
+presence--like a small hand in her own; on Pansy's part it was more than
+an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side
+her sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated
+as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said
+to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
+must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was a direct
+admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent
+perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could
+hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child
+was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to
+remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she
+now perceived that Pansy's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of
+vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so
+extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this
+delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It
+was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to
+interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests
+she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs.
+Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her
+company; it had the effect of one's carrying a nosegay composed all
+of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any
+provocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion.
+The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel's society
+than in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an
+intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite
+pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel
+knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of
+pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was
+negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which
+certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She
+was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she
+was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to
+Isabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could have
+thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions,
+and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale
+when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked
+toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes
+the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo
+Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a
+reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to
+propose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances,
+for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this
+exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy.
+Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome
+parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at
+the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this
+vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative
+posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken
+to drive for the first time.
+
+On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of
+the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await
+them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the
+Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate
+flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a
+walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her
+first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved
+best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with
+a shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their
+return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit
+of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of
+flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching
+Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into
+water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
+occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was
+entered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond's rich
+devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just
+beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the
+reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The
+impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as
+something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take
+in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her
+bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were
+unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly;
+but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their
+colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar
+silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would
+startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from
+the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her.
+Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck
+Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was
+an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had
+arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing,
+face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange
+ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they
+were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a
+moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their
+absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all
+over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and
+had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had
+instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a
+walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.
+
+"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I
+waited for you," Madame Merle said.
+
+"Didn't he ask you to sit down?" Isabel asked with a smile.
+
+Madame Merle looked about her. "Ah, it's very true; I was going away."
+
+"You must stay now."
+
+"Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind."
+
+"I've told you that before," Isabel said--"that it takes something
+extraordinary to bring you to this house."
+
+"And you know what I've told YOU; that whether I come or whether I stay
+away, I've always the same motive--the affection I bear you."
+
+"Yes, you've told me that."
+
+"You look just now as if you didn't believe it," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Ah," Isabel answered, "the profundity of your motives, that's the last
+thing I doubt!"
+
+"You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "I know you've always been kind to me."
+
+"As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has
+to let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however, that I've come
+to-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of
+my own--to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about
+it."
+
+"I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles."
+
+"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I
+suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It's
+about poor Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel reflectively, "it's his trouble then, not yours."
+
+"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a
+week, to talk about Pansy."
+
+"Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated. "I gathered from your husband that perhaps you
+didn't."
+
+"How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the
+matter."
+
+"It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it."
+
+"It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault."
+
+"Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
+To-day he doesn't."
+
+"Haven't you been telling him?" Isabel asked.
+
+Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. "Do you know you're a
+little dry?"
+
+"Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me."
+
+"In that there's some reason. You're so near the child."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me
+dry, I wonder what HE thinks."
+
+"I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done."
+
+"I can do nothing."
+
+"You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious
+connection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to
+me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps
+coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his
+feelings."
+
+"He's very much in love," said Isabel.
+
+"Very much--for him."
+
+"Very much for Pansy, you might say as well."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. "Don't you think she's
+attractive?"
+
+"The dearest little person possible--but very limited."
+
+"She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier's not
+unlimited."
+
+"No," said Isabel, "he has about the extent of one's
+pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders." Her humour had
+lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed
+of exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy's suitor. "He's very
+kind, very honest," she presently added; "and he's not such a fool as he
+seems."
+
+"He assures me that she delights in him," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I don't know; I've not asked her."
+
+"You've never sounded her a little?"
+
+"It's not my place; it's her father's."
+
+"Ah, you're too literal!" said Madame Merle.
+
+"I must judge for myself."
+
+Madame Merle gave her smile again. "It isn't easy to help you."
+
+"To help me?" said Isabel very seriously. "What do you mean?"
+
+"It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful?
+I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of
+the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. Je n'y peux rien,
+moi! I can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially," added Madame Merle,
+"as I don't think him a paragon of husbands."
+
+Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, "You don't wash
+your hands then!" she said. After which again she added in another tone:
+"You can't--you're too much interested."
+
+Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the
+intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before.
+Only this time the latter saw nothing. "Ask him the next time, and
+you'll see."
+
+"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let
+him know that he's not welcome."
+
+"Ah yes," said Madame Merle, "I forgot that--though it's the burden of
+his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same," she
+went on, "Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as he thinks." She had got
+up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her,
+and had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the
+point she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not
+opening the way.
+
+"That must have pleased him, if you've told him," she answered, smiling.
+
+"Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've
+preached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only
+hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his
+head to be jealous."
+
+"Jealous?"
+
+"Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here."
+
+Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.
+"Ah!" she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame
+Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the
+mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
+
+"Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord
+Warburton's falling in love with Pansy," Madame Merle went on. Isabel
+was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. "It's true--there's
+nothing impossible," she returned at last, gravely and more gently.
+
+"So I've had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks."
+
+"That I don't know."
+
+"Ask him and you'll see."
+
+"I shall not ask him," said Isabel.
+
+"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course," Madame Merle
+added, "you've had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton's
+behaviour than I."
+
+"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter
+very much."
+
+Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. "Likes her, you mean--as
+Mr. Rosier means?"
+
+"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know
+that he's charmed with Pansy."
+
+"And you've never told Osmond?" This observation was immediate,
+precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle's lips.
+
+Isabel's eyes rested on her. "I suppose he'll know in time; Lord
+Warburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself."
+
+Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly
+than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave
+the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been
+thinking it over a little: "That would be better than marrying poor Mr.
+Rosier."
+
+"Much better, I think."
+
+"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really
+very kind of him."
+
+"Very kind of him?"
+
+"To drop his eyes on a simple little girl."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--"
+
+"After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever
+known!" Isabel exclaimed.
+
+Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. "Ah, a moment
+ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her."
+
+"I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton."
+
+"So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy
+deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier
+I won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse."
+
+"Mr. Rosier's a nuisance!" Isabel cried abruptly.
+
+"I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected
+to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be
+closed to him." And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared
+to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an
+inconsequent request from Isabel.
+
+"All the same, you know, be kind to him."
+
+She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend.
+"I don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan't be kind to
+him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"You had better wait till he asks her."
+
+"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially," said Madame Merle
+in a moment, "if you make him."
+
+"If I make him?"
+
+"It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him."
+
+Isabel frowned a little. "Where did you learn that?"
+
+"Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you--never!" said Madame Merle, smiling.
+
+"I certainly never told you anything of the sort."
+
+"You MIGHT have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were by
+way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very
+little; I've often thought so since."
+
+Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction.
+But she didn't admit it now--perhaps because she wished not to appear to
+exult in it. "You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,"
+she simply returned.
+
+"She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject.
+Of course I think you've done better in doing as you did. But if you
+wouldn't marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of
+helping him to marry some one else."
+
+Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting
+the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a moment she said,
+reasonably and gently enough: "I should be very glad indeed if, as
+regards Pansy, it could be arranged." Upon which her companion, who
+seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more
+tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming
+very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had
+spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had
+been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged
+his books and which he called his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton
+had come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to
+be at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour.
+Isabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on
+purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to
+read; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if
+she mightn't leave the room. She had come little by little to think
+well of the idea of Pansy's becoming the wife of the master of beautiful
+Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to
+excite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the
+match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Isabel was
+unhappy she always looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by
+theory--for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself
+of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering as
+opposed to doing. To "do"--it hardly mattered what--would therefore
+be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to
+convince herself that she had done everything possible to content her
+husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife's
+limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married
+to an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was
+so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her
+duty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good
+wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely,
+and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking
+had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired
+occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse
+herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to
+Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming
+girl. It was a little "weird" he should--being what he was; but there
+was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any
+one--any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her
+too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was
+always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been
+looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They
+looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when
+they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more
+unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for
+HER it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different;
+but he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had,
+he had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair
+had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might
+succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but
+it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what
+happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for
+her husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had crossed
+their path!
+
+At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path
+lost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that
+Pansy thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men--as sure as if
+she had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome
+she should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing
+herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it
+into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It
+was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;
+the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of
+the type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It
+was true that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a
+statesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and
+she would make a perfect little pearl of a peeress.
+
+It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden
+strangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this
+difficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied
+in poor Rosier could not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there
+were always means of levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly
+aware that she had not taken the measure of Pansy's tenacity, which
+might prove to be inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her
+as rather letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under
+deprecation--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in
+a very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling, yes,
+she would cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she
+clung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier--especially as
+she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed this sentiment to Isabel
+without a single reservation; she had said she thought his conversation
+most interesting--he had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy
+had been of the rightest and easiest--Isabel noticed that for herself,
+as she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a
+patronising way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but
+quite as if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which
+she followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far enough
+for attention to the music and the barytone. He was careful only to be
+kind--he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young chit at
+Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how
+she herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been
+as simple as Pansy the impression would have been deeper still. She
+had not been simple when she refused him; that operation had been
+as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy,
+however, in spite of HER simplicity, really did understand, and was
+glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her partners and
+bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry,
+the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of Roman society.
+She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with
+sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet
+oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if
+she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might have reminded
+her, was better than Mr. Rosier's. But Isabel contented herself at such
+moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all
+to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken
+of her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+
+It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch
+upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had
+been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and
+leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in
+this light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was
+trying as much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded
+after a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all
+she couldn't rise to it; something held her and made this impossible.
+It was not exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a
+general thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience,
+and Isabel was instinctively much more true than false to the common
+genius of her sex. There was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that
+she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a
+while Lord Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give
+Pansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered
+if she had prevented something which would have happened if she
+had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she
+pronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished visitor
+should wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know
+it. Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel
+studiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after
+he should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to
+this than might seem to accord with the description he had given Isabel
+of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that
+she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her
+transparent little companion was for the moment not to be seen through.
+
+She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an
+hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and
+then sat down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had
+transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to
+Osmond's face, and she watched him while he kept his silence. Covert
+observation had become a habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not
+an exaggeration to say that it was allied to that of self-defence, had
+made it habitual. She wished as much as possible to know his thoughts,
+to know what he would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her
+answer. Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she had
+rarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever
+things she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned it in
+a measure from her husband's very countenance. It was the same face she
+had looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating,
+on the terrace of a Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown
+slightly stouter since his marriage. He still, however, might strike one
+as very distinguished.
+
+"Has Lord Warburton been here?" he presently asked.
+
+"Yes, he stayed half an hour."
+
+"Did he see Pansy?"
+
+"Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her."
+
+"Did he talk with her much?"
+
+"He talked almost only to her."
+
+"It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?"
+
+"I don't call it anything," said Isabel; "I've waited for you to give it
+a name."
+
+"That's a consideration you don't always show," Osmond answered after a
+moment.
+
+"I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've so often
+failed of that."
+
+Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. "Are you trying to
+quarrel with me?"
+
+"No, I'm trying to live at peace."
+
+"Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself."
+
+"What do you call it when you try to make me angry?" Isabel asked.
+
+"I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing in the
+world. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now."
+
+Isabel smiled. "It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be angry
+again."
+
+"That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good."
+
+"No--it's not good." She pushed away the book she had been reading and
+took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
+
+"That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of my
+daughter's," Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most
+frequent with him. "I was afraid I should encounter opposition--that you
+too would have views on the subject. I've sent little Rosier about his
+business."
+
+"You were afraid I'd plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven't you noticed that I've
+never spoken to you of him?"
+
+"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these
+days. I know he was an old friend of yours."
+
+"Yes; he's an old friend of mine." Isabel cared little more for him than
+for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he
+was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to
+extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which
+fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they
+were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion
+of tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they
+belonged to her unmarried life. "But as regards Pansy," she added in a
+moment, "I've given him no encouragement."
+
+"That's fortunate," Osmond observed.
+
+"Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little."
+
+"There's no use talking of him," Osmond said. "As I tell you, I've
+turned him out."
+
+"Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even more of
+one. Mr. Rosier still has hope."
+
+"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit
+perfectly quiet to become Lady Warburton."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not
+so affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for
+Osmond had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her.
+The intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady
+Warburton had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But
+that was for herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should
+have put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that
+he thought Lord Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was
+unusual among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert's constant intimation that for
+him nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal
+with the most distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter
+had only to look about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore
+a lapse from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord
+Warburton and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might
+not be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary
+implications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his
+wife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she
+was face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost
+invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating,
+would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of
+her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was
+terribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was also
+capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an
+almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel perhaps took a
+small opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a great
+one.
+
+Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. "I should like it
+extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has
+another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for
+him to come into the family. It's very odd Pansy's admirers should all
+be your old friends."
+
+"It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they
+see Pansy. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in love with her."
+
+"So I think. But you're not bound to do so."
+
+"If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad," Isabel went
+on frankly. "He's an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only
+to sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit perfectly still. If she
+loses Mr. Rosier she may jump up!"
+
+Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire.
+"Pansy would like to be a great lady," he remarked in a moment with a
+certain tenderness of tone. "She wishes above all to please," he added.
+
+"To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps."
+
+"No, to please me."
+
+"Me too a little, I think," said Isabel.
+
+"Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like."
+
+"If you're sure of that, it's very well," she went on.
+
+"Meantime," said Osmond, "I should like our distinguished visitor to
+speak."
+
+"He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to
+him to believe she could care for him."
+
+Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, "Why
+didn't you tell me that?" he asked sharply.
+
+"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first
+chance that has offered."
+
+"Did you speak to him of Rosier?"
+
+"Oh yes, a little."
+
+"That was hardly necessary."
+
+"I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--" And Isabel
+paused.
+
+"So that what?"
+
+"So that he might act accordingly."
+
+"So that he might back out, do you mean?"
+
+"No, so that he might advance while there's yet time."
+
+"That's not the effect it seems to have had."
+
+"You should have patience," said Isabel. "You know Englishmen are shy."
+
+"This one's not. He was not when he made love to YOU."
+
+She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to
+her. "I beg your pardon; he was extremely so," she returned.
+
+He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the
+pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy's tapestry.
+"You must have a great deal of influence with him," Osmond went on at
+last. "The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point."
+
+This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of
+his saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said
+to herself. "Why should I have influence?" she asked. "What have I ever
+done to put him under an obligation to me?"
+
+"You refused to marry him," said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
+
+"I must not presume too much on that," she replied.
+
+He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire
+with his hands behind him. "Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I
+shall leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think
+that over and remember how much I count on you." He waited a little,
+to give her time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently
+strolled out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before
+her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them
+that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust
+herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and
+closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still
+further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation.
+A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh
+candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had
+said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion
+from another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this
+had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it
+true that there was something still between them that might be a handle
+to make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility, on his part, to
+approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not
+asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now
+that it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer
+frightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Lord Warburton's
+part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united
+them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been
+reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,
+but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself
+nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought;
+it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a
+better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might
+be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory
+of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?
+Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But
+what were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they
+mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was
+he in love with Gilbert Osmond's wife, and if so what comfort did he
+expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in
+love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother
+he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she
+possessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would
+do so for her sake and not for the small creature's own--was this the
+service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty
+with which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to
+herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for
+her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive
+one. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were
+pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another
+satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement
+of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him
+in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion
+this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered
+among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way;
+some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then
+she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her
+imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband's did him
+even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she
+was no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till
+the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical
+intimation of Osmond's.
+
+Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace,
+for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of
+thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set
+them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange
+impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband's being in
+more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That
+impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it
+had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond
+half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making
+everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he
+looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty;
+the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a
+presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his
+presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in
+himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This
+mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf
+had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes
+that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It
+was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an
+opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of
+contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no
+deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the
+first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found
+the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley
+with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of
+happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one
+could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and
+choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of
+restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier
+and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the
+feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was
+what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not
+so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time
+and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual
+perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was
+not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of
+speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself
+that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one
+suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she
+thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first
+year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed
+that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it
+was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could
+still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again
+it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect
+that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from
+her own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be
+just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were
+a kind of creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They
+were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that
+is but of one thing, which was NOT a crime. She knew of no wrong he had
+done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated
+her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was
+precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have
+found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was
+not what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first
+he could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.
+But she was, after all, herself--she couldn't help that; and now there
+was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and
+had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension
+he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort.
+He would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the
+wrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he
+would have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts,
+she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she
+almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she
+understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced
+herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending
+there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been
+under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to
+put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the
+year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his
+nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked
+by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the
+whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free
+field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.
+
+Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it
+was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond
+delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love
+to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he
+had succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never
+occurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her
+why: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might
+very well have been true; for during those months she had imagined
+a world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous
+vision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred
+fancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features
+had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures.
+That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was
+what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There
+had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind,
+in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and
+ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness
+which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager
+strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet
+not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She
+would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be
+a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously
+and yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in
+him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich
+the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she
+perceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who
+felt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But
+for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then
+her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf,
+the beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact.
+At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which
+was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other
+conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her
+own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the
+best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital
+there would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was
+no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as
+in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her
+think better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good
+luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate
+in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.
+Touchett's leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring
+him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.
+There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and
+if he loved her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the
+courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+
+Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married
+on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with
+her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was
+only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of
+her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in
+his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme
+conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still
+remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The
+finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever
+known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but
+to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of
+devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she
+knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived IN
+it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been
+captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps
+had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,
+more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was
+this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself
+in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of HIS deception.
+It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more.
+She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been
+like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of
+their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that
+she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their
+marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only
+afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had
+really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in
+the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then
+appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to
+have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had
+too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than
+she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she
+HAD been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas
+for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with
+some one else. One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course
+one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been
+this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She
+had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in
+the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant
+had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she
+judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not
+known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it
+were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at
+life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least
+it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that
+she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so
+different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly
+that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that he had
+no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their
+freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air
+of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth
+and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look
+for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least
+some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;
+but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that
+sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the
+stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had
+contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she
+had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own
+habitation, then, THEN she had seen where she really was.
+
+She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she
+had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had
+lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.
+It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of
+suffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air;
+Osmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high
+window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering;
+for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come
+and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took
+himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture,
+his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his
+knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank
+of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so
+seriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him
+better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first
+gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and
+that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to
+see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she
+had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every
+one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for
+everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very
+well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for
+he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life,
+opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance
+of mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite
+vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one's self unspotted by
+it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one
+was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one's eye, in order
+not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some
+recognition of one's own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable,
+but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel
+about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to
+her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite
+independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities;
+she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,
+avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her
+fellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing,
+however, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of
+a personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her
+believe it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and
+the thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as
+Osmond cared for it.
+
+He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really
+done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared
+to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to
+have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in
+such different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity
+and propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he
+deemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never
+lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame
+of doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed;
+but they attached such different ideas, such different associations and
+desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was
+simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge
+would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But
+for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated
+attitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted;
+so was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an
+immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing
+in the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not
+to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he
+meant by this that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; though
+from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He
+had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,
+and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in
+accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her.
+Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than
+their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but
+she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march
+to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her
+husband's past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory,
+so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain
+things they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people
+they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about
+her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness
+and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she
+seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of
+course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the
+situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had
+pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for
+the aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts
+and longings, of quite another ideal.
+
+Then it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never had
+been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were
+answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed
+of her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble?
+He at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his
+prevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments
+were worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real
+offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her
+own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small
+garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the
+flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay.
+It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already
+far-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was
+because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her
+intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from
+desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would
+be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for
+him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and
+Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the
+part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so
+tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To
+begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the
+Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and
+even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything
+of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did
+all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their
+price? Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands?
+When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for
+the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in
+a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
+husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,
+and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was
+enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions--it was
+enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn
+of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He
+had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well
+furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon
+his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.
+He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to
+it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his
+discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one
+that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.
+
+She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
+had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and
+comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he
+had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If
+to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a
+kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might
+it not be expected to have had upon HIM? It was very simple; he
+despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a
+Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand
+Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for
+a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before
+them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought SHE
+to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate
+him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate
+wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt
+afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she
+had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all
+events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely
+spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out
+fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph
+Touchett's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her
+cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to
+him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid
+state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had
+to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this
+as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly
+aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's
+rage as if Osmond had locked her into her room--which she was sure was
+what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she
+was not defiant, but she certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to
+Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see
+him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never
+known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be
+a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There
+was an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on
+everything. But Ralph's little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the
+hour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache
+for HIM. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never
+had a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying,
+he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of
+her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make Gilbert look better to
+sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that they talked of him--it
+was not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It
+was simply that Ralph was generous and that her husband was not. There
+was something in Ralph's talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his
+being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more
+spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what
+might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond--quite apart
+from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion
+to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she
+was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her
+again--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that
+morning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond.
+She had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to
+feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,
+what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more
+intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert had never
+been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he
+should never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking
+care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation,
+religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange
+exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin,
+had an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a
+kindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was,
+the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had
+once wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but
+that, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge
+and even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face.
+Ralph smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary
+form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She
+didn't wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was
+the great thing, and it didn't matter that such knowledge would rather
+have righted him.
+
+For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire
+had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in
+a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but
+her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a
+state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to
+her there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a
+mockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and
+what could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there
+half the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why
+Pansy shouldn't be married as you would put a letter in the post-office?
+When the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for
+the lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their
+sockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room
+and stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and
+Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which
+Osmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as
+ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had
+not extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on
+those of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her
+father she must have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought this
+unlikely; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply determined to
+be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper
+esteem for chances. She carried herself no less attentively than usual
+and kept no less anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her
+bouquet very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time.
+She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in a
+flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never in want
+of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave Isabel, who was
+not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had rendered her this service
+for some minutes when she became aware of the near presence of Edward
+Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his affable smile and wore a
+look of almost military resolution. The change in his appearance would
+have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom
+a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of
+gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify
+her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After
+he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: "It's all
+pansies; it must be hers!"
+
+Isabel smiled kindly. "Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to hold."
+
+"May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?" the poor young man asked.
+
+"No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back."
+
+"I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
+But may I not at least have a single flower?"
+
+Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the
+bouquet. "Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for you."
+
+"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!" Rosier exclaimed with
+his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+
+"Don't put it into your button-hole," she said. "Don't for the world!"
+
+"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I
+wish to show her that I believe in her still."
+
+"It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show it to
+others. Her father has told her not to dance with you."
+
+"And is that all YOU can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.
+Osmond," said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. "You
+know our acquaintance goes back very far--quite into the days of our
+innocent childhood."
+
+"Don't make me out too old," Isabel patiently answered. "You come back
+to that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must tell you that,
+old friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry
+you I should have refused you on the spot."
+
+"Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere
+Parisian trifler!"
+
+"I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I mean by
+that, of course, is that I'm not in love with you for Pansy."
+
+"Very good; I see. You pity me--that's all." And Edward Rosier looked
+all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to
+him that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he was at least too proud
+to show that the deficiency struck him as general.
+
+Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the
+dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things,
+was against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness,
+after all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more
+than before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form,
+was the most affecting thing in the world--young love struggling with
+adversity. "Would you really be very kind to her?" she finally asked in
+a low tone.
+
+He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held
+in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. "You pity me; but
+don't you pity HER a little?"
+
+"I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life."
+
+"It will depend on what you call life!" Mr. Rosier effectively said.
+"She won't enjoy being tortured."
+
+"There'll be nothing of that."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see."
+
+"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming
+back to me," Isabel added, "and I must beg you to go away."
+
+Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her
+cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he
+walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved
+this sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
+
+Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh
+and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her
+bouquet. Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers;
+whereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at
+play than she had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she
+said nothing to Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after
+he had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare
+misfortune of having already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however,
+she had discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this
+knowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with which she
+responded to the appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under
+acute constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth
+by a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and she had
+not been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord Warburton advancing
+through the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her good-evening;
+she had not seen him since the day before. He looked about him, and then
+"Where's the little maid?" he asked. It was in this manner that he had
+formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.
+
+"She's dancing," said Isabel. "You'll see her somewhere."
+
+He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. "She sees
+me, but she won't notice me," he then remarked. "Are you not dancing?"
+
+"As you see, I'm a wall-flower."
+
+"Won't you dance with me?"
+
+"Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid."
+
+"One needn't prevent the other--especially as she's engaged."
+
+"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She
+dances very hard, and you'll be the fresher."
+
+"She dances beautifully," said Lord Warburton, following her with his
+eyes. "Ah, at last," he added, "she has given me a smile." He stood
+there with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel
+observed him it came over her, as it had done before, that it was
+strange a man of his mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It
+struck her as a great incongruity; neither Pansy's small fascinations,
+nor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement,
+which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it. "I
+should like to dance with you," he went on in a moment, turning back to
+Isabel; "but I think I like even better to talk with you."
+
+"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen
+oughtn't to waltz."
+
+"Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss
+Osmond?"
+
+"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like
+a piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you
+dance with me you'll look as if you were doing it for your own."
+
+"And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?"
+
+"No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands."
+
+"The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it."
+
+"Amuse yourself with talking to me," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've always
+to be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous
+to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?"
+
+"I can't leave my place. Pansy must find me here."
+
+He was silent a little. "You're wonderfully good to her," he said
+suddenly.
+
+Isabel stared a little and smiled. "Can you imagine one's not being?"
+
+"No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a
+great deal for her."
+
+"I've taken her out with me," said Isabel, smiling still. "And I've seen
+that she has proper clothes."
+
+"Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've talked to
+her, advised her, helped her to develop."
+
+"Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it."
+
+She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain
+visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete
+hilarity. "We all try to live as near it as we can," he said after a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she
+welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she
+thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there
+was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case
+of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She
+felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in
+his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of
+nature. Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near
+her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was
+afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn't. She
+felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to
+flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with
+another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the
+first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were
+too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which
+were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent
+that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself
+to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the
+injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her
+attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were
+in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way
+connected--a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be
+trying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it
+was others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was
+what she thought about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were
+so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken
+account of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious,
+made the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back
+into right relations with things the better. He immediately began
+to talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he
+dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a
+little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good
+deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his
+robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always
+seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful
+character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she
+knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a little and
+wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till
+the music of the following dance began, for which she knew Pansy to be
+also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered
+flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's
+complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan,
+to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own
+imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's extreme
+adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond
+had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter's
+duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and
+contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think
+she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was
+because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+
+After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her
+again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound
+his thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. "She has promised
+to dance with me later," he said.
+
+"I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion."
+
+At this he looked a little awkward. "No, I didn't ask her for that. It's
+a quadrille."
+
+"Ah, you're not clever!" said Isabel almost angrily. "I told her to keep
+the cotillion in case you should ask for it."
+
+"Poor little maid, fancy that!" And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. "Of
+course I will if you like."
+
+"If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!"
+
+"I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her
+book."
+
+Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there
+looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined
+to ask him to remove them. She didn't do so, however; she only said to
+him, after a minute, with her own raised: "Please let me understand."
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my stepdaughter.
+You've not forgotten it!"
+
+"Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "he didn't mention to me that he had heard from you."
+
+Lord Warburton stammered a little. "I--I didn't send my letter."
+
+"Perhaps you forgot THAT."
+
+"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to
+write, you know. But I shall send it to-night."
+
+"At three o'clock in the morning?"
+
+"I mean later, in the course of the day."
+
+"Very good. You still wish then to marry her?"
+
+"Very much indeed."
+
+"Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?" And as her companion stared at
+this enquiry Isabel added: "If she can't dance with you for half an hour
+how will she be able to dance with you for life?"
+
+"Ah," said Lord Warburton readily, "I'll let her dance with other
+people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--that you--"
+
+"That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing."
+
+"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner
+where we may sit down and talk."
+
+"Oh," said Isabel gravely, "you're much too considerate of me."
+
+When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself,
+thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions.
+Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that
+he would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite
+of the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the
+ground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to
+make an exception in Lord Warburton's favour.
+
+"After all I don't care to dance," he said; "it's a barbarous amusement:
+I'd much rather talk." And he intimated that he had discovered exactly
+the corner he had been looking for--a quiet nook in one of the smaller
+rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere
+with conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she
+wished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him,
+though she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his
+daughter. It was with his daughter's pretendant, however; that would
+make it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon
+Edward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking
+at the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She
+stopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.
+
+"Certainly not, if I can't dance with HER!" he answered.
+
+"You had better go away then," said Isabel with the manner of good
+counsel.
+
+"I shall not go till she does!" And he let Lord Warburton pass without
+giving him a look.
+
+This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he
+asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him
+somewhere before.
+
+"It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with Pansy."
+
+"Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad."
+
+"He has reason. My husband won't listen to him."
+
+"What's the matter with him?" Lord Warburton enquired. "He seems very
+harmless."
+
+"He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever."
+
+Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this
+account of Edward Rosier. "Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young
+fellow."
+
+"So he is, but my husband's very particular."
+
+"Oh, I see." And Lord Warburton paused a moment. "How much money has he
+got?" he then ventured to ask.
+
+"Some forty thousand francs a year."
+
+"Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know."
+
+"So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas."
+
+"Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really
+an idiot, the young man?"
+
+"An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old
+I myself was in love with him."
+
+"He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day," Lord Warburton rejoined
+vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, "Don't you think we
+might sit here?" he asked.
+
+"Wherever you please." The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a
+subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as
+our friends came in. "It's very kind of you to take such an interest in
+Mr. Rosier," Isabel said.
+
+"He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I
+wondered what ailed him."
+
+"You're a just man," said Isabel. "You've a kind thought even for a
+rival."
+
+Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. "A rival! Do you call him
+my rival?"
+
+"Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person."
+
+"Yes--but since he has no chance!"
+
+"I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It
+shows imagination."
+
+"You like me for it?" And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain
+eye. "I think you mean you're laughing at me for it."
+
+"Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh
+at."
+
+"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do
+you suppose one could do for him?"
+
+"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine
+that yourself," Isabel said. "Pansy too would like you for that."
+
+"Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already."
+
+"Very much, I think."
+
+He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. "Well then, I
+don't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?"
+
+A quick blush sprang to his brow. "You told me she would have no wish
+apart from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would favour
+me--!" He paused a little and then suggested "Don't you see?" through
+his blush.
+
+"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that
+it would probably take her very far."
+
+"That seems to me a very proper feeling," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"Certainly; it's a very proper feeling." Isabel remained silent for some
+moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them
+with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last
+she said: "But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a
+man would wish to be indebted for a wife."
+
+"I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!"
+
+"Yes, of course you must think that."
+
+"I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course."
+
+"No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you,
+and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in
+love."
+
+"Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!"
+
+Isabel shook her head. "You like to think you are while you sit here
+with me. But that's not how you strike me."
+
+"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
+it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
+Osmond?"
+
+"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons."
+
+"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons."
+
+"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw
+for them."
+
+"Ah, really in love--really in love!" Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding
+his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. "You
+must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I
+once was."
+
+"Well, if you're sure," said Isabel, "it's all right."
+
+He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before
+him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to
+his friend. "Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?" She met his eyes,
+and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to
+be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his
+expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own
+account--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a
+hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an
+instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying
+her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or
+of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely
+personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they
+were conscious of at the moment.
+
+"My dear Lord Warburton," she said, smiling, "you may do, so far as I'm
+concerned, whatever comes into your head."
+
+And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
+within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
+gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they
+had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
+regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the
+more as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however,
+and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
+when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
+planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. "You did
+right not to go away. I've some comfort for you."
+
+"I need it," the young man softly wailed, "when I see you so awfully
+thick with him!"
+
+"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be
+much, but what I can I'll do."
+
+He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. "What has suddenly brought you
+round?"
+
+"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!" she answered,
+smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with
+Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many
+other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it
+approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to
+reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if
+she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a
+little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by
+a movement of her finger, murmured gently: "Don't forget to send your
+letter to her father!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase,
+to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
+struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
+unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
+where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
+talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
+obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who
+won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in
+Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without
+currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very
+dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared
+to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness
+needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her
+eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she
+had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had
+been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that
+there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been
+there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.
+Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much
+more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated
+Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They
+are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually
+summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City
+and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The
+Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with
+her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more
+interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening
+parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one
+had heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly
+increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than
+herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual
+enough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and the catacombs, not
+even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the
+scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about
+her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful
+time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which
+she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a
+week there during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she
+had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want
+her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the
+same, for after all she didn't care two straws about Osmond. It was
+her husband who wouldn't let her, and the money question was always
+a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her
+sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel's
+personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with
+clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could
+never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really
+clever ones--always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that,
+different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she
+had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet
+upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should
+both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,
+with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was
+constantly expecting that Isabel would "look down" on her, and she as
+constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would
+begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she
+cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law
+regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor
+Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as
+soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a
+grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband's sister, however;
+she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought
+her very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she
+was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably
+pink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle
+was apparently the Countess's spiritual principle, a little loose nut
+that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too
+anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there
+was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage,
+had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst
+species--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said
+at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she
+had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake.
+The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to
+the Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this
+history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend
+several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond
+himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very
+quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had
+put into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any
+terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her
+former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the
+marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious
+thoughts--if any of the Countess's thoughts were serious--of putting
+her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was
+reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an
+easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements, but it
+seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the
+taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether
+Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see
+Osmond overtopped.
+
+Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the
+card of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription "Henrietta C.
+Stackpole." The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she
+didn't remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant
+then remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the
+Countess should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on
+seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact
+reminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett's;
+the only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the only
+modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She
+recognised Miss Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole
+seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly
+good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that
+sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account
+of her mother--whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother
+was not at all like Isabel's friend; the Countess could see at a
+glance that this lady was much more contemporary; and she received
+an impression of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in
+distant countries--in the character (the professional character) of
+literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown
+over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet
+(oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of
+glossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of
+her "Creole" ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal
+and was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see,
+was always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something
+brisk and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost
+conscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever
+vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its address. The
+Countess could not but feel that the correspondent of the Interviewer
+was much more in the movement than the American Corinne. She explained
+that she had called on the Countess because she was the only person she
+knew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to
+see something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett,
+but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and even if she had been in Florence
+Henrietta would not have put herself out for her, since Mrs. Touchett
+was not one of her admirations.
+
+"Do you mean by that that I am?" the Countess graciously asked.
+
+"Well, I like you better than I do her," said Miss Stackpole. "I seem to
+remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don't
+know whether it was an accident or whether it's your usual style. At
+any rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it
+afterwards in print."
+
+"Dear me!" cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; "I had no idea
+I ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time."
+
+"It was about the position of woman in this city," Miss Stackpole
+remarked. "You threw a good deal of light upon it."
+
+"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And
+you wrote it down and published it?" the Countess went on. "Ah, do let
+me see it!"
+
+"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like," Henrietta said.
+"I didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I
+quoted your views."
+
+The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped
+hands. "Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention my name? I
+should have rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my
+views were; I have so many! But I'm not ashamed of them. I'm not at all
+like my brother--I suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of
+scandal to be put in the papers; if you were to quote him he'd never
+forgive you."
+
+"He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him," said Miss Stackpole
+with bland dryness. "That's another reason," she added, "why I wanted to
+come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend."
+
+"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think what I
+knew about you."
+
+"I'm quite willing to be known by that," Henrietta declared. "But that
+isn't what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my
+relations with Isabel."
+
+"Don't permit it," said the Countess.
+
+"That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome."
+
+"So am I!" the Countess cried. "We'll go together."
+
+"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you
+by name as my companion."
+
+The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside
+her visitor. "Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won't like it,
+but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know how to read."
+
+Henrietta's large eyes became immense. "Doesn't know how to read? May I
+put that into my letter?"
+
+"Into your letter?"
+
+"In the Interviewer. That's my paper."
+
+"Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?"
+
+Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
+"She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered
+that she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason."
+
+The Countess listened with extreme interest. "The reason's Osmond," she
+pregnantly remarked.
+
+"Isabel ought to make a stand," said Miss Stackpole. "I'm afraid she has
+changed a great deal. I told her she would."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't
+my brother like you?" the Countess ingenuously added.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me;
+I don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
+people did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a
+good deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's
+just the same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Isabel."
+
+"Do you mean that she hates you?" the Countess enquired.
+
+"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for."
+
+"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!" the Countess exclaimed.
+
+"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a
+difference. If you know anything," Miss Stackpole went on, "I should
+like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take."
+
+The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. "I know
+very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn't like me
+any better than he appears to like you."
+
+"Yet you're not a lady correspondent," said Henrietta pensively.
+
+"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--I'm
+to stay in the house!" And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
+exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's
+disappointment.
+
+This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. "I shouldn't have gone if
+she HAD asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't
+to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
+shouldn't have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have
+been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's
+not all."
+
+"Rome's very good just now," said the Countess; "there are all sorts of
+brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?"
+Henrietta enquired.
+
+"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur. He's
+making love to Isabel."
+
+"Making love to her?"
+
+"So I'm told; I don't know the details," said the Countess lightly. "But
+Isabel's pretty safe."
+
+Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said
+nothing. "When do you go to Rome?" she enquired abruptly.
+
+"Not for a week, I'm afraid."
+
+"I shall go to-morrow," Henrietta said. "I think I had better not wait."
+
+"Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told Isabel
+receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you
+at your pension." Henrietta sat still--she was lost in thought; and
+suddenly the Countess cried: "Ah, but if you don't go with me you can't
+describe our journey!"
+
+Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking
+of something else and presently expressed it. "I'm not sure that I
+understand you about Lord Warburton."
+
+"Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all."
+
+"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?" Henrietta
+enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+
+The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: "It's certain
+all the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!" she added.
+
+"That idea would be enough to prevent me," said Miss Stackpole. "I
+should want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's. Do you mean
+that Isabel's guilty--guilty--?" And she paused a little, choosing her
+expression.
+
+"Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that
+Osmond's very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great
+deal at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised."
+
+"No, I'm just anxious," Henrietta said.
+
+"Ah, you're not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more
+confidence. I'll tell you," the Countess added quickly: "if it will be a
+comfort to you I engage to draw him off."
+
+Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her
+gaze. "You don't understand me," she said after a while. "I haven't the
+idea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for Isabel--in that way. I'm
+only afraid she's unhappy--that's what I want to get at."
+
+The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and
+sarcastic. "That may very well be; for my part I should like to know
+whether Osmond is." Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
+
+"If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it," Henrietta
+went on.
+
+"You'll see; she'll tell you," said the Countess.
+
+"Ah, she may NOT tell me--that's what I'm afraid of!"
+
+"Well, if Osmond isn't amusing himself--in his own old way--I flatter
+myself I shall discover it," the Countess rejoined.
+
+"I don't care for that," said Henrietta.
+
+"I do immensely! If Isabel's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but I can't
+help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I
+can't tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and
+marry him for? If she had listened to me she'd have got rid of him. I'll
+forgive her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she
+has simply allowed him to trample upon her I don't know that I shall
+even pity her. But I don't think that's very likely. I count upon
+finding that if she's miserable she has at least made HIM so."
+
+Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond
+unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of
+fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose
+mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a
+capacity for coarseness even there. "It will be better if they love each
+other," she said for edification.
+
+"They can't. He can't love any one."
+
+"I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for
+Isabel. I shall positively start to-morrow."
+
+"Isabel certainly has devotees," said the Countess, smiling very
+vividly. "I declare I don't pity her."
+
+"It may be I can't assist her," Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were
+well not to have illusions.
+
+"You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I believe that's
+what you came from America for," the Countess suddenly added.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to look after her," Henrietta said serenely.
+
+Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an
+eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come.
+"Ah, that's very pretty c'est bien gentil! Isn't it what they call
+friendship?"
+
+"I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come."
+
+"She's very happy--she's very fortunate," the Countess went on. "She
+has others besides." And then she broke out passionately. "She's more
+fortunate than I! I'm as unhappy as she--I've a very bad husband; he's a
+great deal worse than Osmond. And I've no friends. I thought I had, but
+they're gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you've done for
+her."
+
+Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She
+gazed at her companion a moment, and then: "Look here, Countess, I'll do
+anything for you that you like. I'll wait over and travel with you."
+
+"Never mind," the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: "only
+describe me in the newspaper!"
+
+Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her
+understand that she could give no fictitious representation of her
+journey to Rome. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On
+quitting her she took the way to the Lung' Arno, the sunny quay beside
+the yellow river where the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand
+all in a row. She had learned her way before this through the streets of
+Florence (she was very quick in such matters), and was therefore able
+to turn with great decision of step out of the little square which forms
+the approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the
+left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of the
+hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew forth
+a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after
+meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over
+her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: "Could
+I see you this evening for a few moments on a very important matter?"
+Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with
+this little document she approached the porter, who now had taken up
+his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home.
+The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about
+twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and begged
+it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her
+course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which
+she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings.
+Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the
+upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with
+antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an
+empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble
+floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but
+scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of
+artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had
+after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the
+little Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the
+sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands
+to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special
+devotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the most beautiful
+picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she
+was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that
+they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite
+work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it
+involved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn
+into the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a
+little exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+
+"I've just been at your hotel," she said. "I left a card for you."
+
+"I'm very much honoured," Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant
+it.
+
+"It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and I know
+you don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about something."
+
+He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. "I shall be very glad
+to hear what you wish to say."
+
+"You don't like to talk with me," said Henrietta. "But I don't care for
+that; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come
+and see me; but since I've met you here this will do as well."
+
+"I was just going away," Goodwood stated; "but of course I'll stop." He
+was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+
+Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was
+so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on
+any terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the
+pictures.
+
+"All I want to. I've been here an hour."
+
+"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio," said Henrietta. "I came up on
+purpose to have a look at it." She went into the Tribune and he slowly
+accompanied her.
+
+"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't
+remember pictures--especially that sort." She had pointed out her
+favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to
+talk with him.
+
+"No," said Henrietta, "it's about something less harmonious!" They
+had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to
+themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus.
+"I want you to do me a favour," Miss Stackpole went on.
+
+Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at
+the sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man
+than our earlier friend. "I'm sure it's something I shan't like," he
+said rather loudly.
+
+"No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no favour."
+
+"Well, let's hear it," he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious
+of his patience.
+
+"You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a favour.
+Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me I'd gladly do
+you one." Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect,
+had an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather
+a hard surface, couldn't help being touched by it. When he was touched
+he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed,
+nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more
+directly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued
+therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. "I may say
+now, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I've ever annoyed you (and
+I think sometimes I have) it's because I knew I was willing to suffer
+annoyance for you. I've troubled you--doubtless. But I'd TAKE trouble
+for you."
+
+Goodwood hesitated. "You're taking trouble now."
+
+"Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it's better on the
+whole that you should go to Rome."
+
+"I thought you were going to say that!" he answered rather artlessly.
+
+"You HAVE considered it then?"
+
+"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise
+I shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I stayed in Paris two
+months for. I was thinking it over."
+
+"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because
+you were so much attracted."
+
+"Best for whom, do you mean?" Goodwood demanded.
+
+"Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next."
+
+"Oh, it won't do HER any good! I don't flatter myself that."
+
+"Won't it do her some harm?--that's the question."
+
+"I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But
+if you want to know, I do want to see her myself."
+
+"Yes, and that's why you go."
+
+"Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?"
+
+"How will it help you?--that's what I want to know," said Miss
+Stackpole.
+
+"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about
+in Paris."
+
+"It will make you more discontented."
+
+"Why do you say 'more' so?" Goodwood asked rather sternly. "How do you
+know I'm discontented?"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta, hesitating a little, "you seem never to have
+cared for another."
+
+"How do you know what I care for?" he cried with a big blush. "Just now
+I care to go to Rome."
+
+Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.
+"Well," she observed at last, "I only wanted to tell you what I think;
+I had it on my mind. Of course you think it's none of my business. But
+nothing is any one's business, on that principle."
+
+"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest,"
+said Caspar Goodwood. "I shall go to Rome and I shan't hurt Mrs.
+Osmond."
+
+"You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that's the real
+issue."
+
+"Is she in need of help?" he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
+
+"Most women always are," said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness
+and generalising less hopefully than usual. "If you go to Rome," she
+added, "I hope you'll be a true friend--not a selfish one!" And she
+turned off and began to look at the pictures.
+
+Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered
+round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. "You've heard
+something about her here," he then resumed. "I should like to know what
+you've heard."
+
+Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this
+occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after
+thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. "Yes, I've
+heard," she answered; "but as I don't want you to go to Rome I won't
+tell you."
+
+"Just as you please. I shall see for myself," he said. Then
+inconsistently, for him, "You've heard she's unhappy!" he added.
+
+"Oh, you won't see that!" Henrietta exclaimed.
+
+"I hope not. When do you start?"
+
+"To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?"
+
+Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss
+Stackpole's company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the
+same character as Gilbert Osmond's, but it had at this moment an equal
+distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole's virtues than a
+reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,
+and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.
+Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of
+things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters
+he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But
+it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss
+Stackpole didn't take so much for granted. She took for granted that he
+was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when
+they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had
+repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no
+wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was NOT always thinking of
+her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least
+colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing
+her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn't
+care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him,
+that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now
+made other reflections--which show how widely different, in effect, his
+ill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond's. He desired to go immediately to
+Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the
+European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee
+to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found
+one's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's wish to have
+the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at
+least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But
+he couldn't take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the
+morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected
+woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait
+longer than he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day.
+She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in
+a European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of
+irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to
+put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that;
+it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some
+moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a
+tone of extreme distinctness, "Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll
+go too, as I may be of assistance to you."
+
+"Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!" Henrietta returned
+imperturbably.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be
+displeased by the continuance of Ralph's visit to Rome. That knowledge
+was very present to her as she went to her cousin's hotel the day
+after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his
+sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient
+perception of the sources of Osmond's opposition. He wished her to have
+no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle
+of freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself,
+that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that
+she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband's aversion to
+it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had
+not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was
+her appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort
+of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination,
+however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary
+decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled
+her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had
+lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband's
+intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the
+less, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back
+something she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and
+monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do
+nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her
+to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph;
+but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this
+prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet
+made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband's wish
+for the event; she didn't, to be just, see how he COULD like her to be
+with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond's
+sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively
+interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to
+decide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and
+her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her
+wish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Ralph would
+start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself
+in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward.
+It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed
+preferable to repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred
+act--of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous.
+To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open
+acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that
+their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be
+no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal
+readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was
+to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there
+was no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel
+went to the Hotel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure
+of propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn't have been
+a better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest
+appreciation. Isabel's application of that measure had been particularly
+free to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't
+leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This
+indeed was Gilbert's business as well as her own.
+
+She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. "I want you to answer
+me a question. It's about Lord Warburton."
+
+"I think I guess your question," Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out
+of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
+
+"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it."
+
+"Oh, I don't say I can do that."
+
+"You're intimate with him," she said; "you've a great deal of
+observation of him."
+
+"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!"
+
+"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature."
+
+"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar," said Ralph
+with an air of private amusement.
+
+"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?"
+
+"Very much, I think. I can make that out."
+
+"Ah!" said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+
+Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+mystification. "You say that as if you were disappointed."
+
+Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.
+"It's after all no business of mine."
+
+"You're very philosophic," said her cousin. And then in a moment: "May I
+enquire what you're talking about?"
+
+Isabel stared. "I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants,
+of all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I've told you that before,
+without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I
+think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?"
+
+"Ah, for Pansy, no!" cried Ralph very positively.
+
+"But you said just now he did."
+
+Ralph waited a moment. "That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "That's nonsense, you know."
+
+"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine."
+
+"That would be very tiresome." She spoke, as she flattered herself, with
+much subtlety.
+
+"I ought to tell you indeed," Ralph went on, "that to me he has denied
+it."
+
+"It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you
+that he's in love with Pansy?"
+
+"He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me know, of
+course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh."
+
+"Does he really think it?"
+
+"Ah, what Warburton really thinks--!" said Ralph.
+
+Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves
+on which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked
+up, and then, "Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!" she cried abruptly and
+passionately.
+
+It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the
+words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of
+relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf
+between them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a
+moment: "How unhappy you must be!"
+
+He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the
+first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. "When I
+talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense," she said with a quick
+smile. "The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments!
+The matter's very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can't
+undertake to see him through."
+
+"He ought to succeed easily," said Ralph.
+
+Isabel debated. "Yes--but he has not always succeeded."
+
+"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss
+Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?"
+
+"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he'll let
+the matter drop."
+
+"He'll do nothing dishonourable," said Ralph.
+
+"I'm very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to
+leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it's cruel
+to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up."
+
+"Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But Warburton
+isn't obliged to mind that."
+
+"No, cruel to her," said Isabel. "She would be very unhappy if she were
+to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea
+seems to amuse you; of course you're not in love with him. He has the
+merit--for Pansy--of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance
+that Lord Warburton isn't."
+
+"He'd be very good to her," said Ralph.
+
+"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said
+a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with
+perfect propriety."
+
+"How would your husband like that?"
+
+"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain
+satisfaction himself."
+
+"Has he commissioned you to obtain it?" Ralph ventured to ask.
+
+"It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton's--an older
+friend, that is, than Gilbert--I should take an interest in his
+intentions."
+
+"Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. "Let me understand. Are you
+pleading his cause?"
+
+"Not in the least. I'm very glad he shouldn't become your stepdaughter's
+husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!" said Ralph,
+smiling. "But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you
+haven't pushed him enough."
+
+Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. "He knows me well
+enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention
+of pushing, I presume. I'm not afraid I shall not be able to justify
+myself!" she said lightly.
+
+Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to
+Ralph's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural
+face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage
+desire to hear her complain of her husband--hear her say that she should
+be held accountable for Lord Warburton's defection. Ralph was certain
+that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form
+that in such an event Osmond's displeasure would take. It could only
+take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of
+it--to let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It
+little mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not
+deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt
+cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely
+mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did
+she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention?
+Why did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her?
+How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her
+humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
+mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
+bound to consider. "You'll be decidedly at variance, all the same," he
+said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
+understood, "You'll find yourselves thinking very differently," he
+continued.
+
+"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!" She took up her
+parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. "It's a
+matter we can hardly quarrel about, however," she added; "for almost all
+the interest is on his side. That's very natural. Pansy's after all his
+daughter--not mine." And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+
+Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him without
+his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
+opportunity to lose. "Do you know what his interest will make him say?"
+he asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not
+discouragingly--and he went on. "It will make him say that your want
+of zeal is owing to jealousy." He stopped a moment; her face made him
+afraid.
+
+"To jealousy?"
+
+"To jealousy of his daughter."
+
+She blushed red and threw back her head. "You're not kind," she said in
+a voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+
+"Be frank with me and you'll see," he answered.
+
+But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
+tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
+mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going
+to the girl's room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was
+always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty
+patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.
+At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room
+fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in
+accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up
+and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that
+the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo
+Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal
+bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.
+Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of
+humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Isabel,
+the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel
+had a difficult task--the only thing was to perform it as simply as
+possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against
+betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at
+least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But Pansy seemed to
+have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she
+had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the
+fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a
+cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her
+stepmother's knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own
+lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she
+desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke
+it. The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and
+indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of
+a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her
+tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+Pansy's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel
+had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the
+effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with
+her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half
+in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness
+of the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked
+out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When
+Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might
+have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her
+silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire
+to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer
+and nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep
+longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she
+begged her to advise her now.
+
+"It's difficult for me to advise you," Isabel returned. "I don't know
+how I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must get his
+advice and, above all, you must act on it."
+
+At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. "I think
+I should like your advice better than papa's," she presently remarked.
+
+"That's not as it should be," said Isabel coldly. "I love you very much,
+but your father loves you better."
+
+"It isn't because you love me--it's because you're a lady," Pansy
+answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. "A lady can
+advise a young girl better than a man."
+
+"I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes."
+
+"Ah yes," said the child eagerly, "I must do that."
+
+"But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not for your
+own sake, it's for mine," Isabel went on. "If I try to learn from you
+what you expect, what you desire, it's only that I may act accordingly."
+
+Pansy stared, and then very quickly, "Will you do everything I want?"
+she asked.
+
+"Before I say yes I must know what such things are."
+
+Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to
+marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so
+if her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn't allow it.
+
+"Very well then, it's impossible," Isabel pronounced.
+
+"Yes, it's impossible," said Pansy without a sigh and with the same
+extreme attention in her clear little face.
+
+"You must think of something else then," Isabel went on; but Pansy,
+sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the
+least success.
+
+"You think of those who think of you," she said with a faint smile. "I
+know Mr. Rosier thinks of me."
+
+"He ought not to," said Isabel loftily. "Your father has expressly
+requested he shouldn't."
+
+"He can't help it, because he knows I think of HIM."
+
+"You shouldn't think of him. There's some excuse for him, perhaps; but
+there's none for you."
+
+"I wish you would try to find one," the girl exclaimed as if she were
+praying to the Madonna.
+
+"I should be very sorry to attempt it," said the Madonna with unusual
+frigidity. "If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you
+think of him?"
+
+"No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right."
+
+"Ah, but I don't admit Mr. Rosier's right!" Isabel hypocritically cried.
+
+Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking
+advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of
+disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that
+she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And
+she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might
+never marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She
+appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of
+course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning.
+She was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This
+might seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy,
+evidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness
+toward her father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only
+the sweetness of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite
+intimation that she could prove it better by remaining single than even
+by marrying him.
+
+"Your father would like you to make a better marriage," said Isabel.
+"Mr. Rosier's fortune is not at all large."
+
+"How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have myself
+so little money; why should I look for a fortune?"
+
+"Your having so little is a reason for looking for more." With which
+Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face
+were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was
+what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy's solemn eyes, fixed on her own,
+almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light
+of the girl's preference.
+
+"What should you like me to do?" her companion softly demanded.
+
+The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous
+vagueness. "To remember all the pleasure it's in your power to give your
+father."
+
+"To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?"
+
+For a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she
+heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy's attention seemed to
+make. "Yes--to marry some one else."
+
+The child's eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting
+her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting
+up from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands
+unclasped and then quavered out: "Well, I hope no one will ask me!"
+
+"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready
+to ask you."
+
+"I don't think he can have been ready," said Pansy.
+
+"It would appear so if he had been sure he'd succeed."
+
+"If he had been sure? Then he wasn't ready!"
+
+Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment
+looking into the fire. "Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,"
+she resumed; "of course you know it's of him I speak." She found
+herself, against her expectation, almost placed in the position of
+justifying herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more
+crudely than she had intended.
+
+"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean
+that he'll propose for me I think you're mistaken."
+
+"Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely."
+
+Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. "Lord Warburton won't
+propose simply to please papa."
+
+"Your father would like you to encourage him," Isabel went on
+mechanically.
+
+"How can I encourage him?"
+
+"I don't know. Your father must tell you that."
+
+Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if
+she were in possession of a bright assurance. "There's no danger--no
+danger!" she declared at last.
+
+There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her
+believing it, which conduced to Isabel's awkwardness. She felt accused
+of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect
+she was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that
+there was a danger. But she didn't; she only said--in her embarrassment
+rather wide of the mark--that he surely had been most kind, most
+friendly.
+
+"Yes, he has been very kind," Pansy answered. "That's what I like him
+for."
+
+"Why then is the difficulty so great?"
+
+"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't want--what did you
+say I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don't want to marry,
+and he wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble me. That's the
+meaning of his kindness. It's as if he said to me: 'I like you very
+much, but if it doesn't please you I'll never say it again.' I
+think that's very kind, very noble," Pansy went on with deepening
+positiveness. "That is all we've said to each other. And he doesn't care
+for me either. Ah no, there's no danger."
+
+Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which
+this submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy's
+wisdom--began almost to retreat before it. "You must tell your father
+that," she remarked reservedly.
+
+"I think I'd rather not," Pansy unreservedly answered.
+
+"You oughtn't to let him have false hopes."
+
+"Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he
+believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa
+won't propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me," said
+the child very lucidly.
+
+There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion
+draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.
+Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that
+she herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock.
+Nevertheless it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond,
+that she was on her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the
+influence of this sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she
+retired--a suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have
+done her utmost.
+
+"Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a
+nobleman."
+
+Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for
+Isabel to pass. "I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!" she remarked very
+gravely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond's drawing-room for several
+days, and Isabel couldn't fail to observe that her husband said nothing
+to her about having received a letter from him. She couldn't fail to
+observe, either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that,
+though it was not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their
+distinguished friend kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four
+days he alluded to his absence.
+
+"What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a
+tradesman with a bill?"
+
+"I know nothing about him," Isabel said. "I saw him last Friday at the
+German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you."
+
+"He has never written to me."
+
+"So I supposed, from your not having told me."
+
+"He's an odd fish," said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel's making
+no rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five
+days to indite a letter. "Does he form his words with such difficulty?"
+
+"I don't know," Isabel was reduced to replying. "I've never had a letter
+from him."
+
+"Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate
+correspondence."
+
+She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation
+drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the
+afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+
+"When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you
+say to him?" he asked.
+
+She just faltered. "I think I told him not to forget it.
+
+"Did you believe there was a danger of that?"
+
+"As you say, he's an odd fish."
+
+"Apparently he has forgotten it," said Osmond. "Be so good as to remind
+him."
+
+"Should you like me to write to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I've no objection whatever."
+
+"You expect too much of me."
+
+"Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you."
+
+"I'm afraid I shall disappoint you," said Isabel.
+
+"My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment."
+
+"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself!
+If you really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them
+yourself."
+
+For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: "That
+won't be easy, with you working against me."
+
+Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of
+looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of
+her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully
+cruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable
+necessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence.
+That effect had never been so marked as now. "I think you accuse me of
+something very base," she returned.
+
+"I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all come
+forward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know that it's
+base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I've no
+doubt you've the finest ideas about it."
+
+"I told you I would do what I could," she went on.
+
+"Yes, that gained you time."
+
+It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him
+beautiful. "How much you must want to make sure of him!" she exclaimed
+in a moment.
+
+She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her
+words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made
+a comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had
+once held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich
+enough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her--a
+horrible delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her
+that none of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing
+otherwise, however; he only said quickly: "Yes, I want it immensely."
+
+At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed
+the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing
+Osmond. He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress;
+a movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a
+perception of ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English
+address, in which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element
+of good-breeding; in which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving
+transitions. Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel
+remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking
+about their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn't known
+what was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away. "No,"
+he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; "I'm only on the point of
+going." And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled
+to England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. "I'm awfully
+sorry to leave poor Touchett!" he ended by exclaiming.
+
+For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back
+in his chair, listening. Isabel didn't look at him; she could only fancy
+how he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were
+the more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them.
+Yet Isabel was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it
+expressive. "You had better take poor Touchett with you," she heard her
+husband say, lightly enough, in a moment.
+
+"He had better wait for warmer weather," Lord Warburton answered. "I
+shouldn't advise him to travel just now."
+
+He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon
+see them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a course
+he strongly recommended. Why shouldn't they come to England in the
+autumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such
+pleasure to do what he could for them--to have them come and spend a
+month with him. Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but
+once; which was an absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and
+intelligence. It was just the country for him--he would be sure to get
+on well there. Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what
+a good time she had had there and if she didn't want to try it again.
+Didn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really
+very good. Touchett didn't take proper care of it, but it was the sort
+of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. Why didn't they
+come and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must have asked them. Hadn't
+asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!--and Lord Warburton promised to
+give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a
+mere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with
+Touchett and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the
+people they must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. Lord
+Warburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told
+him that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a
+country she deserved to see. Of course she didn't need to go to England
+to be admired--that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense
+success there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked
+if she were not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked
+good-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other day he
+hadn't said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind
+to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What
+could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things
+one wanted--one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other
+hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense
+that one had to say something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled
+one's wits. He had it at present, and that was the effect it produced
+on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn't think he spoke as he ought she must set
+it down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond.
+He was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her
+instead of calling--but he would write to her at any rate, to tell her a
+lot of things that would be sure to occur to him as soon as he had left
+the house. They must think seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+
+If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the
+announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord
+Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other
+manner, and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was
+capable of executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked
+him quite well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He
+would do that on any occasion--not from impudence but simply from the
+habit of success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband's power to
+frustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on
+in her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor; said what was
+proper to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said
+himself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had found her
+alone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness of Osmond's emotion.
+She felt almost sorry for him; he was condemned to the sharp pain of
+loss without the relief of cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as
+he saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl
+his thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he
+treated their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so
+clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond's
+cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present
+appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was
+simply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive
+exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on
+this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to
+irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he
+treated every one--with an air of being interested in him only for his
+own advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so
+perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign now of an
+inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain--not
+the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any
+satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction;
+she wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the same
+time she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton.
+Osmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the
+advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it
+was something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned back
+in his place, listening but vaguely to the other's friendly offers and
+suppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to assume that they
+were addressed essentially to his wife--he had at least (since so little
+else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he personally had
+kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he was now able
+to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was something to be
+able to look as if the leave-taker's movements had no relation to his
+own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond's performance was
+in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton's position was after
+all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't leave
+Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had stopped short
+of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour was safe.
+Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal that
+they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success
+Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but
+left Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration.
+Isabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista
+which had suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Pansy's little
+figure marching up the middle of it.
+
+Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither
+Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of
+giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if
+it were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed
+and stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it
+was not to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would
+rather not see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone--he had
+something to say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she
+was afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense
+with explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good
+taste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish
+to say just the last word of all to the ladies. "I've a letter to write
+before dinner," he said; "you must excuse me. I'll see if my daughter's
+disengaged, and if she is she shall know you're here. Of course when
+you come to Rome you'll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you
+about the English expedition: she decides all those things."
+
+The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little
+speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole
+it was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he
+left the room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, "Your
+husband's very angry"; which would have been extremely disagreeable to
+her. Nevertheless, if he had done so, she would have said: "Oh, don't be
+anxious. He doesn't hate you: it's me that he hates!"
+
+It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend
+showed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in another chair,
+handling two or three of the objects that were near him. "I hope he'll
+make Miss Osmond come," he presently remarked. "I want very much to see
+her."
+
+"I'm glad it's the last time," said Isabel.
+
+"So am I. She doesn't care for me."
+
+"No, she doesn't care for you."
+
+"I don't wonder at it," he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
+"You'll come to England, won't you?"
+
+"I think we had better not."
+
+"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come
+to Lockleigh once, and you never did?"
+
+"Everything's changed since then," said Isabel.
+
+"Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we're concerned. To see
+you under my roof"--and he hung fire but an instant--"would be a great
+satisfaction."
+
+She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.
+They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,
+already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek.
+She shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his
+face with a fixed smile--a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship
+probably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
+
+"I'm going away," he said. "I want to bid you good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Lord Warburton." Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+
+"And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy."
+
+"Thank you, Lord Warburton," Pansy answered.
+
+He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. "You ought to be very
+happy--you've got a guardian angel."
+
+"I'm sure I shall be happy," said Pansy in the tone of a person whose
+certainties were always cheerful.
+
+"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should
+ever fail you, remember--remember--" And her interlocutor stammered a
+little. "Think of me sometimes, you know!" he said with a vague laugh.
+Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.
+
+When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her
+stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
+
+"I think you ARE my guardian angel!" she exclaimed very sweetly.
+
+Isabel shook her head. "I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most
+your good friend."
+
+"You're a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle with
+me."
+
+"I've asked your father nothing," said Isabel, wondering.
+
+"He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a
+very kind kiss."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "that was quite his own idea!"
+
+She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she
+was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn't put
+himself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after
+their dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till
+late in the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him
+before going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his
+usual munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his
+daughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was
+a partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his
+wife. She was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she
+would remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the
+drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+
+"I don't understand what you wish to do," he said in a moment. "I should
+like to know--so that I may know how to act."
+
+"Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired."
+
+"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a
+comfortable place." And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were
+scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,
+however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair.
+The fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew
+her cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. "I think you're trying to
+humiliate me," Osmond went on. "It's a most absurd undertaking."
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean," she returned.
+
+"You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully."
+
+"What is it that I've managed?"
+
+"You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again." And he
+stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
+her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know
+that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of
+thought.
+
+"If you mean that Lord Warburton's under an obligation to come back
+you're wrong," Isabel said. "He's under none whatever."
+
+"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't
+mean he'll come from a sense of duty."
+
+"There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome."
+
+"Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible." And Osmond
+began to walk about again. "However, about that perhaps there's no
+hurry," he added. "It's rather a good idea of his that we should go
+to England. If it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I
+think I should try to persuade you."
+
+"It may be that you'll not find my cousin," said Isabel.
+
+"I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as
+possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told
+me so much about at one time: what do you call it?--Gardencourt. It must
+be a charming thing. And then, you know, I've a devotion to the memory
+of your uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to
+see where he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was
+right. Pansy ought to see England."
+
+"I've no doubt she would enjoy it," said Isabel.
+
+"But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off," Osmond continued;
+"and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you
+think me so very proud?" he suddenly asked.
+
+"I think you very strange."
+
+"You don't understand me."
+
+"No, not even when you insult me."
+
+"I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of certain
+facts, and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's not mine.
+It's surely a fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own
+hands."
+
+"Are you going back to Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked. "I'm very tired of
+his name."
+
+"You shall hear it again before we've done with it."
+
+She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that
+this ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the vision of such a
+fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,
+too different; he didn't touch her. Still, the working of his morbid
+passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in
+what light he saw himself justified. "I might say to you that I judge
+you've nothing to say to me that's worth hearing," she returned in a
+moment. "But I should perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be
+worth my hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse
+me."
+
+"Of having prevented Pansy's marriage to Warburton. Are those words
+plain enough?"
+
+"On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when
+you told me that you counted on me--that I think was what you said--I
+accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it."
+
+"You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me
+more willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get
+him out of the way."
+
+"I think I see what you mean," said Isabel.
+
+"Where's the letter you told me he had written me?" her husband
+demanded.
+
+"I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him."
+
+"You stopped it on the way," said Osmond.
+
+Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered
+her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first
+cousin to that of pity. "Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine--!" she
+exclaimed in a long murmur.
+
+"I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted. You've
+got him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you've placed
+me in the position in which you wished to see me--that of a man who has
+tried to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed."
+
+"Pansy doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone," Isabel said.
+
+"That has nothing to do with the matter."
+
+"And he doesn't care for Pansy."
+
+"That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted this
+particular satisfaction," Osmond continued; "you might have taken some
+other. It doesn't seem to me that I've been presumptuous--that I have
+taken too much for granted. I've been very modest about it, very quiet.
+The idea didn't originate with me. He began to show that he liked her
+before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you."
+
+"Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend
+to such things yourself."
+
+He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. "I thought you were very
+fond of my daughter."
+
+"I've never been more so than to-day."
+
+"Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that
+perhaps is natural."
+
+"Is this all you wished to say to me?" Isabel asked, taking a candle
+that stood on one of the tables.
+
+"Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?"
+
+"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another
+opportunity to try to stupefy me."
+
+"It's not that. It's proved that Pansy can aim high."
+
+"Poor little Pansy!" said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had
+come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton's
+departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some
+importance to Isabel--the temporary absence, once again, of Madame
+Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor
+of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's
+happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of
+women might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at
+night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her
+friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to
+her that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.
+Isabel's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but
+every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when
+the charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness
+of respite. She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar
+Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to
+her immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to
+Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he
+might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage,
+had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered
+rightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since then
+he had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the only
+one in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left her
+that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like
+a collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist,
+no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer
+wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the
+tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel a
+strain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It
+had been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm
+that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only
+person with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she
+couldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried
+with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried to
+think it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her with
+his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best
+to darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent,
+and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a
+violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her
+own fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted
+three or four days.
+
+The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the
+first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a
+thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think
+of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do
+nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to
+doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord
+Warburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,
+uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could
+never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as
+she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith
+in Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory
+was not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failed
+to marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what
+he had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic
+enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If
+he extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the
+only form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an
+enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because
+he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of
+bareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory
+or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social
+drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of
+human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never
+heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this
+impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from
+time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was
+all bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had
+thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more
+than once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband
+about him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a
+reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence
+in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man's
+disappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her,
+she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Goodwood's affairs
+could have, after all, little interest for Gilbert. When it had come
+to the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that,
+considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.
+Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.
+It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him;
+even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her
+that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had
+the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble he
+had become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to
+set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel
+that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.
+She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace
+with the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to
+her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled
+with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day
+on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was
+coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for
+him than for any one else to make out--since he WOULD make it out, as
+over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimate
+disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had
+invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only
+a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her
+stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he
+spent several days without coming to see her.
+
+Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and
+Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw
+herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping
+her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been
+superficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather
+enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously
+criticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still
+marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as
+keen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her
+remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had
+put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her
+opinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quite
+unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old she had
+never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had
+managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason for
+everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, when
+she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having
+already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend
+that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to do
+with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her
+independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to
+it. "It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to Isabel; "it doesn't
+seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay
+at home; this is much more important." It was not therefore with a sense
+of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
+pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully
+inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her
+knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to
+be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a
+perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after
+all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so
+little. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the
+other's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because
+she had guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but
+she had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions just
+now were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still
+have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified
+in having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large
+concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all
+abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however,
+that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this
+confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not
+in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached this point
+with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of
+being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph,
+nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
+
+"Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say
+it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+
+"What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were
+enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+
+"He does nothing. But he doesn't like me."
+
+"He's very hard to please!" cried Miss Stackpole. "Why don't you leave
+him?"
+
+"I can't change that way," Isabel said.
+
+"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a
+mistake. You're too proud."
+
+"I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I
+don't think that's decent. I'd much rather die."
+
+"You won't think so always," said Henrietta.
+
+"I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to
+me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I married
+him before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do
+anything more deliberate. One can't change that way," Isabel repeated.
+
+"You HAVE changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't mean
+to say you like him."
+
+Isabel debated. "No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm weary
+of my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops."
+
+Henrietta gave a laugh. "Don't you think you're rather too considerate?"
+
+"It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!" Isabel answered.
+
+It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in
+Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a
+young lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal
+roof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she
+would leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered
+that he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta
+that as Osmond didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but
+they could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss
+Stackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to
+drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward, on the
+opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with a
+respectful attention which Henrietta occasionally found irritating. She
+complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond had a little look as if she should
+remember everything one said. "I don't want to be remembered that way,"
+Miss Stackpole declared; "I consider that my conversation refers only
+to the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits
+there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring
+them out some day against me." She could not teach herself to think
+favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of
+personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even
+uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a
+little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her,
+so that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate
+acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in
+effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot
+enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held
+to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were
+elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that
+Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,
+so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
+might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the
+moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was
+nothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself
+off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife's
+friends; he took occasion to call Isabel's attention to it.
+
+"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make
+a new collection," he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
+visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived
+the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the
+trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common
+with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his
+being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably
+tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of
+his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him
+privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's
+only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can't
+say much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,
+the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and
+looks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries
+the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and
+almost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a
+lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he
+doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a
+piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in the
+poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your most
+wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't
+a nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never
+have admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of
+a new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel
+pen writes; aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks
+and moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that
+she doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but I
+hear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't get
+rid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone
+in which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they give
+you great comfort. I don't like at all to think she talks about me--I
+feel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat."
+
+Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather
+less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of
+which the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let
+her friend know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that
+she was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what
+comfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling
+on her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance of
+seeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straight
+in front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.
+Isabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must
+have been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.
+Touchett's door at the close of their last interview. He was dressed
+just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered the colour
+of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a
+strangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh
+to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and
+more overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached
+high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back
+after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like
+a February sky.
+
+Miss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the
+latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States
+the year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him
+considerable attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, but
+she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn't the same man
+when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and
+shown him that England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked in
+most places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the English
+were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+affected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity was an
+affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all
+the chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all the farmers' daughters
+were chambermaids--she couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemed
+able to grasp the great school system; it had been really too much
+for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of
+everything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had
+chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed
+really fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one
+he had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest;
+he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled
+together from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting
+cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wanted
+to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of
+geography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was
+perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never
+to have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was
+unprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to
+confess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent
+some pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream
+from the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that you
+could get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn't, nor fans,
+nor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quite
+overwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it was
+the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England,
+hunting--"hunting round" Henrietta called it. These amusements were
+those of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the
+pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England
+that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in
+keeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join
+her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come
+over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of
+the ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was what she
+liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been
+swept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered
+on the contrary one day when there were five American families, walking
+all round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the
+subject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it
+now; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was
+determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight.
+The mystery about that other one had never been explained.
+
+Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel
+a note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be
+at home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what
+he was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presented
+himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who
+would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality,
+however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in
+appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at
+least that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had
+been misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not
+disappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he had
+not come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he
+had come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be none but the
+very simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had come
+for his amusement. Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal of
+eagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the
+ghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome
+for his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared
+for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over his
+heartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities were
+at an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, but
+he had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believe
+he was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence,
+though he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-light
+upon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on general
+topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,
+"Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk." He spoke a good
+deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is,
+how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculated
+to simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn't
+like her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save as
+having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say
+of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis
+exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert;
+it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday
+evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband
+still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not
+inviting them.
+
+To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early;
+he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every
+now and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about
+him; she thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him.
+But she couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was
+only extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very
+different from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with
+HIM. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering
+herself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of
+women. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any
+personal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed
+probable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case
+he had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of
+this principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy
+to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat
+with coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry
+her, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would
+have been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which
+would strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.
+He declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn't easy at
+first, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the
+top of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt a
+little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and
+he gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that
+Mr. Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had ever wished
+to; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of being
+inaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to
+dinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even
+desired to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was
+very original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English
+portmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear
+out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the
+Campagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly
+in the evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying to
+him one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. And
+then she added smiling:
+
+"I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you."
+
+"You're the person in the world who has most right," he answered. "I've
+given you assurances that I've never given any one else."
+
+The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill
+at the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr.
+Goodwood had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow
+was; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt.
+Caspar remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not
+supposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the
+place of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the
+Hotel de Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of
+Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular
+change had in fact occurred in this lady's relations with Ralph
+Touchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and see him, but on
+hearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of her
+own motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always under
+the conviction that they were great enemies. "Oh yes, we're intimate
+enemies," Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as the
+humour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In reality
+they became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she should
+never have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had
+always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellent
+fellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about
+everything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to which Ralph always had
+a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Bantling on the other hand proved
+a great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling with
+Henrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their
+inevitable difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with taking
+the ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.
+Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but after
+he had been left alone with his host he found there were various other
+matters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had
+just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole's
+merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither,
+after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--a
+theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very
+sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant
+man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done.
+There was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he did it in
+this case by repeating several times his visit to the Hotel de Paris.
+It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had artfully
+disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an occupation; she
+had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making
+him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather
+should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.
+Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,
+and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a
+constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the
+occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely
+entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in
+one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would
+cluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel
+in these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past
+was more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had
+spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I
+say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster;
+for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The
+Countess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, her
+dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the
+unholy legend of the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been
+away somewhere,--no one, not even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Rome
+and began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame
+Merle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: "What
+on earth did you do with Lord Warburton?" As if it were any business of
+hers!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to
+return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which
+he was not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he
+mentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She
+forbore to express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she
+sat by his sofa: "I suppose you know you can't go alone?"
+
+"I've no idea of doing that," Ralph answered. "I shall have people with
+me."
+
+"What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?"
+
+"Ah," said Ralph jocosely, "after all, they're human beings."
+
+"Are there any women among them?" Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+
+"You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a soubrette in
+my employment."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta calmly, "you can't go to England that way. You
+must have a woman's care."
+
+"I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a
+good while."
+
+"You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you," said
+Henrietta.
+
+"Go with me?" Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+
+"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It
+would be better for your health to lie down again."
+
+Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. "I like you very
+much," he said in a moment.
+
+Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. "You needn't think
+that by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you, and what is
+more I'll take care of you."
+
+"You're a very good woman," said Ralph.
+
+"Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be easy.
+But you had better go, all the same."
+
+Before she left him, Ralph said to her: "Do you really mean to take care
+of me?"
+
+"Well, I mean to try."
+
+"I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!" And it was perhaps a
+sign of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he
+burst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent,
+such a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and
+renounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe
+under the supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that
+the prospect pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He
+felt even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to
+see his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed
+to him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to
+die at home; it was the only wish he had left--to extend himself in the
+large quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his
+eyes upon the summer dawn.
+
+That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his
+visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back
+to England. "Ah then," said Caspar, "I'm afraid I shall be a fifth wheel
+to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you."
+
+"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind."
+
+"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you."
+
+"Granting that, SHE'S kind," smiled Ralph.
+
+"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness," Goodwood
+answered without lending himself to the joke. "For myself, however," he
+added, "I'll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with
+you and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone."
+
+"And you'd rather stay here than do either," said Ralph. "There's really
+no need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily efficient."
+
+"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"You can easily get her to let you off."
+
+"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,
+but that isn't the principal thing. The principal thing is that she
+wants me to leave Rome."
+
+"Ah, you see too much in it," Ralph suggested.
+
+"I bore her," Goodwood went on; "she has nothing to say to me, so she
+invented that."
+
+"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you with
+me. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience," Ralph added in a
+moment.
+
+"Well," said Caspar Goodwood simply, "she thinks I'm watching her."
+
+"Watching her?"
+
+"Trying to make out if she's happy."
+
+"That's easy to make out," said Ralph. "She's the most visibly happy
+woman I know."
+
+"Exactly so; I'm satisfied," Goodwood answered dryly. For all his
+dryness, however, he had more to say. "I've been watching her; I was
+an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be
+happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to
+see for myself what it amounts to. I've seen," he continued with a harsh
+ring in his voice, "and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite
+ready to go."
+
+"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph rejoined.
+And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel
+Osmond.
+
+Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found
+it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at
+Miss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in
+Florence.
+
+"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the
+Countess. "I think it right you should know that."
+
+"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house
+three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!" the Countess
+cried.
+
+"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house."
+
+The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: "Is that the
+story that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes
+to marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy
+the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone."
+
+"No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him."
+
+"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't
+know she carried it so far."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that
+the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. "I really must stick to my
+point--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton."
+
+"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
+brother's capable of everything."
+
+"I don't know what your brother's capable of," said Henrietta with
+dignity.
+
+"It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending
+him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought
+I would make him faithless?" the Countess continued with audacious
+insistence. "However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The
+house is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left
+traces; I'm sure I shall see him yet."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
+which had made the fortune of her letters to the Interviewer, "perhaps
+he'll be more successful with you than with Isabel!"
+
+When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
+that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It
+had always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were
+made to understand each other. "I don't care whether he understands me
+or not," Henrietta declared. "The great thing is that he shouldn't die
+in the cars."
+
+"He won't do that," Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of
+faith.
+
+"He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't know
+what you want to do."
+
+"I want to be alone," said Isabel.
+
+"You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home."
+
+"Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators."
+
+"Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?" Henrietta rather grimly asked.
+
+"The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes me
+uncomfortable."
+
+Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. "You're like the stricken
+deer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of
+helplessness!" she broke out.
+
+"I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do."
+
+"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come
+on purpose, to leave you just as I find you."
+
+"You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed," Isabel said.
+
+"Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+something."
+
+"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a
+solemn one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping it."
+
+"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the
+greatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what I want
+you to promise."
+
+"The worst? What do you call the worst?"
+
+"Before your character gets spoiled."
+
+"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled," Isabel answered,
+smiling. "I'm taking very good care of it. I'm extremely struck," she
+added, turning away, "with the off-hand way in which you speak of a
+woman's leaving her husband. It's easy to see you've never had one!"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, "nothing is
+more common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we
+must look in the future." Her argument, however, does not concern this
+history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to
+Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might
+designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.
+Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that
+Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+rid of them all.
+
+For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a
+low tone, with a quick smile: "My dear Ralph--!"
+
+It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the
+same way, jocosely, ingenuously: "I've seen less of you than I might,
+but it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a great deal about
+you."
+
+"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done."
+
+"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other
+people speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and that's so
+flat."
+
+"I might have seen more of you certainly," Isabel said. "But when one's
+married one has so much occupation."
+
+"Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England I
+shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor." He
+continued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded
+in making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to
+his term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the
+summer. If he preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality
+was sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in
+conversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though
+about this, as about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic.
+Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should
+divide it, of the precautions he should take. "Henrietta's my greatest
+precaution," he went on. "The conscience of that woman's sublime."
+
+"Certainly she'll be very conscientious."
+
+"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that
+she goes with me. There's a conception of duty for you."
+
+"Yes, it's a generous one," said Isabel, "and it makes me deeply
+ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know."
+
+"Your husband wouldn't like that."
+
+"No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same."
+
+"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a
+cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!"
+
+"That's why I don't go," said Isabel simply--yet not very lucidly.
+
+Ralph understood well enough, however. "I should think so, with all
+those occupations you speak of."
+
+"It isn't that. I'm afraid," said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as
+if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: "I'm afraid."
+
+Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+deliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public
+penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her
+words simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this
+might be, Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. "Afraid of your
+husband?"
+
+"Afraid of myself!" she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and
+then added: "If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my
+duty. That's what women are expected to be."
+
+"Ah yes," laughed Ralph; "but to make up for it there's always some man
+awfully afraid of some woman!"
+
+She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different
+turn. "With Henrietta at the head of your little band," she exclaimed
+abruptly, "there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!"
+
+"Ah, my dear Isabel," Ralph answered, "he's used to that. There is
+nothing left for Mr. Goodwood."
+
+She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They
+stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. "You've
+been my best friend," she said.
+
+"It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I'm of no use
+to you."
+
+Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.
+She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. "If you
+should send for me I'd come," she said at last.
+
+"Your husband won't consent to that."
+
+"Oh yes, I can arrange it."
+
+"I shall keep that for my last pleasure!" said Ralph.
+
+In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that
+evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the
+first to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert
+Osmond, who almost always was present when his wife received. They sat
+down together, and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed
+possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his
+legs crossed, lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but
+not at all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the
+little sofa creak beneath him. Osmond's face wore a sharp, aggressive
+smile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good
+news. He remarked to Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him;
+he himself should particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent
+men--they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come
+back; there was something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like
+himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.
+
+"I'm very fond of Rome, you know," Osmond said; "but there's nothing
+I like better than to meet people who haven't that superstition. The
+modern world's after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet
+are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor
+stuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young.
+Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like
+everything that's really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's
+nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty
+of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of
+light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity
+which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything
+like it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the
+present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the
+last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things
+are literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you--!" With which
+he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and
+smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. "I'm going to say
+something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me
+have the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because--because you've
+reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
+number of people like you--a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as
+well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't
+I speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the
+snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood
+from you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There's a
+danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that
+strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
+fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have
+been--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was
+in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about
+you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern
+man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."
+
+I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
+ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
+usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
+closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
+odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what
+he was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a
+grossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade.
+Goodwood had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he
+scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew
+what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and
+that idea spoke louder to him than her husband's perfectly-pitched
+voice. He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she
+would be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the
+other rooms. His humour was not, like Osmond's, of the best; there was
+an element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this time
+he had not disliked Osmond personally; he had only thought him very
+well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person
+whom Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open
+field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense
+of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account. He
+had not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of
+sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came
+nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was
+quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the
+amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused
+him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half
+trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish
+refinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he found some
+private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression
+that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity.
+He knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him evil; he
+had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and
+could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true
+that Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have
+liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for practice
+had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible
+to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order to
+deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated
+it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no
+better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his
+soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife's feelings as if he were
+commissioned to answer for them.
+
+That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this
+evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even
+than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo
+Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his
+wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each
+of them to say "we" as to say "I". In all this there was an air of
+intention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could
+only reflect for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond's relations with her
+husband were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her
+husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of
+things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had never given
+him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that
+she had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss
+Stackpole sensational. She was too fond of early news. Moreover, since
+her arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well
+ceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, it may be said for
+her, would have been quite against her conscience. She had now seen
+the reality of Isabel's situation, and it had inspired her with a just
+reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of
+assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her
+wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the state
+of Mr. Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present only by sending
+him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American journals, of
+which she received several by every post and which she always perused
+with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed
+in an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own
+hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't
+he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the
+least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of
+authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness
+with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now
+recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing
+more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth;
+apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she WERE
+unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character
+she had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him
+leave Rome. He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for
+her cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to think that of all the
+services she might have asked of him this was the one she had been eager
+to select. There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have
+kept him in Rome.
+
+To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her
+to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge
+that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no
+knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the
+old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his
+throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
+Osmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching
+again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible
+that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what
+did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether
+she loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without
+one's gaining a straw one's self. "You travel, by the by, with Ralph
+Touchett," Osmond said. "I suppose that means you'll move slowly?"
+
+"I don't know. I shall do just as he likes."
+
+"You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you must
+really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we
+feel. Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than
+once as if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it's
+worse than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it's a kind
+of indelicacy. I wouldn't for the world be under such an obligation to
+Touchett as he has been to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably
+have to look after him, and every one isn't so generous as you."
+
+"I've nothing else to do," Caspar said dryly.
+
+Osmond looked at him a moment askance. "You ought to marry, and then
+you'd have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you wouldn't be
+quite so available for deeds of mercy."
+
+"Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?" the young
+man mechanically asked.
+
+"Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't always
+active; it's often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my
+wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,
+we walk, we drive--we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I
+delight, to this hour, in my wife's conversation. If you're ever bored
+take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that
+case; but you'll never bore yourself. You'll always have something to
+say to yourself--always have a subject of reflection."
+
+"I'm not bored," said Goodwood. "I've plenty to think about and to say
+to myself."
+
+"More than to say to others!" Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh.
+"Where shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned Touchett to his
+natural caretakers--I believe his mother's at last coming back to look
+after him. That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a
+finish--! Perhaps you'll spend the summer in England?"
+
+"I don't know. I've no plans."
+
+"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free."
+
+"Oh yes, I'm very free."
+
+"Free to come back to Rome I hope," said Osmond as he saw a group of
+new visitors enter the room. "Remember that when you do come we count on
+you!"
+
+Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without
+his having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several
+associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy
+with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
+intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was
+absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear
+hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help
+her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he
+opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked
+to the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather
+self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he
+often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera,
+and it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to
+contain himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to
+go, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might
+not speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured
+himself was empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found
+her self absolutely prevented. "I'm afraid it's impossible. People are
+saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me."
+
+"I shall wait till they are all gone then."
+
+She hesitated a moment. "Ah, that will be delightful!" she exclaimed.
+
+And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several
+people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess
+Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no
+consciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little
+circle of gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke
+into a united laugh. Osmond had disappeared--he never bade good-bye to
+people; and as the Countess was extending her range, according to her
+custom at this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed.
+Isabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law
+would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+
+"May I not say a word to you now?" Goodwood presently asked her. She
+got up immediately, smiling. "Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you
+like." They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle,
+and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them
+spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room
+slowly fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She
+seemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the
+passion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his
+eyes and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and
+blurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with
+gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would
+have perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was
+frightened at what she saw in his own face. "I suppose you wish to bid
+me goodbye?" she said.
+
+"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome," he answered with
+almost plaintive honesty.
+
+"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how
+kind I think you."
+
+For a moment more he said nothing. "With a few words like that you make
+me go."
+
+"You must come back some day," she brightly returned.
+
+"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible."
+
+"Oh no; I don't mean all that."
+
+"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go,"
+Goodwood added.
+
+"Come back whenever you like," said Isabel with attempted lightness.
+
+"I don't care a straw for your cousin!" Caspar broke out.
+
+"Is that what you wished to tell me?"
+
+"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--" he
+paused a moment, and then--"what have you really made of your life?" he
+said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but
+she said nothing, and he went on: "I can't understand, I can't penetrate
+you! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?" Still she said
+nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to
+ease. "I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
+That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and
+you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed.
+You conceal everything; I haven't really come near you."
+
+"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
+
+"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done
+well?"
+
+"You ask a great deal."
+
+"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I
+shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business."
+He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
+considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that
+it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she
+would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a
+lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. "You're perfectly
+inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I
+tell you I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I
+don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away
+with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If
+you should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to
+leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as
+contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the
+truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing.
+That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I
+wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't
+thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away.
+But if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single
+moment, is there? If you're really hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say
+will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. I
+thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't
+say it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last
+time--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say that, I know;
+and you've no right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen,
+you're always thinking of something else. After this I must go, of
+course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason,
+not a real one. I can't judge by your husband," he went on irrelevantly,
+almost incoherently; "I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each
+other. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine? When I say
+that to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you've
+something to hide. It's none of my business--very true. But I love you,"
+said Caspar Goodwood.
+
+As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which
+they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+
+"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it," she uttered softly.
+
+"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I
+love you as I've never loved you."
+
+"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go."
+
+"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but
+you can't, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask
+nothing--nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole
+satisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!"
+
+"That I tell you what?"
+
+"Whether I may pity you."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+
+"To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something.
+I'd give my life to it."
+
+She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes.
+They rested a moment on his. "Don't give your life to it; but give a
+thought to it every now and then." And with that she went back to the
+Countess Gemini.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the
+evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,
+and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.
+Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability,
+and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been
+mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord
+Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel
+(whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first
+utterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman,
+for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.
+
+"Please don't talk of him," said Isabel for answer; "we've heard so much
+of him of late."
+
+Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and
+smiled at the left corner of her mouth. "You've heard, yes. But you must
+remember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be
+able to congratulate Pansy."
+
+"You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton."
+
+"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?" Madame
+Merle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation
+of good-humour.
+
+Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.
+"You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to
+watch the affair."
+
+"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?"
+
+"You had better ask Pansy," said Isabel.
+
+"I shall ask her what you've said to her."
+
+These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused
+on Isabel's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a
+critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto;
+she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling.
+But apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since
+she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation
+which even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had
+suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel's surprise--our heroine
+having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy's marriage; and
+she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond's alarm. More
+clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from
+she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare
+that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of
+the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her
+destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her
+nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The
+sense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened
+to be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own
+husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet
+taken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a
+different eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention
+in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes,
+there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to
+herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was
+it that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not been
+good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which
+married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's
+challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge
+which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless
+vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's
+professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to
+interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere
+with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in
+casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several
+years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle's interest was
+identical with Osmond's: that was enough. "I think Pansy will tell
+you nothing that will make you more angry," she said in answer to her
+companion's last remark.
+
+"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the
+situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?"
+
+"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it
+rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I've nothing
+more to say or to hear. I've no doubt," Isabel added, "that he'll be
+very happy to discuss the subject with you."
+
+"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening."
+
+"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't
+apply to me for information."
+
+"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my
+heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied
+the imagination."
+
+"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned."
+
+"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not
+directly. But when one's such an old friend one can't help having
+something at stake. You forget how long I've known Pansy. You mean,
+of course," Madame Merle added, "that YOU are one of the persons
+concerned."
+
+"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated a little. "Ah yes, your work's done."
+
+"Take care what you say," said Isabel very gravely.
+
+"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your
+husband judges you severely."
+
+Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle's informing her
+that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife
+that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was
+meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only
+when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not
+right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an
+open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as
+well as in his thoughts. "Should you like to know how I judge HIM?" she
+asked at last.
+
+"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to
+know."
+
+There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel
+thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.
+"Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't despair," she said
+abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.
+
+But Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only
+gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the
+air a faint, agreeable fragrance. "I don't despair; I feel encouraged.
+And I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I
+know you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that
+one can count upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in
+it."
+
+"What truth do you speak of?" Isabel asked, wondering.
+
+"Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own
+movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to
+please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite
+of having lost a little of it," Madame Merle continued with a smile, "to
+ask such a question as that!" She sat looking at her friend, to judge
+the effect of her words, and then went on: "Now don't be heroic, don't
+be unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour
+in speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I
+haven't the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And
+don't you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's
+true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to
+extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't
+alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his
+daughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord
+Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's
+a pity. If he gave her up to please you it's another. That's a pity too,
+but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign
+yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter
+married. Let him off--let us have him!"
+
+Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and
+apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew
+pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her
+visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this
+was not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. "Who
+are you--what are you?" Isabel murmured. "What have you to do with my
+husband?" It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as
+if she had loved him.
+
+"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however,
+that I shall do so."
+
+"What have you to do with me?" Isabel went on.
+
+Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes
+from Isabel's face. "Everything!" she answered.
+
+Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost
+a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's eyes seemed
+only a darkness. "Oh misery!" she murmured at last; and she fell
+back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a
+high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married
+her. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.
+
+Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away,
+under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread
+upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her
+confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a
+less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that
+had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her
+secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern
+quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a
+sun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which
+no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.
+Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the
+continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the
+greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it
+interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it
+chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to
+her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from
+pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the
+musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was
+no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of
+worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could
+not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor
+have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy,
+as we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess
+Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage;
+but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her
+mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several
+resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low
+parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front
+of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,
+between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After
+the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than
+usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the
+other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she felt the touch
+of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind,
+rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to
+tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where
+the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the
+flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and
+gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness
+of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft
+confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the
+hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.
+
+On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution
+not to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this
+lady's image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an
+almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate
+friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were
+to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary
+works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance
+with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,
+and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with
+some success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it
+was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that
+was what Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt
+Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her
+niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she had a much
+richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own
+career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor
+stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted;
+she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which
+could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much
+have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making
+passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great
+artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of
+marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage
+but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain,
+and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her
+naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was
+imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed
+to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly
+affectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that her
+young friend had been subject to the good old man's charity. She had
+found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in
+the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young
+woman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her
+closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert
+occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with
+the conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the
+least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money.
+Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought
+a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular
+injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying
+to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman
+for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least
+he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her
+money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let
+her go. Ah, if Mr. Touchett's great charity would but help her to-day it
+would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame
+Merle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the
+boon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in
+regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they
+have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but
+a characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive
+she had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: "Poor, poor Madame
+Merle!"
+
+Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same
+afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of
+time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the
+lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which
+we once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that
+apartment, towards six o'clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his
+hostess stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion
+commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to
+its apparent as to its real importance.
+
+"I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it," said Madame
+Merle.
+
+"Did I say I was unhappy?" Osmond asked with a face grave enough to
+suggest that he might have been.
+
+"No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude."
+
+"Don't talk about gratitude," he returned dryly. "And don't aggravate
+me," he added in a moment.
+
+Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white
+hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were,
+to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. "On
+your side, don't try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my
+thoughts."
+
+"I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite enough of my
+own."
+
+"That's because they're so delightful."
+
+Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at
+his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an
+expression of fatigue. "You do aggravate me," he remarked in a moment.
+"I'm very tired."
+
+"Eh moi donc!" cried Madame Merle.
+
+"With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my own
+fault."
+
+"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's
+a great gift."
+
+"Do you call it an interest?" Osmond enquired with detachment.
+
+"Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time."
+
+"The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter."
+
+"You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so
+brilliant."
+
+"Damn my brilliancy!" he thoughtfully murmured. "How little, after all,
+you know me!"
+
+"If I don't know you I know nothing," smiled Madame Merle. "You've the
+feeling of complete success."
+
+"No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me."
+
+"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express
+yourself more too."
+
+Osmond just hung fire. "I wish you'd express yourself less!"
+
+"You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never been a
+chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to
+say to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself," she
+went on with a change of tone.
+
+"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means
+to carry out her ideas."
+
+"Her ideas to-day must be remarkable."
+
+"Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever."
+
+"She was unable to show me any this morning," said Madame Merle. "She
+seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was
+completely bewildered."
+
+"You had better say at once that she was pathetic."
+
+"Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much."
+
+He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one
+foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. "I should like to
+know what's the matter with you," he said at last.
+
+"The matter--the matter--!" And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went
+on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a
+clear sky: "The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to
+weep, and that I can't!"
+
+"What good would it do you to weep?"
+
+"It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you."
+
+"If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you shed
+them."
+
+"Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a
+wolf. I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile this
+morning; I was horrid," she said.
+
+"If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably
+didn't perceive it," Osmond answered.
+
+"It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I
+was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know.
+You've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul."
+
+"It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition," Osmond
+said. "It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your
+influence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle?
+How can it suffer alteration?"
+
+"I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it
+can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which
+was a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it.
+You're VERY bad," she added with gravity in her emphasis.
+
+"Is this the way we're to end?" Osmond asked with the same studied
+coldness.
+
+"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did--How do bad people
+end?--especially as to their COMMON crimes. You have made me as bad as
+yourself."
+
+"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough," said Osmond,
+his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
+
+Madame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and
+she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the
+pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile
+betrayed a painful effort. "Good enough for anything that I've done with
+myself? I suppose that's what you mean."
+
+"Good enough to be always charming!" Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
+
+"Oh God!" his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on
+Isabel's part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her
+hands.
+
+"Are you going to weep after all?" Osmond asked; and on her remaining
+motionless he went on: "Have I ever complained to you?"
+
+She dropped her hands quickly. "No, you've taken your revenge
+otherwise--you have taken it on HER."
+
+Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling
+and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the
+heavenly powers. "Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at
+bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist."
+
+"Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph too
+much."
+
+"I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph."
+
+"You've made your wife afraid of you."
+
+Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on
+his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at
+his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation
+of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a
+peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse
+with. "Isabel's not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish," he said
+at last. "To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as
+that?"
+
+"I've thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle answered.
+"Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you
+she feared."
+
+"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not
+responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at
+all: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of
+me that I can see," he went on; "how then should I have made her? You're
+at least as brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish;
+one might suppose you knew me by this time." He got up as he spoke and
+walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if
+he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare
+porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it
+in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,
+he pursued: "You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you
+lose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you think."
+
+"I think you're very simple." And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
+"I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's
+only since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what
+you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please
+be very careful of that precious object."
+
+"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack," said Osmond dryly as he put
+it down. "If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly
+rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box
+myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I
+only asked that she should like me."
+
+"That she should like you so much!"
+
+"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she
+should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that."
+
+"I never adored you," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Ah, but you pretended to!"
+
+"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit," Madame
+Merle went on.
+
+"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort," said
+Osmond. "If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's
+hardly for her."
+
+"The tragedy's for me!" Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long
+low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her
+mantel-shelf.
+
+"It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false
+position."
+
+"You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for
+our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least
+my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I
+haven't a fault to find with her."
+
+"Ah," she said softly, "if I had a child--!"
+
+Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, "The children of
+others may be a great interest!" he announced.
+
+"You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all that
+holds us together."
+
+"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?" Osmond asked.
+
+"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that," Madame
+Merle pursued, "that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be
+MY work," she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter,
+relaxing to its habit of smoothness.
+
+Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the
+former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, "On the whole, I
+think," he said, "you had better leave it to me."
+
+After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the
+mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the
+existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. "Have I
+been so vile all for nothing?" she vaguely wailed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments
+Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics
+and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who
+professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made
+an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if
+they had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense,
+though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself
+the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only
+desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour
+every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a
+condition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was
+not a severe cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they
+offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs
+of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary
+of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the
+Countess forbade herself every form of active research; her preference
+was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most
+interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the
+Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--with all the respect
+that she owed her--could not see why she should not descend from the
+vehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble
+that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be
+divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents' guest
+might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when
+the Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild
+afternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional
+puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together,
+but Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often
+ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to
+bellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed)
+bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed
+to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the
+Countess often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return;
+and Isabel believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the
+dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so
+remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt
+to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks
+the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the
+western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of
+travertine--the latent colour that is the only living element in the
+immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking
+up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a multitude of
+swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became aware
+that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had
+turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with
+a certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before
+perceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose.
+Such an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and
+this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of
+speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied
+he drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters
+she would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She
+replied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only
+give him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon
+a broken block.
+
+"It's very soon told," said Edward Rosier. "I've sold all my bibelots!"
+Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had
+told her he had had all his teeth drawn. "I've sold them by auction at
+the Hotel Drouot," he went on. "The sale took place three days ago, and
+they've telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things."
+
+"I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think
+me rich enough now?"
+
+"Is it for that you did it?" Isabel asked gently.
+
+"For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I think
+of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the
+sale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed
+me. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I
+should tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my
+pocket, and he can't say I'm poor!" the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+
+"He'll say now that you're not wise," said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond
+had never said this before.
+
+Rosier gave her a sharp look. "Do you mean that without my bibelots I'm
+nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That's what they
+told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn't seen
+HER!"
+
+"My dear friend, you deserve to succeed," said Isabel very kindly.
+
+"You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I shouldn't."
+And he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had
+the air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and
+is full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful
+suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons
+still have the perversity to think him diminutive. "I know what happened
+here while I was away," he went on; "What does Mr. Osmond expect after
+she has refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+Isabel debated. "That she'll marry another nobleman."
+
+"What other nobleman?"
+
+"One that he'll pick out."
+
+Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.
+"You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at me."
+
+"I didn't mean to laugh," said Isabel. "I laugh very seldom. Now you had
+better go away."
+
+"I feel very safe!" Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but
+it evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather
+a loud voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and
+looking all round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience.
+Suddenly Isabel saw him change colour; there was more of an audience
+than he had suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions
+had returned from their excursion. "You must really go away," she said
+quickly. "Ah, my dear lady, pity me!" Edward Rosier murmured in a voice
+strangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then
+he added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by
+a happy thought: "Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I've a great desire
+to be presented to her."
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "She has no influence with her brother."
+
+"Ah, what a monster you make him out!" And Rosier faced the Countess,
+who advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps
+to the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in
+conversation with a very pretty young man.
+
+"I'm glad you've kept your enamels!" Isabel called as she left him. She
+went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,
+with lowered eyes. "We'll go back to the carriage," she said gently.
+
+"Yes, it's getting late," Pansy returned more gently still. And she
+went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel,
+however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had
+immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had
+removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced
+himself, while the Countess's expressive back displayed to Isabel's eye
+a gracious inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost
+to sight, for Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage.
+Pansy, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her
+lap; then she raised them and rested them on Isabel's. There shone out
+of each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion which
+touched Isabel to the heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over
+her soul, as she compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal
+of the child with her own dry despair. "Poor little Pansy!" she
+affectionately said.
+
+"Oh never mind!" Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then
+there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. "Did you show
+your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?" Isabel asked at last.
+
+"Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased."
+
+"And you're not tired, I hope."
+
+"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired."
+
+The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman
+to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently
+returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not
+to wait--she would come home in a cab!
+
+About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves
+with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found
+Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her;
+she got up from her low chair. "Pardon my taking the liberty," she said
+in a small voice. "It will be the last--for some time."
+
+Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,
+frightened look. "You're not going away!" Isabel exclaimed.
+
+"I'm going to the convent."
+
+"To the convent?"
+
+Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round
+Isabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment,
+perfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver
+of her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel
+nevertheless pressed her. "Why are you going to the convent?"
+
+"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now
+and then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the
+world, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little
+seclusion--a little reflexion." Pansy spoke in short detached sentences,
+as if she could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph
+of self-control: "I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world
+this winter."
+
+Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a
+larger meaning than the girl herself knew. "When was this decided?" she
+asked. "I've heard nothing of it."
+
+"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be
+too much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a
+quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks. It's only for a few
+weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who
+used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being
+educated. I'm very fond of little girls," said Pansy with an effect
+of diminutive grandeur. "And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I
+shall be very quiet and think a great deal."
+
+Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
+"Think of ME sometimes."
+
+"Ah, come and see me soon!" cried Pansy; and the cry was very different
+from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
+
+Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how
+little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,
+tender kiss.
+
+Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had
+arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to
+the drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and
+this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful
+toss of the head, "En voila, ma chere, une pose!" But if it was an
+affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She
+could only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed.
+It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him
+that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after
+he had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden departure: she
+spoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden
+herself ever to ask Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a
+declaration, and there was one that came very naturally. "I shall miss
+Pansy very much."
+
+He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of
+flowers in the middle of the table. "Ah yes," he said at last, "I had
+thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I
+dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I
+can make you understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about
+it. That's why I had not spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter
+into it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part
+of the education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and
+fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present
+time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy's a little
+dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This
+bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society--one should take her
+out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very
+salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under
+the arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are
+gentlewomen born; several of them are noble. She will have her books
+and her drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal
+arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be a
+certain little sense of sequestration. She'll have time to think, and
+there's something I want her to think about." Osmond spoke deliberately,
+reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at
+the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so
+much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words--almost into
+pictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the
+picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he
+went on: "The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great
+institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an essential need
+in families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school
+of repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world," he
+added; "I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This
+one's very well, as SHE should take it, and she may think of it as much
+as she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way."
+
+Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found
+it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her
+husband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point of
+playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She
+could not understand his purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it
+better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced
+that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to
+herself and destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do
+something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to
+mark the difference between his sympathies and her own, and show that
+if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural
+he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he
+wished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill
+into Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood and
+had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were
+very fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite
+hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the
+impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough.
+The old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination,
+and as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of
+her husband's genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of
+flowers--poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond
+wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it
+hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief presently,
+in hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess
+too, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a
+different conclusion from Isabel.
+
+"It's very absurd, my dear Osmond," she said, "to invent so many pretty
+reasons for poor Pansy's banishment. Why don't you say at once that you
+want to get her out of my way? Haven't you discovered that I think very
+well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me simpaticissimo. He has
+made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've
+made up your mind that with those convictions I'm dreadful company for
+Pansy."
+
+Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.
+"My dear Amy," he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece
+of gallantry, "I don't know anything about your convictions, but if
+I suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to
+banish YOU."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure
+of her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received
+a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of
+Mrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph cannot last many days," it ran, "and
+if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come
+only if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk
+a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious
+to see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there's
+no other company." Isabel was prepared for this news, having received
+from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England
+with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive,
+but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to
+his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave
+again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands
+instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly
+use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett.
+Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to
+Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given
+her to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt.
+Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting
+her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should
+lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an
+acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel
+received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.
+
+Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it
+into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband's study.
+Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and
+went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio
+volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open
+at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he
+had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of
+water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already
+transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted
+disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife
+without looking round.
+
+"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said.
+
+"When I come to your room I always knock," he answered, going on with
+his work.
+
+"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying."
+
+"Ah, I don't believe that," said Osmond, looking at his drawing through
+a magnifying glass. "He was dying when we married; he'll outlive us
+all."
+
+Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful
+cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of
+her own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to
+Gardencourt."
+
+"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial
+curiosity.
+
+"To see Ralph before he dies."
+
+To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his
+chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no
+negligence. "I don't see the need of it," he said at last. "He came to
+see you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great
+mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you
+should see him. Now you tell me it's not to have been the last. Ah,
+you're not grateful!"
+
+"What am I to be grateful for?"
+
+Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust
+from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his
+wife. "For my not having interfered while he was here."
+
+"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you
+didn't like it. I was very glad when he went away."
+
+"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him."
+
+Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little
+drawing. "I must go to England," she said, with a full consciousness
+that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly
+obstinate.
+
+"I shall not like it if you do," Osmond remarked.
+
+"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing
+I do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie."
+
+Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why you must
+go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me."
+
+"I know nothing about revenge."
+
+"I do," said Osmond. "Don't give me an occasion."
+
+"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would
+commit some folly."
+
+"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me."
+
+"If I disobeyed you?" said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of
+mildness.
+
+"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the
+most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition."
+
+"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three
+minutes ago."
+
+"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we
+should prolong our discussion; you know my wish." And he stood there as
+if he expected to see her withdraw.
+
+But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she
+still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary
+degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her
+imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. "You've no
+reason for such a wish," said Isabel, "and I've every reason for going.
+I can't tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It's
+your own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant."
+
+She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the
+sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no
+surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed
+his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious
+endeavour to draw her out. "It's all the more intense then," he
+answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly
+counsel: "This is a very important matter." She recognised that; she
+was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between
+them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she
+said nothing, and he went on. "You say I've no reason? I have the very
+best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It's
+dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your cousin is nothing
+whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions to him.
+I've already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he
+was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from
+week to week I expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has never
+liked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me," said Osmond
+with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. "I've an ideal of what
+my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe
+alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other
+men. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile most
+expressively when I talk about US, but I assure you that WE, WE, Mrs.
+Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to
+have found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced or
+separated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than
+any human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable
+proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You
+don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing,
+because--because--" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had
+something to say which would be very much to the point. "Because I think
+we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most
+in life is the honour of a thing!"
+
+He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped
+out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick
+emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself
+caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command,
+they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any
+expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism,
+they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign
+of the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name of
+something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form.
+They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers
+had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not
+changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in
+the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it
+began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It
+came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after
+all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes
+before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which
+she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
+slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she
+must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather
+than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of mockery," she said.
+"How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of
+your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity?
+Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in
+your heart?"
+
+"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks."
+
+"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
+
+"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
+
+"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."
+
+He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived
+long enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've come to
+threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his table, where
+he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood
+studying it.
+
+"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said Isabel.
+
+He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was
+not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you out of your
+mind?" he enquired.
+
+"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially if all
+you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
+rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
+
+He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on the
+hypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one of his
+little brushes again.
+
+She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye
+his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after
+which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion,
+were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly
+encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of
+eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the
+Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in
+which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged.
+The Countess had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been
+glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the
+sound of Isabel's step she raised her head.
+
+"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me some
+amusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you think
+this would do me any good?"
+
+Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without
+reading or understanding it. "I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had
+bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying."
+
+The Countess threw down her book. "Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully
+sorry for you."
+
+"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
+
+"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added. "You
+must have been with Osmond."
+
+Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of
+her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
+embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's
+fluttering attention. "I've been with Osmond," she said, while the
+Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
+
+"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say he
+was glad poor Mr. Touchett's dying?"
+
+"He said it's impossible I should go to England."
+
+The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she
+already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to
+Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then
+there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for
+a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,
+picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment.
+After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had
+already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for
+Isabel's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's trouble
+was deep.
+
+It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had
+no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression
+of her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous
+expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the
+conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to
+England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing
+would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt
+an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. "Nothing's
+impossible for you, my dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are you
+rich and clever and good?"
+
+"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak."
+
+"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a tone
+which sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.
+
+From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew
+back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately
+taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. "Because
+we're so happy together that we can't separate even for a fortnight."
+
+"Ah," cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, "when I want to make
+a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!"
+
+Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It
+may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is
+certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily
+to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the
+great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as
+this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's
+husband. "I'm afraid--yes, I'm afraid," she said to herself more than
+once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her
+husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her
+own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held
+her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when
+Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between
+them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was
+a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with
+which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what
+he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for
+all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with
+whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank
+down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.
+
+When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her.
+She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin
+lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She
+lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now
+she was leaning far out. "I knocked," she began, "but you didn't
+answer me. So I ventured in. I've been looking at you for the past five
+minutes. You're very unhappy."
+
+"Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me."
+
+"Will you give me leave to try?" And the Countess sat down on the
+sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something
+communicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have
+a deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the first time that her
+sister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her
+glittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. "After
+all," she soon resumed, "I must tell you, to begin with, that I don't
+understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so
+many reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my
+husband's dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply
+let me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel,
+you're not simple enough."
+
+"No, I'm not simple enough," said Isabel.
+
+"There's something I want you to know," the Countess declared--"because
+I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you've guessed it.
+But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you
+shouldn't do as you like."
+
+"What do you wish me to know?" Isabel felt a foreboding that made her
+heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this
+alone was portentous.
+
+But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject.
+"In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really
+suspected?"
+
+"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know what
+you mean."
+
+"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman
+with such a pure mind!" cried the Countess.
+
+Isabel slowly got up. "You're going to tell me something horrible."
+
+"You can call it by whatever name you will!" And the Countess rose
+also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood
+a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even
+then, of ugliness; after which she said: "My first sister-in-law had no
+children."
+
+Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. "Your
+first sister-in-law?"
+
+"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has
+been married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it
+mightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must
+have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died
+childless. It wasn't till after her death that Pansy arrived."
+
+Isabel's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,
+vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to
+follow than she could see. "Pansy's not my husband's child then?"
+
+"Your husband's--in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one
+else's wife's. Ah, my good Isabel," cried the Countess, "with you one
+must dot one's i's!"
+
+"I don't understand. Whose wife's?" Isabel asked.
+
+"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more
+than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing
+what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no
+reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to
+fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in
+childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little
+girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from
+nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and
+in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had
+gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but
+where she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed,
+sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody
+heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without
+researches," the Countess lucidly proceeded; "as also, you'll
+understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond and
+me. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle
+it?--that is to settle ME if I should say anything. I said nothing,
+right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of
+me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all
+this time, as I've never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me,
+from the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was
+my brother's daughter. As for her veritable mother--!" But with this
+Pansy's wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression
+of her sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to
+look at her than she had ever had to meet.
+
+She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an
+echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.
+"Why have you told me this?" she asked in a voice the Countess hardly
+recognised.
+
+"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been bored,
+frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this
+time I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't mind my saying
+so, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not
+knowing. It's a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that
+I've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that
+of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally
+found itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know," the
+Countess inimitably added. "The facts are exactly what I tell you."
+
+"I had no idea," said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner
+that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
+
+"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to
+you that he was for six or seven years her lover?"
+
+"I don't know. Things HAVE occurred to me, and perhaps that was what
+they all meant."
+
+"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about
+Pansy!" the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+
+"Oh, no idea, for me," Isabel went on, "ever DEFINITELY took that form."
+She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn't.
+"And as it is--I don't understand."
+
+She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to
+have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She
+had expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a
+spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have
+been, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister
+passage of public history. "Don't you recognise how the child could
+never pass for HER husband's?--that is with M. Merle himself," her
+companion resumed. "They had been separated too long for that, and he
+had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever
+had children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions
+happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a
+pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was
+dead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain
+accommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean,
+that suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had to take care of.
+What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and
+for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,
+poverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life?
+With the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been living with her
+at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course
+left it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor
+sister-in-law, in her grave, couldn't help herself, and the real mother,
+to save HER skin, renounced all visible property in the child."
+
+"Ah, poor, poor woman!" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It
+was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction
+from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the
+Countess Gemini found only another discomfiture.
+
+"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed. "Yes
+indeed, you have a way of your own--!"
+
+"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!" said Isabel
+with a sudden check.
+
+"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!" the
+Countess went on. "I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too
+soon."
+
+"But to me, to me--?" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as
+if her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all
+for herself.
+
+"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you
+call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another
+woman--SUCH a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their risks and
+their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had
+passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her
+own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances
+so intense that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may
+therefore imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on conveniently
+to ANY of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them."
+
+"Yes," Isabel mechanically echoed, "the whole past is between them."
+
+"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,
+they had kept it up."
+
+She was silent a little. "Why then did she want him to marry me?"
+
+"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because
+she believed you would be good to Pansy."
+
+"Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn't like her!" cried Isabel.
+
+"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows
+it; she knows everything."
+
+"Will she know that you've told me this?"
+
+"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for it, and
+do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that
+I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it.
+Only, as it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little
+idiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but myself."
+
+Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantastic
+wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her
+feet. "Why did Osmond never marry her?" she finally asked.
+
+"Because she had no money." The Countess had an answer for everything,
+and if she lied she lied well. "No one knows, no one has ever known,
+what she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I
+don't believe Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have married
+him."
+
+"How can she have loved him then?"
+
+"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I
+suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was
+living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won't say his ancestors,
+because he never had any--her relations with Osmond had changed, and she
+had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,"
+the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically
+afterwards--"she HAD never had, what you might call any illusions of
+INTELLIGENCE. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always
+been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but
+she has never succeeded. I don't call Madame Merle a success, you know.
+I don't know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very
+little to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except,
+of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of
+expense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did
+that, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've watched
+them for years; I know everything--everything. I'm thought a great
+scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up those
+two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for
+ever defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she looks
+horrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She
+has been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the
+vile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd
+expose her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his
+court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that
+afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She
+let me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that
+game. She pretends there's a good deal more to tell about me than about
+her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don't care a fig what she
+may say, simply because I know YOU don't care a fig. You can't trouble
+your head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge
+as she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great
+idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown
+lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god.
+There should be no scandal about Caesar's wife, you know; and, as I say,
+she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn't
+marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy people would put
+things together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror
+lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the
+mother has never done so."
+
+"Yes, yes, the mother has done so," said Isabel, who had listened to
+all this with a face more and more wan. "She betrayed herself to me the
+other day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a
+chance of Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at
+its not coming off she almost dropped the mask."
+
+"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She has
+failed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it
+up."
+
+Isabel started at the words "her daughter," which her guest threw off
+so familiarly. "It seems very wonderful," she murmured; and in this
+bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
+touched by the story.
+
+"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!" the Countess
+went on. "She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself
+have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she
+had become yours."
+
+"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
+seeing me--!" Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
+
+"I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.
+Osmond's marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before
+that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That
+you might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something for
+her. Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really
+extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,"
+cried the Countess, "why did you ever inherit money?" She stopped a
+moment as if she saw something singular in Isabel's face. "Don't tell
+me now that you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would
+refuse to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and
+natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in
+your life!"
+
+"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry," Isabel
+said. "I'm much obliged to you."
+
+"Yes, you seem to be!" cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.
+"Perhaps you are--perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I should have
+thought."
+
+"How should I take it?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of." Isabel made
+no answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. "They've
+always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke
+off--or HE did. But he has always been more for her than she has been
+for him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that
+each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also
+do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know
+such a thing as that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how
+much better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but
+Osmond has never lifted a little finger for HER. She has worked for him,
+plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found
+money for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her. She's an old
+habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn't
+miss her if she were removed. And, what's more, today she knows it. So
+you needn't be jealous!" the Countess added humorously.
+
+Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath;
+her head was humming with new knowledge. "I'm much obliged to you," she
+repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: "How
+do you know all this?"
+
+This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel's
+expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold
+stare, with which, "Let us assume that I've invented it!" she cried. She
+too, however, suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel's
+arm, said with the penetration of her sharp bright smile: "Now will you
+give up your journey?"
+
+Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a
+moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a
+minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed
+eyes and pale lips.
+
+"I've done wrong to speak--I've made you ill!" the Countess cried.
+
+"Ah, I must see Ralph!" Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in
+the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of
+far-reaching, infinite sadness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the
+Countess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with
+her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought
+(except of her journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy;
+from her she couldn't turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had
+given her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five
+o'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza
+Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and
+obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had
+come with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women,
+and she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that
+the well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she
+disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her; not for
+the world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more
+than before the impression of a well-appointed prison; for it was not
+possible to pretend Pansy was free to leave it. This innocent creature
+had been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary
+effect of the revelation was to make her reach out a hand.
+
+The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she
+went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady.
+The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a
+large clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax
+flowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures
+on the walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome
+than like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment
+only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned
+at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got
+up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her
+extreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect
+was strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision
+that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully,
+seeing a painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her
+falsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these
+dark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the
+room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of
+handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It
+made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot
+she would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to
+her; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to
+Madame Merle. In one's relations with this lady, however, there were
+never any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off
+not only her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was
+different from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and
+Isabel instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her
+habitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she
+had undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a
+peculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw
+that she was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the
+whole the wonderful woman had never been so natural. She looked at her
+young friend from head to foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a
+cold gentleness rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their
+last meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She had
+been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+
+"You can leave us alone," she said to the portress; "in five minutes
+this lady will ring for you." And then she turned to Isabel, who, after
+noting what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let
+her eyes wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished
+never to look at Madame Merle again. "You're surprised to find me here,
+and I'm afraid you're not pleased," this lady went on. "You don't see
+why I should have come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've
+been rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission." There
+was none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply
+and mildly; but Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could
+not have told herself with what intention it was uttered. "But I've not
+been sitting long," Madame Merle continued; "that is I've not been long
+with Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon
+that she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable.
+It may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I
+can't tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the
+chance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well;
+still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good
+woman--what's her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection whatever. I
+stayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not
+in the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has arranged
+it delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it's all none of my
+business, but I feel happier since I've seen her. She may even have a
+maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears
+a little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see
+Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't
+find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most
+coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly
+like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says
+it's a great happiness for them to have her. She's a little saint of
+heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame
+Catherine the portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the
+signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me
+go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I must tell you
+that--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother Superior; it was
+of such high importance that you should be treated with respect. I
+requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her how she
+supposed I would treat you!"
+
+So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had
+long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases
+and gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel's
+ear, though her eyes were absent from her companion's face. She had not
+proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse
+in her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle
+modulation marked a momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely
+new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in
+the space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in
+the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person
+who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a
+very different person--a person who knew her secret. This discovery was
+tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of
+women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the
+conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed
+on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had
+the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been touched with
+a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the alertness of her
+will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her not betraying
+herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her voice
+refused to improve--she couldn't help it--while she heard herself say
+she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able
+only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+
+Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large
+clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might
+have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and
+saw before her the phantom of exposure--this in itself was a revenge,
+this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a
+moment during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with
+her back half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side
+of the window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she
+saw; she saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon.
+She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become
+a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in
+which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry
+staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool,
+as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron. All the
+bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it was as if
+she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment during
+which, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something that
+would hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous
+vision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world
+standing there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to
+think as the meanest. Isabel's only revenge was to be silent still--to
+leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. She left her there
+for a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who at last
+seated herself with a movement which was in itself a confession of
+helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down at her. Madame
+Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel's face. She might see
+what she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never accuse
+her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her the
+opportunity to defend herself.
+
+"I'm come to bid Pansy good-bye," our young woman said at last. "I go to
+England to-night."
+
+"Go to England to-night!" Madame Merle repeated sitting there and
+looking up at her.
+
+"I'm going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett's dying."
+
+"Ah, you'll feel that." Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance
+to express sympathy. "Do you go alone?"
+
+"Yes; without my husband."
+
+Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the
+general sadness of things. "Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I'm sorry
+he's dying. Shall you see his mother?"
+
+"Yes; she has returned from America."
+
+"She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have
+changed," said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a
+moment, then added: "And you'll see dear old Gardencourt again!"
+
+"I shall not enjoy it much," Isabel answered.
+
+"Naturally--in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the houses I
+know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I
+don't venture to send a message to the people," Madame Merle added; "but
+I should like to give my love to the place."
+
+Isabel turned away. "I had better go to Pansy. I've not much time."
+
+While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and
+admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet
+smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump
+white hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she
+had already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss
+Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly
+and said: "It will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her
+myself." Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+
+"Will you let me remain a little?" this lady asked. "It's so good to be
+here."
+
+"You may remain always if you like!" And the good sister gave a knowing
+laugh.
+
+She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long
+staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean;
+so, thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine
+gently pushed open the door of Pansy's room and ushered in the visitor;
+then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and
+embraced.
+
+"She's glad to see you," she repeated; "it will do her good." And she
+placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement
+to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. "How does this dear child
+look?" she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+
+"She looks pale," Isabel answered.
+
+"That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. Elle eclaire la
+maison," said the good sister.
+
+Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was
+perhaps this that made her look pale. "They're very good to me--they
+think of everything!" she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to
+accommodate.
+
+"We think of you always--you're a precious charge," Madame Catherine
+remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and
+whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with
+a leaden weight on Isabel's ears; it seemed to represent the surrender
+of a personality, the authority of the Church.
+
+When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid
+her head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some moments, while
+Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and
+looking about the room. "Don't you think I've arranged it well? I've
+everything I have at home."
+
+"It's very pretty; you're very comfortable." Isabel scarcely knew what
+she could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her think she had
+come to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend
+to rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: "I've come to
+bid you good-bye. I'm going to England."
+
+Pansy's white little face turned red. "To England! Not to come back?"
+
+"I don't know when I shall come back."
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry," Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had
+no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
+
+"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see
+him," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa
+go?"
+
+"No; I shall go alone."
+
+For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she
+thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never
+by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed
+them deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel
+was sure; and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands
+and wives who were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet
+even in thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle
+stepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have
+stood almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the
+saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted
+heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would
+(for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon,
+so she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her
+own. "You'll be very far away," she presently went on.
+
+"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter," Isabel
+explained; "since so long as you're here I can't be called near you."
+
+"Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very often."
+
+"I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing
+with me. I can't amuse you."
+
+"I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes."
+
+"Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England."
+
+"You're not happy, Mrs. Osmond," said Pansy.
+
+"Not very. But it doesn't matter."
+
+"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to
+come out."
+
+"I wish indeed you might."
+
+"Don't leave me here," Pansy went on gently.
+
+Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. "Will you come
+away with me now?" she asked.
+
+Pansy looked at her pleadingly. "Did papa tell you to bring me?"
+
+"No; it's my own proposal."
+
+"I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?"
+
+"I don't think he knew I was coming."
+
+"He thinks I've not had enough," said Pansy. "But I have. The ladies are
+very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some
+very little ones--such charming children. Then my room--you can see for
+yourself. All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished
+me to think a little--and I've thought a great deal."
+
+"What have you thought?"
+
+"Well, that I must never displease papa."
+
+"You knew that before."
+
+"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything--I'll do anything," said
+Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into
+her face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been
+vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!
+Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated
+easily. She laid her hand on Pansy's as if to let her know that her
+look conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl's
+momentary resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only
+her tribute to the truth of things. She didn't presume to judge others,
+but she had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no
+vocation for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of
+sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her
+pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful.
+Yes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few articles!
+
+Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. "Good-bye then. I leave
+Rome to-night."
+
+Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's
+face. "You look strange, you frighten me."
+
+"Oh, I'm very harmless," said Isabel.
+
+"Perhaps you won't come back?"
+
+"Perhaps not. I can't tell."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won't leave me!"
+
+Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. "My dear child, what can I do
+for you?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--but I'm happier when I think of you."
+
+"You can always think of me."
+
+"Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid," said Pansy.
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+"Of papa--a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see me."
+
+"You must not say that," Isabel observed.
+
+"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it
+more easily."
+
+Isabel considered. "I won't desert you," she said at last. "Good-bye, my
+child."
+
+Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two
+sisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor
+to the top of the staircase. "Madame Merle has been here," she remarked
+as they went; and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: "I
+don't like Madame Merle!"
+
+Isabel hesitated, then stopped. "You must never say that--that you don't
+like Madame Merle."
+
+Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a
+reason for non-compliance. "I never will again," she said with exquisite
+gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it
+appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which
+Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she
+reached the bottom the girl was standing above. "You'll come back?" she
+called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+
+"Yes--I'll come back."
+
+Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of
+the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. "I won't
+go in," said the good sister. "Madame Merle's waiting for you."
+
+At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking
+if there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment's reflexion
+assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her
+desire to avoid Pansy's other friend. Her companion grasped her arm
+very gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said
+in French and almost familiarly: "Eh bien, chere Madame, qu'en
+pensez-vous?"
+
+"About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you."
+
+"We think it's enough," Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she
+pushed open the door of the parlour.
+
+Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so
+absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame
+Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been
+thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full
+possession of her resources. "I found I wished to wait for you," she
+said urbanely. "But it's not to talk about Pansy."
+
+Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame
+Merle's declaration she answered after a moment: "Madame Catherine says
+it's enough."
+
+"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about
+poor Mr. Touchett," Madame Merle added. "Have you reason to believe that
+he's really at his last?"
+
+"I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a
+probability."
+
+"I'm going to ask you a strange question," said Madame Merle. "Are
+you very fond of your cousin?" And she gave a smile as strange as her
+utterance.
+
+"Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you."
+
+She just hung fire. "It's rather hard to explain. Something has occurred
+to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit
+of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never
+guessed it?"
+
+"He has done me many services."
+
+"Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman."
+
+"HE made me--?"
+
+Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more
+triumphantly: "He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required
+to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him you've to thank." She
+stopped; there was something in Isabel's eyes.
+
+"I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money."
+
+"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He
+brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!"
+
+Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by
+lurid flashes. "I don't know why you say such things. I don't know what
+you know."
+
+"I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that."
+
+Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment
+with her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only revenge: "I
+believed it was you I had to thank!"
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud
+penance. "You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so."
+
+"Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again."
+
+Madame Merle raised her eyes. "I shall go to America," she quietly
+remarked while Isabel passed out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel
+descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the
+arms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of Henrietta Stackpole.
+She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not
+definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt
+her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from
+Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question
+the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took
+little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they
+were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their
+course through other countries--strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless
+lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed,
+a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but
+it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of
+memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their
+will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a
+logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now
+that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much
+concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt
+to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things,
+their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their
+horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She
+remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity
+of a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that
+they had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after
+all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of
+use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all
+desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge.
+Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers
+it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in
+her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had
+been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph
+his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect
+of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything
+more--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble
+tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
+
+She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as
+good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive,
+simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and
+regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures
+couched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret
+now--that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of
+her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle
+had been so--well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped,
+from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been.
+Whatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and
+doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was
+going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression that she
+should never again see Madame Merle. This impression carried her into
+the future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She
+saw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who
+had her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of
+the present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away,
+further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was
+evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any appetite
+for renunciation--was the sense that life would be her business for a
+long time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost
+enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength--it was a
+proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn't be she was to live
+only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things
+might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury
+of life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable,
+too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid
+to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be
+valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things?
+Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It
+involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but
+Isabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow
+of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.
+Then the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of
+her indifference closed her in.
+
+Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid
+she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,
+looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she
+wished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped.
+She rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an
+arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station,
+the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her
+with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend's. She
+remembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty
+spectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered
+how she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded
+streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the
+incident came before her as the deed of another person.
+
+"It's too beautiful that you should have come," said Henrietta, looking
+at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the
+proposition. "If you hadn't--if you hadn't; well, I don't know,"
+remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
+
+Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another
+figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment
+she recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little
+apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about
+him to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken--that of
+abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their
+embraces.
+
+"There's Mr. Bantling," said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely
+caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+
+"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!" Henrietta
+exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile--a smile
+tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. "Isn't it lovely she
+has come?" Henrietta asked. "He knows all about it," she added; "we had
+quite a discussion. He said you wouldn't, I said you would."
+
+"I thought you always agreed," Isabel smiled in return. She felt she
+could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling's brave
+eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to
+remember he was an old friend of her cousin--that he understood, that
+it was all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him,
+extravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.
+
+"Oh, I always agree," said Mr. Bantling. "But she doesn't, you know."
+
+"Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?" Henrietta enquired.
+"Your young lady has probably remained at Calais."
+
+"I don't care," said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never
+found so interesting.
+
+"Stay with her while I go and see," Henrietta commanded, leaving the two
+for a moment together.
+
+They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel
+how it had been on the Channel.
+
+"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough," she said, to her
+companion's obvious surprise. After which she added: "You've been to
+Gardencourt, I know."
+
+"Now how do you know that?"
+
+"I can't tell you--except that you look like a person who has been to
+Gardencourt."
+
+"Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you know."
+
+"I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,"
+said Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she
+should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
+
+Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed
+a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue,
+and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. "You can ask Miss
+Stackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago."
+
+"Did you see my cousin?"
+
+"Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been
+there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he
+was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can't speak,"
+Mr. Bantling pursued. "He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He
+was just as clever as ever. It's awfully wretched."
+
+Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. "Was
+that late in the day?"
+
+"Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know."
+
+"I'm greatly obliged to you. Can I go down tonight?"
+
+"Ah, I don't think SHE'LL let you go," said Mr. Bantling. "She wants you
+to stop with her. I made Touchett's man promise to telegraph me to-day,
+and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. 'Quiet and easy,'
+that's what it says, and it's dated two o'clock. So you see you can wait
+till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired."
+
+"Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Bantling, "We were certain you would like the last news."
+On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to
+agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel's maid, whom she had caught
+in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of
+losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress's
+luggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station.
+"You know you're not to think of going to the country to-night,"
+Henrietta remarked to her. "It doesn't matter whether there's a train
+or not. You're to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a
+corner to be had in London, but I've got you one all the same. It isn't
+a Roman palace, but it will do for a night."
+
+"I'll do whatever you wish," Isabel said.
+
+"You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish."
+
+"She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?" Mr.
+Bantling enquired jocosely.
+
+Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. "I see you're
+in a great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the Paddington Station
+to-morrow morning at ten."
+
+"Don't come for my sake, Mr. Bantling," said Isabel.
+
+"He'll come for mine," Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into
+a cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street--to do her
+justice there had been dinner enough--she asked those questions to which
+she had alluded at the station. "Did your husband make you a scene about
+your coming?" That was Miss Stackpole's first enquiry.
+
+"No; I can't say he made a scene."
+
+"He didn't object then?"
+
+"Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a scene."
+
+"What was it then?"
+
+"It was a very quiet conversation."
+
+Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. "It must have been hellish,"
+she then remarked. And Isabel didn't deny that it had been hellish. But
+she confined herself to answering Henrietta's questions, which was easy,
+as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no
+new information. "Well," said Miss Stackpole at last, "I've only one
+criticism to make. I don't see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go
+back."
+
+"I'm not sure I myself see now," Isabel replied. "But I did then."
+
+"If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return."
+
+Isabel waited a moment. "Perhaps I shall find another."
+
+"You'll certainly never find a good one."
+
+"In default of a better my having promised will do," Isabel suggested.
+
+"Yes; that's why I hate it."
+
+"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a
+complication, but what will going back be?"
+
+"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!" said
+Henrietta with much intention.
+
+"He will, though," Isabel answered gravely. "It won't be the scene of a
+moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life."
+
+For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and
+then Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested,
+announced abruptly: "I've been to stay with Lady Pensil!"
+
+"Ah, the invitation came at last!"
+
+"Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me."
+
+"Naturally enough."
+
+"It was more natural than I think you know," said Henrietta, who fixed
+her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly:
+"Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I
+criticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at
+least, was born on the other side!"
+
+It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so
+modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel's mind was not
+possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with
+a quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately
+recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,
+"Henrietta Stackpole," she asked, "are you going to give up your
+country?"
+
+"Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact
+in the face. I'm going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in
+London."
+
+"It seems very strange," said Isabel, smiling now.
+
+"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think
+I know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain."
+
+"One can't explain one's marriage," Isabel answered. "And yours doesn't
+need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn't a riddle."
+
+"No, he isn't a bad pun--or even a high flight of American humour. He
+has a beautiful nature," Henrietta went on. "I've studied him for many
+years and I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good
+prospectus. He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the
+other hand he doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in
+the United States."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever
+heard you say anything against your native land."
+
+"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after
+all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I AM changed; a woman has to change a
+good deal to marry."
+
+"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see something
+of the inner life."
+
+Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. "That's the key to the
+mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good
+a right as any one!" she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly
+diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta,
+after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she
+had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was
+a disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was
+subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had
+not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+marrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to
+Isabel's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A
+little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was
+original. But she didn't see how Henrietta could give up her country.
+She herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her
+country as it had been Henrietta's. She presently asked her if she had
+enjoyed her visit to Lady Pensil.
+
+"Oh yes," said Henrietta, "she didn't know what to make of me."
+
+"And was that very enjoyable?"
+
+"Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She thinks
+she knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman of my modern
+type. It would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better
+or a little worse. She's so puzzled; I believe she thinks it's my duty
+to go and do something immoral. She thinks it's immoral that I should
+marry her brother; but, after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll
+never understand my mixture--never!"
+
+"She's not so intelligent as her brother then," said Isabel. "He appears
+to have understood."
+
+"Oh no, he hasn't!" cried Miss Stackpole with decision. "I really
+believe that's what he wants to marry me for--just to find out the
+mystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed idea--a kind of
+fascination."
+
+"It's very good in you to humour it."
+
+"Oh well," said Henrietta, "I've something to find out too!" And Isabel
+saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She
+was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.
+
+Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington
+Station, where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company both
+of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his
+perplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found
+out at least the great point--that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting
+in initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had
+been on his guard against this deficiency.
+
+"Henrietta has told me, and I'm very glad," Isabel said as she gave him
+her hand.
+
+"I dare say you think it awfully odd," Mr. Bantling replied, resting on
+his neat umbrella.
+
+"Yes, I think it awfully odd."
+
+"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked
+striking out a line," said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Isabel's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even
+quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small
+household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that
+instead of being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown
+into the drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to
+her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to
+come to her. She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared--as
+scared as if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious
+things, watching her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark
+and cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The
+house was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it
+had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She
+left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the library and
+along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep
+made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had
+seen years before; it might have been only yesterday she had stood
+there. She envied the security of valuable "pieces" which change by no
+hair's breadth, only grow in value, while their owners lose inch by
+inch youth, happiness, beauty; and she became aware that she was walking
+about as her aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany.
+She was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It
+suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just
+that way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She
+might have had another life and she might have been a woman more blest.
+She stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture--a charming and
+precious Bonington--upon which her eyes rested a long time. But she was
+not looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had
+not come that day in Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+
+Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the
+big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her
+eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a
+repository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most
+undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first
+time, if her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the
+matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel's hot cheek.
+
+"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Ralph," Mrs.
+Touchett said. "The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her
+place. He has a man who's supposed to look after him, but the man's good
+for nothing; he's always looking out of the window--as if there were
+anything to see! I didn't wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be
+sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the
+nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house."
+
+"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking
+everywhere," Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.
+
+"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that
+it's always sleep."
+
+"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?"
+
+Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. "You can try him," was the
+limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her
+room. "I thought they had taken you there; but it's not my house, it's
+Ralph's; and I don't know what they do. They must at least have taken
+your luggage; I don't suppose you've brought much. Not that I care,
+however. I believe they've given you the same room you had before; when
+Ralph heard you were coming he said you must have that one."
+
+"Did he say anything else?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!" cried Mrs. Touchett as she
+preceded her niece up the staircase.
+
+It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept
+in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous;
+Mrs. Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. "Is there really
+no hope?" our young woman asked as she stood before her.
+
+"None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful
+life."
+
+"No--it has only been a beautiful one." Isabel found herself already
+contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that; there's no beauty without health.
+That is a very odd dress to travel in."
+
+Isabel glanced at her garment. "I left Rome at an hour's notice; I took
+the first that came."
+
+"Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to
+be their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them--but they seemed
+to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black
+brocade."
+
+"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them the
+truth," said Isabel. "Lily wrote me you had dined with her."
+
+"She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she
+should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been
+expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to
+America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure."
+
+These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece,
+whom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this
+repast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the
+melancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not
+to be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman's
+inexpressiveness, her want of regret, of disappointment, came back to
+her. Unmistakeably she would have found it a blessing to-day to be able
+to feel a defeat, a mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she
+were not even missing those enrichments of consciousness and privately
+trying--reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet;
+the testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other
+hand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all
+it might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had
+come over her dimly that she had failed of something, that she saw
+herself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her little
+sharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Ralph had as yet not
+moved, but that he probably would be able to see her before dinner.
+And then in a moment she added that he had seen Lord Warburton the day
+before; an announcement which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed
+an intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an
+accident might bring them together. Such an accident would not be happy;
+she had not come to England to struggle again with Lord Warburton. She
+none the less presently said to her aunt that he had been very kind to
+Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome.
+
+"He has something else to think of now," Mrs. Touchett returned. And she
+paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+
+Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant.
+But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished
+to gain a moment. "Ah yes--the House of Lords and all that."
+
+"He's not thinking of the Lords; he's thinking of the ladies. At least
+he's thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he's engaged to be married."
+
+"Ah, to be married!" Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+
+"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.
+Poor Ralph can't go to the wedding, though I believe it's to take place
+very soon.
+
+"And who's the young lady?"
+
+"A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--something of
+that sort."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel said. "It must be a sudden decision."
+
+"Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just
+been made public."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her
+aunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed soreness,
+and the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this
+kind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone
+almost of relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that
+ladies, even married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as
+an offence to themselves. Isabel's first care therefore was to show
+that however that might be in general she was not offended now. But
+meanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some
+moments thoughtful--she presently forgot Mrs. Touchett's observation--it
+was not because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed
+half Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in the
+city of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband that Lord
+Warburton was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course
+not aware how extremely wan she must have looked while she made this
+intellectual effort. But at last she collected herself and said to her
+aunt: "He was sure to do it some time or other."
+
+Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the
+head. "Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!" she cried suddenly. They went on
+with their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord
+Warburton's death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was
+all over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A
+servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him
+to leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her
+hands folded on the edge of the table. "I should like to ask you three
+questions," she observed when the servant had gone.
+
+"Three are a great many."
+
+"I can't do with less; I've been thinking. They're all very good ones."
+
+"That's what I'm afraid of. The best questions are the worst," Isabel
+answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left
+the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows,
+she felt herself followed by her eyes.
+
+"Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Lord Warburton?" Mrs.
+Touchett enquired.
+
+Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. "No, dear aunt."
+
+"Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say."
+
+"Your believing me's an immense temptation," she declared, smiling
+still.
+
+"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm
+misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to crow
+over you."
+
+"It's my husband who doesn't get on with me," said Isabel.
+
+"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing over YOU,"
+Mrs. Touchett added. "Do you still like Serena Merle?" she went on.
+
+"Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she's going to America."
+
+"To America? She must have done something very bad."
+
+"Yes--very bad."
+
+"May I ask what it is?"
+
+"She made a convenience of me."
+
+"Ah," cried Mrs. Touchett, "so she did of me! She does of every one."
+
+"She'll make a convenience of America," said Isabel, smiling again and
+glad that her aunt's questions were over.
+
+It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
+dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
+there, but after a while went away--the local doctor, who had attended
+his father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day; he
+was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope,
+but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his
+mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further
+need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew
+that her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel's arrival Ralph gave no
+sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised
+himself and said he knew that she had come.
+
+How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no
+one had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in
+the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room.
+She told the nurse she might go--she herself would sit with him for the
+rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had
+moved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take
+it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained
+perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a
+long time--till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He
+might have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the
+figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome,
+and this was worse; there was but one change possible now. There was a
+strange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box.
+With this he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes to
+greet her it was as if she were looking into immeasurable space. It was
+not till midnight that the nurse came back; but the hours, to Isabel,
+had not seemed long; it was exactly what she had come for. If she had
+come simply to wait she found ample occasion, for he lay three days in
+a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to
+wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as
+if he too were waiting for something--for something that certainly would
+come. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming
+had already arrived; and yet she never lost the sense that they were
+still together. But they were not always together; there were other
+hours that she passed in wandering through the empty house and listening
+for a voice that was not poor Ralph's. She had a constant fear; she
+thought it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained
+silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Countess
+Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the third day.
+
+"I feel better to-night," he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless
+dimness of her vigil; "I think I can say something." She sank upon her
+knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him
+not to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face was of necessity
+serious--it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner
+apparently had not lost a perception of incongruities. "What does it
+matter if I'm tired when I've all eternity to rest? There's no harm in
+making an effort when it's the very last of all. Don't people always
+feel better just before the end? I've often heard of that; it's what I
+was waiting for. Ever since you've been here I thought it would come.
+I tried two or three times; I was afraid you'd get tired of sitting
+there." He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice
+seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his face
+turned to Isabel and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. "It
+was very good of you to come," he went on. "I thought you would; but I
+wasn't sure."
+
+"I was not sure either till I came," said Isabel.
+
+"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the
+angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You've been like that;
+as if you were waiting for me."
+
+"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this. This is
+not death, dear Ralph."
+
+"Not for you--no. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see
+others die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that we remain. I've
+had it--even I. But now I'm of no use but to give it to others. With me
+it's all over." And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till
+it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She couldn't
+see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. "Isabel," he
+went on suddenly, "I wish it were over for you." She answered nothing;
+she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay
+silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. "Ah, what
+is it you have done for me?"
+
+"What is it you did for me?" she cried, her now extreme agitation half
+smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
+things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them
+supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. "You did
+something once--you know it. O Ralph, you've been everything! What have
+I done for you--what can I do to-day? I would die if you could live.
+But I don't wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you." Her
+voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+
+"You won't lose me--you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be
+nearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in
+life there's love. Death is good--but there's no love."
+
+"I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should be!"
+Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse
+herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the
+moment, became single and melted together into this present pain. "What
+must you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I
+only know to-day because there are people less stupid than I."
+
+"Don't mind people," said Ralph. "I think I'm glad to leave people."
+
+She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to
+pray to him. "Is it true--is it true?" she asked.
+
+"True that you've been stupid? Oh no," said Ralph with a sensible
+intention of wit.
+
+"That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?"
+
+He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:
+"Ah, don't speak of that--that was not happy." Slowly he moved his face
+toward her again, and they once more saw each other. "But for that--but
+for that--!" And he paused. "I believe I ruined you," he wailed.
+
+She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he
+seemed already so little of this world. But even if she had not had
+it she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only
+knowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge that they were
+looking at the truth together.
+
+"He married me for the money," she said. She wished to say everything;
+she was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a
+little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he
+raised them in a moment, and then, "He was greatly in love with you," he
+answered.
+
+"Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn't have married me if I had
+been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you
+to understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that's
+all over."
+
+"I always understood," said Ralph.
+
+"I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it."
+
+"You don't hurt me--you make me very happy." And as Ralph said this
+there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her
+head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. "I always
+understood," he continued, "though it was so strange--so pitiful. You
+wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you
+were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the
+conventional!"
+
+"Oh yes, I've been punished," Isabel sobbed.
+
+He listened to her a little, and then continued: "Was he very bad about
+your coming?"
+
+"He made it very hard for me. But I don't care."
+
+"It is all over then between you?"
+
+"Oh no; I don't think anything's over."
+
+"Are you going back to him?" Ralph gasped.
+
+"I don't know--I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't
+want to think--I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and
+that's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my
+knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I have been for a
+long time. And I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad;
+only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be
+pain--? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not
+the deepest thing; there's something deeper."
+
+Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared
+to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then
+he murmured simply: "You must stay here."
+
+"I should like to stay--as long as seems right."
+
+"As seems right--as seems right?" He repeated her words. "Yes, you think
+a great deal about that."
+
+"Of course one must. You're very tired," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest thing.
+No--no. But it's very deep. If I could stay--"
+
+"For me you'll always be here," she softly interrupted. It was easy to
+interrupt him.
+
+But he went on, after a moment: "It passes, after all; it's passing now.
+But love remains. I don't know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I
+shall find out. There are many things in life. You're very young."
+
+"I feel very old," said Isabel.
+
+"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe--I don't
+believe--" But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+
+She begged him to be quiet now. "We needn't speak to understand each
+other," she said.
+
+"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for
+more than a little."
+
+"Oh Ralph, I'm very happy now," she cried through her tears.
+
+"And remember this," he continued, "that if you've been hated
+you've also been loved. Ah but, Isabel--ADORED!" he just audibly and
+lingeringly breathed.
+
+"Oh my brother!" she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that
+if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost
+with which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled
+the necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint
+dawn, she knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down
+without undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast
+the night. She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such
+waiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the
+night wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock,
+but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up
+from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed
+to her for an instant that he was standing there--a vague, hovering
+figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his
+white face--his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not
+afraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty
+passed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that
+shone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside Ralph's door she
+stopped a moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that
+filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she were
+lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting
+motionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his
+hands in her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ralph's
+further wrist resting in his professional fingers. The two nurses were
+at the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but
+the doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Ralph's hand
+in a proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very
+hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only looked at what she had
+come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been in life, and there
+was a strange resemblance to the face of his father, which, six years
+before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt
+and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a general thing
+neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this
+one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed;
+her acute white face was terrible.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lydia," Isabel murmured.
+
+"Go and thank God you've no child," said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging
+herself.
+
+Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the
+height of the London "season," to take a morning train down to a quiet
+station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which
+stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this
+edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself
+at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton
+himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs.
+Touchett. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one;
+there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather
+had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous
+May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the
+hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it
+was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been
+dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and
+prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears
+that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the
+splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the
+bowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group
+of gentlemen all unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards
+learned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she
+knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling
+beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the
+rest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was
+conscious of Mr. Goodwood's gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than
+he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon
+the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she
+thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found
+she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt
+he had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that
+pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and
+something in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex
+intention. She wouldn't meet his eyes, though there was doubtless
+sympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the
+little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to
+her--though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett--was Henrietta Stackpole.
+Henrietta had been crying.
+
+Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,
+and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself
+that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was
+fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been
+greatly in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had
+left her husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting
+the hours of her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive.
+He was not one of the best husbands, but that didn't alter the case.
+Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were
+quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel
+thought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a
+distance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder
+of Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew
+back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day,
+postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must
+decide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a
+decision. On that occasion she had simply started. Osmond gave no sound
+and now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From
+Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had told
+her not to write.
+
+Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel's company, but offered her no assistance;
+she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but
+with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs.
+Touchett was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she
+managed to extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion
+that, after all, such things happened to other people and not to
+herself. Death was disagreeable, but in this case it was her son's
+death, not her own; she had never flattered herself that her own would
+be disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than
+poor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind him,
+and indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was, to Mrs.
+Touchett's mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage of. For
+herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so good as that. She
+made known to Isabel very punctually--it was the evening her son was
+buried--several of Ralph's testamentary arrangements. He had told her
+everything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money;
+of course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of
+Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books and the use of the
+place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by
+the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons
+suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the
+will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property,
+which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various
+bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his
+father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small
+legacies.
+
+"Some of them are extremely peculiar," said Mrs. Touchett; "he has left
+considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I
+asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at
+various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't
+like him, for he hasn't left you a penny. It was his opinion that you
+had been handsomely treated by his father, which I'm bound to say I
+think you were--though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of
+it. The pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one
+by one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to
+Lord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library?
+It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss
+Stackpole--'in recognition of her services to literature.' Does he mean
+her following him up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It
+contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can't carry
+it about the world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction.
+She will sell it of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she'll
+set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?"
+
+This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her
+arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than
+to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one
+of the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She
+was quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her
+command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony
+in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes
+often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which
+looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest
+vehicle approach the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in
+rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had
+a high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under
+the circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come down
+from London to call on Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett
+he had come to see, and not Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the
+validity of this thesis Isabel presently stepped out of the house and
+wandered away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she
+had been but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for
+visiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first it
+struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory I have just
+mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her little rest, and
+if you had seen her pacing about you would have said she had a bad
+conscience. She was not pacified when at the end of a quarter of an
+hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge
+from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently
+proposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search of her. She
+was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have
+drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen
+and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt
+was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that,
+as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his hands rather
+stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently
+were silent; but Mrs. Touchett's thin little glance, as she directed it
+toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say
+with cutting sharpness: "Here's the eminently amenable nobleman you
+might have married!" When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,
+that was not what they said. They only said "This is rather awkward, you
+know, and I depend upon you to help me." He was very grave, very proper
+and, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without
+a smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile.
+He looked extremely selfconscious.
+
+"Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me," said Mrs.
+Touchett. "He tells me he didn't know you were still here. I know he's
+an old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I
+brought him out to see for himself."
+
+"Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back
+in time for dinner," Mrs. Touchett's companion rather irrelevantly
+explained. "I'm so glad to find you've not gone."
+
+"I'm not here for long, you know," Isabel said with a certain eagerness.
+
+"I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England
+sooner than--a--than you thought?"
+
+"Yes, I came very suddenly."
+
+Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the
+grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton
+hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking
+about her husband--rather confusedly--and then had checked himself. He
+continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a
+place over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If
+he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had
+the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Isabel
+thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was
+another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+
+"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were
+still here--if they had thought you would see them," Lord Warburton went
+on. "Do kindly let them see you before you leave England."
+
+"It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of
+them."
+
+"I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two?
+You know there's always that old promise." And his lordship coloured a
+little as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more
+familiar air. "Perhaps I'm not right in saying that just now; of course
+you're not thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a
+visit. My sisters are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days;
+and if you could come then--as you say you're not to be very long in
+England--I would see that there should be literally no one else."
+
+Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be
+there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+
+"Thank you extremely," she contented herself with saying; "I'm afraid I
+hardly know about Whitsuntide."
+
+"But I have your promise--haven't I?--for some other time."
+
+There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked
+at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was
+that--as had happened before--she felt sorry for him. "Take care you
+don't miss your train," she said. And then she added: "I wish you every
+happiness."
+
+He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. "Ah yes,
+6.40; I haven't much time, but I've a fly at the door. Thank you very
+much." It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having
+reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. "Good-bye,
+Mrs. Osmond; good-bye." He shook hands with her, without meeting her
+eyes, and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to
+them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two
+ladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn.
+
+"Are you very sure he's to be married?" Isabel asked of her aunt.
+
+"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and
+he accepted it."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "I give it up!"--while her aunt returned to the house
+and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.
+
+She gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while she
+strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the
+acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a
+rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as
+an object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before,
+nor even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something
+important had happened to her--that the place had an air of association.
+Then she remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before,
+when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar
+Goodwood informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when
+she had read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing
+that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an
+interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have
+something to say to her. She wouldn't sit down on it now--she felt
+rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood the
+past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which
+persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this
+agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence
+of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have
+said that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or
+no, if you had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the
+former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment
+she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular
+absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in
+the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her.
+There was nothing to recall her to the house; the two ladies, in their
+seclusion, dined early and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she
+had sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight
+had grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She
+quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had
+become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood,
+who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on the
+unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her
+in the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised
+her of old.
+
+She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started
+forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked
+like violence, but felt like--she knew not what, he grasped her by the
+wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had
+not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was
+something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he
+had looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present
+it was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to
+her--beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost
+seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that.
+All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had
+disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. "You've
+frightened me," she said.
+
+"I didn't mean to," he answered, "but if I did a little, no matter.
+I came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn't come here
+directly. There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took
+a fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I
+don't know who he was, but I didn't want to come with him; I wanted to
+see you alone. So I've been waiting and walking about. I've walked all
+over, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was
+a keeper, or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I
+had made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that
+gentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you." Goodwood
+spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had parted in Rome.
+Isabel had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into
+herself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out
+sail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was
+a feeling of danger. There was indeed something really formidable in his
+resolution. She gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee,
+leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed
+to darken round them. "I want to speak to you," he repeated; "I've
+something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you--as I did
+the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I
+couldn't help it; I knew I was wrong. But I'm not wrong now; please
+don't think I am," he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment
+into entreaty. "I came here to-day for a purpose. It's very different.
+It was vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you."
+
+She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or
+because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she
+listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep
+into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and
+it was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. "How can you
+help me?" she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had
+said seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+
+"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you remember
+what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I
+know on good authority; everything's clear to me to-day. It was a good
+thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,
+a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He
+explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of
+your family and he left you--so long as you should be in England--to my
+care," said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. "Do you know
+what he said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he
+died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let
+you.'"
+
+Isabel suddenly got up. "You had no business to talk about me!"
+
+"Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded, following
+her fast. "And he was dying--when a man's dying it's different." She
+checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more
+than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That
+had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea,
+which she scented in all her being. "But it doesn't matter!" he
+exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem
+of her garment. "If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have
+known all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral
+to see what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for
+God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you. You're the
+most unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of fiends."
+
+She turned on him as if he had struck her. "Are you mad?" she cried.
+
+"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's
+necessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against him; I'll
+speak only of you," Goodwood added quickly. "How can you pretend you're
+not heart-broken? You don't know what to do--you don't know where to
+turn. It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you
+in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too--what it
+would cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it
+will"--and he flared almost into anger: "give me one word of truth! When
+I know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save
+you? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you
+go back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for
+it!'--that's what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn't I? He
+was such a near relation!" cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point
+again. "I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things
+to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was
+after he got home--when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too.
+I understand all about it: you're afraid to go back. You're perfectly
+alone; you don't know where to turn. You can't turn anywhere; you know
+that perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of ME."
+
+"To think of 'you'?" Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The
+idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed
+large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had
+been a comet in the sky.
+
+"You don't know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade
+you to trust me," Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining
+eyes. "Why should you go back--why should you go through that ghastly
+form?"
+
+"To get away from you!" she answered. But this expressed only a little
+of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She
+had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the
+desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere
+sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her
+feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and
+strange, forced open her set teeth.
+
+At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that
+he would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was
+perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it
+all out. "I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you'll only for
+once listen to me. It's too monstrous of you to think of sinking back
+into that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It's
+you that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+shouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I'm
+yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock.
+What have you to care about? You've no children; that perhaps would be
+an obstacle. As it is you've nothing to consider. You must save what you
+can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a
+part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look
+of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the
+world. We've nothing to do with all that; we're quite out of it; we look
+at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next
+is nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman
+deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life--in going
+down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and
+that's why I'm here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under
+the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that
+has the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+question is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it! Were we
+born to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I never knew YOU
+afraid! If you'll only trust me, how little you will be disappointed!
+The world's all before us--and the world's very big. I know something
+about that."
+
+Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were
+pressing something that hurt her.
+
+"The world's very small," she said at random; she had an immense
+desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say
+something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never
+seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form
+of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted
+help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not
+whether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then
+that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her
+dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she
+felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her
+feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
+
+"Ah, be mine as I'm yours!" she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly
+given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,
+through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+
+This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the
+metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest
+of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of
+this. "Do me the greatest kindness of all," she panted. "I beseech you
+to go away!"
+
+"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!" he cried.
+
+She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. "As you love
+me, as you pity me, leave me alone!"
+
+He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she
+felt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like
+white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and
+it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in
+his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his
+face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and
+made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked
+and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when
+darkness returned she was free. She never looked about her; she only
+darted from the spot. There were lights in the windows of the house;
+they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time--for
+the distance was considerable--she had moved through the darkness (for
+she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked
+all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the
+latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a
+very straight path.
+
+Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in
+Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.
+He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened
+and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and
+jacket; she was on the point of going out. "Oh, good-morning," he said,
+"I was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good
+deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. "Pray
+what led you to suppose she was here?"
+
+"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she
+had come to London. He believed she was to come to you."
+
+Again Miss Stackpole held him--with an intention of perfect kindness--in
+suspense. "She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this
+morning she started for Rome."
+
+Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the
+doorstep. "Oh, she started--?" he stammered. And without finishing
+his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn't
+otherwise move.
+
+Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out
+her hand and grasped his arm. "Look here, Mr. Goodwood," she said; "just
+you wait!"
+
+On which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face, with a
+revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him
+with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his
+life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now
+the key to patience.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
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+      The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 2 (of 2) by Henry James
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+.smcap  {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:100%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portrait of a Lady
+       Volume 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2834]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      VOLUME II (of II)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry James
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <table summary="" border="3" cellpadding="4">
+      <tbody>
+        <tr>
+          <td>
+            &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+            href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2833/2833-h/2833-h.htm">Previous
+            Volume</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+          </td>
+        </tr>
+      </tbody>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XXXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XXXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XLI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XLII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XLIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XLIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XLV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XLVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XLVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XLVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XLIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER L </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER LI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER LII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER LIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER LIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER LV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his
+      friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had
+      gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a
+      visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had
+      obtained his admittance&mdash;it was one of the secondary theatres&mdash;looked
+      about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act had just terminated and
+      he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After scanning two or three tiers
+      of boxes he perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady
+      whom he easily recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage and
+      partly screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her, leaning back in
+      his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They appeared to have the place to
+      themselves, and Warburton supposed their companions had taken advantage of
+      the recess to enjoy the relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while
+      with his eyes on the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up
+      and interrupt the harmony. At last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and
+      this accident determined him. There should be no marked holding off. He
+      took his way to the upper regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett
+      slowly descending, his hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where
+      they usually were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely
+      and want company,&rdquo; was Ralph&rsquo;s greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve some that&rsquo;s very good which you&rsquo;ve yet deserted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn&rsquo;t want me. Then
+      Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice&mdash;Miss
+      Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn&rsquo;t think they wanted me either. The
+      opera&rsquo;s very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks.
+      I feel very low.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better go home,&rdquo; Lord Warburton said without affectation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She seems to have plenty of friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s why I must watch,&rdquo; said Ralph with the same large
+      mock-melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t want you it&rsquo;s probable she doesn&rsquo;t want me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;re different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel&rsquo;s welcome was as to a friend
+      so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer temporal
+      province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr. Osmond, to whom
+      he had been introduced the day before and who, after he came in, sat
+      blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in the subjects of
+      allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor that Miss Archer had,
+      in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was,
+      however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely
+      animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk
+      with him moreover pointed to presence of mind; it expressed a kindness so
+      ingenious and deliberate as to indicate that she was in undisturbed
+      possession of her faculties. Poor Lord Warburton had moments of
+      bewilderment. She had discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could;
+      what business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above all
+      with such tones of reparation&mdash;preparation? Her voice had tricks of
+      sweetness, but why play them on <i>him</i>? The others came back; the
+      bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was large, and there
+      was room for him to remain if he would sit a little behind and in the
+      dark. He did so for half an hour, while Mr. Osmond remained in front,
+      leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord
+      Warburton heard nothing, and from his gloomy corner saw nothing but the
+      clear profile of this young lady defined against the dim illumination of
+      the house. When there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked
+      to Isabel, and Lord Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short
+      time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies.
+      Isabel said nothing to detain him, but it didn&rsquo;t prevent his being puzzled
+      again. Why should she mark so one of his values&mdash;quite the wrong one&mdash;when
+      she would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He
+      was angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+      Verdi&rsquo;s music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and
+      walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic
+      streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the
+      stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the character of that gentleman?&rdquo; Osmond asked of Isabel after he
+      had retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Irreproachable&mdash;don&rsquo;t you see it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He owns about half England; that&rsquo;s his character,&rdquo; Henrietta remarked.
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they call a free country!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he&rsquo;s a great proprietor? Happy man!&rdquo; said Gilbert Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call that happiness&mdash;the ownership of wretched human beings?&rdquo;
+       cried Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;He owns his tenants and has thousands of them. It&rsquo;s
+      pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I
+      don&rsquo;t insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me you own a human being or two,&rdquo; Mr. Bantling suggested
+      jocosely. &ldquo;I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Warburton&rsquo;s a great radical,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;He has very advanced
+      opinions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has very advanced stone walls. His park&rsquo;s enclosed by a gigantic iron
+      fence, some thirty miles round,&rdquo; Henrietta announced for the information
+      of Mr. Osmond. &ldquo;I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston
+      radicals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they approve of iron fences?&rdquo; asked Mr. Bantling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking
+      to <i>you</i> over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?&rdquo; Osmond went on,
+      questioning Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well enough for all the use I have for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how much of a use is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I like to like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Liking to like&rsquo;&mdash;why, it makes a passion!&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she considered&mdash;&ldquo;keep that for liking to <i>dis</i>like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to provoke me then,&rdquo; Osmond laughed, &ldquo;to a passion for <i>him</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a
+      disproportionate gravity. &ldquo;No, Mr. Osmond; I don&rsquo;t think I should ever
+      dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,&rdquo; she more easily added,
+      &ldquo;is a very nice man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of great ability?&rdquo; her friend enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As good as he&rsquo;s good-looking do you mean? He&rsquo;s very good-looking. How
+      detestably fortunate!&mdash;to be a great English magnate, to be clever
+      and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your
+      high favour! That&rsquo;s a man I could envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel considered him with interest. &ldquo;You seem to me to be always envying
+      some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it&rsquo;s poor Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My envy&rsquo;s not dangerous; it wouldn&rsquo;t hurt a mouse. I don&rsquo;t want to
+      destroy the people&mdash;I only want to <i>be</i> them. You see it would
+      destroy only myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d like to be the Pope?&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should love it&mdash;but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why&rdquo;&mdash;Osmond
+      reverted&mdash;&ldquo;do you speak of your friend as poor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women&mdash;when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after
+      they&rsquo;ve hurt them; that&rsquo;s their great way of showing kindness,&rdquo; said
+      Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism
+      so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as
+      if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It serves him right if you have,&rdquo; said Henrietta while the curtain rose
+      for the ballet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four
+      hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered
+      him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the
+      collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her
+      companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his
+      place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and
+      finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said
+      in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m leaving Rome,&rdquo; he
+      added. &ldquo;I must bid you goodbye.&rdquo; Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now
+      sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of
+      his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the
+      point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him
+      a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      afraid you&rsquo;ll think me very &lsquo;volatile.&rsquo; I told you the other day I wanted
+      so much to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; you could easily change your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bon voyage</i> then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re in a great hurry to get rid of me,&rdquo; said his lordship quite
+      dismally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least. But I hate partings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care what I do,&rdquo; he went on pitifully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at him a moment. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re not keeping your
+      promise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He coloured like a boy of fifteen. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m not, then it&rsquo;s because I can&rsquo;t;
+      and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo; He lingered still, however. &ldquo;When shall I see you again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: &ldquo;Some
+      day after you&rsquo;re married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will never be. It will be after you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do as well,&rdquo; she smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the
+      shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these
+      presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful
+      blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is
+      impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek
+      sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as
+      with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the
+      large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman
+      air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine
+      mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it
+      is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon
+      them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a
+      clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more mildly human.
+      Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace,
+      wondering to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and
+      how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red walls of the
+      room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their
+      beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself,
+      and it was all the greater because she was glad again, for the time, to be
+      alone. At last, however, her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide
+      of life. An occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the
+      Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the
+      smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared,
+      apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly,
+      with his hands behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing
+      smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have&mdash;the best.&rdquo; And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call them better company than an English peer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.&rdquo; She got up, speaking with
+      intention a little dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest of
+      his question. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid that what I heard the other evening is true:
+      you&rsquo;re rather cruel to that nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not true. I&rsquo;m
+      scrupulously kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I mean!&rdquo; Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such happy
+      hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was fond of
+      originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he
+      had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race
+      and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself
+      a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of
+      choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high
+      appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its
+      distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its solid
+      actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing him to an
+      English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of such conduct
+      as Isabel&rsquo;s. It would be proper that the woman he might marry should have
+      done something of that sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly
+      qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s personal
+      merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of
+      that gentleman&rsquo;s conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond
+      spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended by
+      affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn&rsquo;t have seen
+      that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?&mdash;which
+      perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+      sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel&rsquo;s invidious kinsman was obliged
+      to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His good humour was
+      imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his production of the
+      right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of a match for your
+      cigarette. Clearly he was amused&mdash;as amused as a man could be who was
+      so little ever surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not
+      that his spirits were visibly high&mdash;he would never, in the concert of
+      pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a mortal
+      dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random ravings. He
+      thought Miss Archer sometimes of too precipitate a readiness. It was pity
+      she had that fault, because if she had not had it she would really have
+      had none; she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as
+      handled ivory to the palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was
+      deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency
+      that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa
+      Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He
+      was pleased with everything; he had never before been pleased with so many
+      things at once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one
+      evening, going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet
+      to which he prefixed the title of &ldquo;Rome Revisited.&rdquo; A day or two later he
+      showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to
+      her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by
+      a tribute to the muse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often&mdash;he would
+      have admitted that&mdash;too sorely aware of something wrong, something
+      ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended
+      on his spirit. But at present he was happy&mdash;happier than he had
+      perhaps ever been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation.
+      This was simply the sense of success&mdash;the most agreeable emotion of
+      the human heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he
+      had the irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often
+      reminded himself. &ldquo;Ah no, I&rsquo;ve not been spoiled; certainly I&rsquo;ve not been
+      spoiled,&rdquo; he used inwardly to repeat. &ldquo;If I do succeed before I die I
+      shall thoroughly have earned it.&rdquo; He was too apt to reason as if &ldquo;earning&rdquo;
+       this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and might be
+      confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not
+      been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he
+      was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them, now too
+      old; others had been too easy. The present one had been less arduous than
+      might have been expected, but had been easy&mdash;that is had been rapid&mdash;only
+      because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort
+      than he had believed it in him to make. The desire to have something or
+      other to show for his &ldquo;parts&rdquo;&mdash;to show somehow or other&mdash;had
+      been the dream of his youth; but as the years went on the conditions
+      attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as
+      gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise
+      what one could &ldquo;stand.&rdquo; If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall had been
+      conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar pleasure of being
+      at last and all of a sudden identified&mdash;as from the hand of a great
+      master&mdash;by the so high and so unnoticed fact of style. His &ldquo;style&rdquo;
+       was what the girl had discovered with a little help; and now, beside
+      herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world without his having
+      any of the trouble. She should do the thing <i>for</i> him, and he would
+      not have waited in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady
+      received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: &ldquo;Leave Florence
+      4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But
+      can&rsquo;t wait if you dawdle in Rome.&rdquo; The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant,
+      but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would
+      immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he
+      replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in
+      Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow of Saint
+      Peter&rsquo;s. He would not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that
+      time she would have started for Bellaggio. It might be months in this case
+      before he should see her again. This exchange took place in the large
+      decorated sitting-room occupied by our friends at the hotel; it was late
+      in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence
+      on the morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had
+      contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the fourth
+      floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay them a visit.
+      Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and
+      had formed in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued
+      ties. Ralph was making arrangements for the morrow&rsquo;s journey, and Isabel
+      sat alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were
+      orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors,
+      the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted
+      and painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was
+      ugly to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,
+      bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,
+      presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in
+      her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to
+      pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink tissue-paper
+      burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale rosiness over
+      the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you&rsquo;ll come back; but who knows?&rdquo; Gilbert Osmond said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re much more likely to start on your voyage round the world.
+      You&rsquo;re under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what you
+      choose; you can roam through space.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Italy&rsquo;s a part of space,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;I can take it on the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the way round the world? No, don&rsquo;t do that. Don&rsquo;t put us in a
+      parenthesis&mdash;give us a chapter to ourselves. I don&rsquo;t want to see you
+      on your travels. I&rsquo;d rather see you when they&rsquo;re over. I should like to
+      see you when you&rsquo;re tired and satiated,&rdquo; Osmond added in a moment. &ldquo;I
+      shall prefer you in that state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. &ldquo;You turn
+      things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,
+      without intending it. You&rsquo;ve no respect for my travels&mdash;you think
+      them ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you find that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the
+      paper-knife. &ldquo;You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about as
+      if the world belonged to me, simply because&mdash;because it has been put
+      into my power to do so. You don&rsquo;t think a woman ought to do that. You
+      think it bold and ungraceful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it beautiful,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;You know my opinions&mdash;I&rsquo;ve
+      treated you to enough of them. Don&rsquo;t you remember my telling you that one
+      ought to make one&rsquo;s life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at
+      first; but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be
+      trying to do with your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up from her book. &ldquo;What you despise most in the world is bad,
+      is stupid art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond gave a smile&mdash;a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of
+      their conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he
+      had seen it before. &ldquo;You have one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it&rsquo;s one of the countries I
+      want most to see. Can&rsquo;t you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve a better excuse&mdash;the means of going. You&rsquo;re quite wrong in
+      your theory that I laugh at you. I don&rsquo;t know what has put it into your
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should
+      have the means to travel when you&rsquo;ve not; for you know everything and I
+      know nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more reason why you should travel and learn,&rdquo; smiled Osmond.
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; he added as if it were a point to be made, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was
+      thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life&mdash;so it pleased her
+      to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have
+      likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress
+      overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages
+      or historians to hold up&mdash;that this felicity was coming to an end.
+      That most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a
+      reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the
+      point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were a
+      danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be as
+      well. Happy things don&rsquo;t repeat themselves, and her adventure wore already
+      the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from which, after
+      feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the breeze rose. She
+      might come back to Italy and find him different&mdash;this strange man who
+      pleased her just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run
+      the risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity that the
+      chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that touched the source
+      of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent
+      too; he was looking at her. &ldquo;Go everywhere,&rdquo; he said at last, in a low,
+      kind voice; &ldquo;do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy,&mdash;be
+      triumphant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by being triumphant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, doing what you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things
+      one likes is often very tiresome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Osmond with his quiet quickness. &ldquo;As I intimated just now,
+      you&rsquo;ll be tired some day.&rdquo; He paused a moment and then he went on: &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know whether I had better not wait till then for something I want to
+      say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I can&rsquo;t advise you without knowing what it is. But I&rsquo;m horrid when
+      I&rsquo;m tired,&rdquo; Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that. You&rsquo;re angry, sometimes&mdash;that I can believe,
+      though I&rsquo;ve never seen it. But I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re never &lsquo;cross.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even when I lose my temper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t lose it&mdash;you find it, and that must be beautiful.&rdquo; Osmond
+      spoke with a noble earnestness. &ldquo;They must be great moments to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could only find it now!&rdquo; Isabel nervously cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I&rsquo;m speaking very
+      seriously.&rdquo; He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
+      bent his eyes on the floor. &ldquo;What I wish to say to you,&rdquo; he went on at
+      last, looking up, &ldquo;is that I find I&rsquo;m in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly rose. &ldquo;Ah, keep that till I am tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired of hearing it from others?&rdquo; He sat there raising his eyes to her.
+      &ldquo;No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must say
+      it now.&rdquo; She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped herself
+      and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this situation,
+      exchanging a long look&mdash;the large, conscious look of the critical
+      hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if
+      he were afraid he had been too familiar. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m absolutely in love with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+      discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for
+      his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed
+      the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a
+      fine bolt&mdash;backward, forward, she couldn&rsquo;t have said which. The words
+      he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful and generous,
+      invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but, morally
+      speaking, she retreated before them&mdash;facing him still&mdash;as she
+      had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. &ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t say
+      that, please,&rdquo; she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of
+      having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great
+      was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have banished
+      all dread&mdash;the sense of something within herself, deep down, that she
+      supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there like a large
+      sum stored in a bank&mdash;which there was a terror in having to begin to
+      spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the idea that it will matter much to you,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      too little to offer you. What I have&mdash;it&rsquo;s enough for me; but it&rsquo;s
+      not enough for you. I&rsquo;ve neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic
+      advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I
+      think it can&rsquo;t offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure.
+      It gives me pleasure, I assure you,&rdquo; he went on, standing there before
+      her, considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken
+      up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+      awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,
+      refined, slightly ravaged face. &ldquo;It gives me no pain, because it&rsquo;s
+      perfectly simple. For me you&rsquo;ll always be the most important woman in the
+      world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at herself in this character&mdash;looked intently, thinking
+      she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an
+      expression of any such complacency. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t offend me; but you ought to
+      remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded, troubled.&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Incommoded,&rdquo; she heard herself saying that, and it struck her as a
+      ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember perfectly. Of course you&rsquo;re surprised and startled. But if
+      it&rsquo;s nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave
+      something that I may not be ashamed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it may leave. You see at all events that I&rsquo;m not
+      overwhelmed,&rdquo; said Isabel with rather a pale smile. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not too troubled
+      to think. And I think that I&rsquo;m glad I leave Rome to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t agree with you there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t at all <i>know</i> you,&rdquo; she added abruptly; and then she
+      coloured as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year
+      before to Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were not going away you&rsquo;d know me better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do that some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so. I&rsquo;m very easy to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she emphatically answered&mdash;&ldquo;there you&rsquo;re not sincere.
+      You&rsquo;re not easy to know; no one could be less so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast,
+      but I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely; but you&rsquo;re very wise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are you, Miss Archer!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel so just now. Still, I&rsquo;m wise enough to think you had better
+      go. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed to
+      surrender. After which he added: &ldquo;If we meet again you&rsquo;ll find me as you
+      leave me. If we don&rsquo;t I shall be so all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something quietly firm about Isabel&rsquo;s visitor; he might go of
+      his own movement, but wouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing more. I
+      haven&rsquo;t asked anything of you&mdash;not even a thought in the future; you
+      must do me that justice. But there&rsquo;s a little service I should like to
+      ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome&rsquo;s delightful, and it&rsquo;s
+      a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you&rsquo;re sorry to
+      leave it; but you&rsquo;re right to do what your aunt wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t even wish it!&rdquo; Isabel broke out strangely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match
+      these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: &ldquo;Ah well, it&rsquo;s
+      proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that&rsquo;s proper; I
+      go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don&rsquo;t know me,
+      but when you do you&rsquo;ll discover what a worship I have for propriety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not conventional?&rdquo; Isabel gravely asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like the way you utter that word! No, I&rsquo;m not conventional: I&rsquo;m
+      convention itself. You don&rsquo;t understand that?&rdquo; And he paused a moment,
+      smiling. &ldquo;I should like to explain it.&rdquo; Then with a sudden, quick, bright
+      naturalness, &ldquo;Do come back again,&rdquo; he pleaded. &ldquo;There are so many things
+      we might talk about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood there with lowered eyes. &ldquo;What service did you speak of just
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She&rsquo;s alone at
+      the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn&rsquo;t at all my
+      ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,&rdquo; said Gilbert
+      Osmond gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a great pleasure to me to go,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell her
+      what you say. Once more good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a
+      moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of
+      deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded
+      hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation&mdash;for it had not
+      diminished&mdash;was very still, very deep. What had happened was
+      something that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to
+      meet; but here, when it came, she stopped&mdash;that sublime principle
+      somehow broke down. The working of this young lady&rsquo;s spirit was strange,
+      and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem
+      altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a
+      last vague space it couldn&rsquo;t cross&mdash;a dusky, uncertain tract which
+      looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in
+      the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin&rsquo;s escort, and
+      Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought
+      very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried his
+      companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s
+      preference&mdash;hours that were to form the first stage in a larger
+      scheme of travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a
+      little trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Bantling&rsquo;s aid. Isabel
+      was to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of
+      Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s departure, and she determined to devote the last of these
+      to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for a
+      moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame Merle&rsquo;s.
+      This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the point of
+      leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle in the
+      mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that country,
+      whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, &ldquo;forever&rdquo;) seemed to
+      Isabel, in the light of certain photographs of their immense crenellated
+      dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious privilege. She
+      mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond had asked her to take a
+      look at his daughter, but didn&rsquo;t mention that he had also made her a
+      declaration of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ah, comme cela se trouve!</i>&rdquo; Madame Merle exclaimed. &ldquo;I myself have
+      been thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit
+      before I go off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can go together then,&rdquo; Isabel reasonably said: &ldquo;reasonably&rdquo; because
+      the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had
+      prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like it
+      better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic
+      sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage finely meditated. &ldquo;After all, why should we both go;
+      having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I can easily go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about your going alone&mdash;to the house of a handsome
+      bachelor. He has been married&mdash;but so long ago!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared. &ldquo;When Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s away what does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know he&rsquo;s away, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They? Whom do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every one. But perhaps it doesn&rsquo;t signify.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were going why shouldn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m an old frump and you&rsquo;re a beautiful young woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting all that, you&rsquo;ve not promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much you think of your promises!&rdquo; said the elder woman in mild
+      mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; Madame Merle audibly reflected. &ldquo;I really think you wish
+      to be kind to the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish very much to be kind to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I&rsquo;d have come
+      if you hadn&rsquo;t. Or rather,&rdquo; Madame Merle added, &ldquo;<i>Don&rsquo;t</i> tell her. She
+      won&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding
+      way which led to Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s hill-top, she wondered what her friend had
+      meant by no one&rsquo;s being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals,
+      this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of
+      the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous
+      quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for
+      the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose that
+      she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly done?
+      Of course not: she must have meant something else&mdash;something which in
+      the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had time to
+      explain. Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts of things
+      as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming at the piano
+      in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s
+      drawing-room; the little girl was &ldquo;practising,&rdquo; and Isabel was pleased to
+      think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately came in,
+      smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father&rsquo;s house with a
+      wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there half an hour, and
+      Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the pantomime
+      soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire&mdash;not chattering, but
+      conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Isabel&rsquo;s affairs
+      that Isabel was so good as to take in hers. Isabel wondered at her; she had
+      never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower of cultivated
+      sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our admiring young
+      woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned; and yet how
+      simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel was fond,
+      ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding, as who should
+      say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her, up to this time,
+      to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not really all-knowing.
+      Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness?
+      Was it put on to please her father&rsquo;s visitor, or was it the direct
+      expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Isabel spent in Mr.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful empty, dusky rooms&mdash;the windows had been
+      half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through an easy
+      crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a gleam of faded
+      colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom&mdash;her interview with the
+      daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Pansy was
+      really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept so; she had
+      neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent&mdash;only two or three
+      small exquisite instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake,
+      for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender was to
+      be touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy victim of fate. She
+      would have no will, no power to resist, no sense of her own importance;
+      she would easily be mystified, easily crushed: her force would be all in
+      knowing when and where to cling. She moved about the place with her
+      visitor, who had asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where
+      Pansy gave her judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her
+      prospects, her occupations, her father&rsquo;s intentions; she was not
+      egotistical, but felt the propriety of supplying the information so
+      distinguished a guest would naturally expect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+      Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time.
+      Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education; it
+      isn&rsquo;t finished yet, you know. I don&rsquo;t know what they can do with me more;
+      but it appears it&rsquo;s far from finished. Papa told me one day he thought he
+      would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the convent, the
+      masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa&rsquo;s not rich, and I
+      should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for me, because I don&rsquo;t
+      think I&rsquo;m worth it. I don&rsquo;t learn quickly enough, and I have no memory.
+      For what I&rsquo;m told, yes&mdash;especially when it&rsquo;s pleasant; but not for
+      what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who was my best friend, and
+      they took her away from the convent, when she was fourteen, to make&mdash;how
+      do you say it in English?&mdash;to make a dot. You don&rsquo;t say it in
+      English? I hope it isn&rsquo;t wrong; I only mean they wished to keep the money
+      to marry her. I don&rsquo;t know whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep
+      the money&mdash;to marry me. It costs so much to marry!&rdquo; Pansy went on
+      with a sigh; &ldquo;I think papa might make that economy. At any rate I&rsquo;m too
+      young to think about it yet, and I don&rsquo;t care for any gentleman; I mean
+      for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like to marry him; I
+      would rather be his daughter than the wife of&mdash;of some strange
+      person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might think, for I&rsquo;ve
+      been so much away from him. Papa has always been principally for holidays.
+      I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you must not tell him that. You
+      shall not see him again? I&rsquo;m very sorry, and he&rsquo;ll be sorry too. Of
+      everyone who comes here I like you the best. That&rsquo;s not a great
+      compliment, for there are not many people. It was very kind of you to come
+      to-day&mdash;so far from your house; for I&rsquo;m really as yet only a child.
+      Oh, yes, I&rsquo;ve only the occupations of a child. When did <i>you</i> give
+      them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know how old you
+      are, but I don&rsquo;t know whether it&rsquo;s right to ask. At the convent they told
+      us that we must never ask the age. I don&rsquo;t like to do anything that&rsquo;s not
+      expected; it looks as if one had not been properly taught. I myself&mdash;I
+      should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left directions for
+      everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off that side I go
+      into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I
+      always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful. In Rome, from the
+      convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I practise three hours.
+      I don&rsquo;t play very well. You play yourself? I wish very much you&rsquo;d play
+      something for me; papa has the idea that I should hear good music. Madame
+      Merle has played for me several times; that&rsquo;s what I like best about
+      Madame Merle; she has great facility. I shall never have facility. And
+      I&rsquo;ve no voice&mdash;just a small sound like the squeak of a slate-pencil
+      making flourishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down to
+      the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white hands move
+      quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child good-bye,
+      held her close, looked at her long. &ldquo;Be very good,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;give
+      pleasure to your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that&rsquo;s what I live for,&rdquo; Pansy answered. &ldquo;He has not much
+      pleasure; he&rsquo;s rather a sad man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it
+      almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged
+      her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in her
+      head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say to Pansy
+      about her father; there were things it would have given her pleasure to
+      hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner became conscious
+      of these things than her imagination was hushed with horror at the idea of
+      taking advantage of the little girl&mdash;it was of this she would have
+      accused herself&mdash;and of exhaling into that air where he might still
+      have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed state. She had come&mdash;she
+      had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She rose quickly from the
+      music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a moment, still holding her
+      small companion, drawing the child&rsquo;s sweet slimness closer and looking
+      down at her almost in envy. She was obliged to confess it to herself&mdash;she
+      would have taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Gilbert Osmond to
+      this innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said no
+      other word; she only kissed Pansy once again. They went together through
+      the vestibule, to the door that opened on the court; and there her young
+      hostess stopped, looking rather wistfully beyond. &ldquo;I may go no further.
+      I&rsquo;ve promised papa not to pass this door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right to obey him; he&rsquo;ll never ask you anything unreasonable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for a long time, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you can, I hope. I&rsquo;m only a little girl,&rdquo; said Pansy, &ldquo;but I
+      shall always expect you.&rdquo; And the small figure stood in the high, dark
+      doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into
+      the brightness beyond the big <i>portone</i>, which gave a wider dazzle as
+      it opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval
+      sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this
+      interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is engaged
+      again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return
+      to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just
+      narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the
+      numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was that
+      in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she was
+      expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green
+      shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had come in
+      through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth and perfume.
+      Our young woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her;
+      she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention
+      she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a
+      glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into the house, since the
+      entrance to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and
+      privacy always reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival by a
+      process of conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her face this
+      attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively
+      more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent
+      in seeing the world. She had ranged, she would have said, through space
+      and surveyed much of mankind, and was therefore now, in her own eyes, a
+      very different person from the frivolous young woman from Albany who had
+      begun to take the measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of
+      years before. She flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a
+      great deal more of life than this light-minded creature had even
+      suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect,
+      instead of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would
+      have evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have
+      been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+      been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been
+      projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for
+      instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine&rsquo;s sister and Edmund Ludlow&rsquo;s
+      wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her
+      relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought her
+      children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and tenderness
+      the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to
+      snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean with
+      extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in Paris before
+      taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from the
+      American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so that while her
+      sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to a narrow circle.
+      Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in the month of July,
+      and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the
+      flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade of great chestnuts made a
+      resting-place for such upward wanderings as might be undertaken by ladies
+      and children on warm afternoons. They had afterwards reached the French
+      capital, which was worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily, but
+      thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel, who in these days made use of her
+      memory of Rome as she might have done, in a hot and crowded room, of a
+      phial of something pungent hidden in her handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and wonderments
+      not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined her found
+      further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these speculations.
+      They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done
+      before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated,
+      at anything his sister-in-law might have done or have failed to do. Mrs.
+      Ludlow&rsquo;s mental motions were sufficiently various. At one moment she
+      thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take
+      a house in New York&mdash;the Rossiters&rsquo;, for instance, which had an
+      elegant conservatory and was just round the corner from her own; at
+      another she couldn&rsquo;t conceal her surprise at the girl&rsquo;s not marrying some
+      member of one of the great aristocracies. On the whole, as I have said,
+      she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities. She had taken
+      more satisfaction in Isabel&rsquo;s accession of fortune than if the money had
+      been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper
+      setting for her sister&rsquo;s slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent
+      figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely&mdash;development,
+      to Lily&rsquo;s understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with
+      morning-calls and evening-parties. Intellectually, doubtless, she had made
+      immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social
+      conquests of which Mrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily&rsquo;s
+      conception of such achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly
+      what she had expected of Isabel&mdash;to give it form and body. Isabel
+      could have done as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow
+      appealed to her husband to know whether there was any privilege she
+      enjoyed in Europe which the society of that city might not offer her. We
+      know ourselves that Isabel had made conquests&mdash;whether inferior or
+      not to those she might have effected in her native land it would be a
+      delicate matter to decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of
+      complacency that I again mention that she had not rendered these
+      honourable victories public. She had not told her sister the history of
+      Lord Warburton, nor had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s state of
+      mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that she
+      didn&rsquo;t wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking
+      deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily&rsquo;s
+      advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily
+      knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her
+      sister&rsquo;s career a strange anti-climax&mdash;an impression confirmed by the
+      fact that Isabel&rsquo;s silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct
+      proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this
+      happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost
+      her courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as
+      inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it
+      added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young lady&rsquo;s courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its
+      height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver things
+      than spending the winter in Paris&mdash;Paris had sides by which it so
+      resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose&mdash;and her close
+      correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She
+      had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and
+      wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the
+      Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of
+      the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to
+      their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very
+      conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good
+      for her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good
+      enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had
+      made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have
+      accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her,
+      as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such
+      impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her
+      hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned
+      dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an
+      occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy
+      London street. The world lay before her&mdash;she could do whatever she
+      chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice
+      was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square
+      to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed
+      in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our
+      heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly.
+      But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers
+      and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so
+      that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right
+      again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed
+      even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets&mdash;the moving
+      crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the
+      dark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at her hotel, she
+      wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a day or two for Rome. She
+      made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence&mdash;having gone
+      first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished
+      this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her
+      natural protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was spending
+      the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had
+      been recalled to America by a telegram from the <i>Interviewer</i>. This
+      journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her genius
+      than the mouldering cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way
+      by a promise from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over to see her.
+      Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not presenting herself just
+      yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough.
+      Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than
+      bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the
+      thing or one didn&rsquo;t, and what one &ldquo;would&rdquo; have done belonged to the sphere
+      of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of
+      things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so
+      frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at
+      Florence, because she took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in
+      question there than formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now
+      find a pretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning
+      that he had not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not
+      been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they
+      should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that
+      her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been
+      consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two
+      ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in
+      Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these
+      countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among the
+      most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose and
+      reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Isabel travelled
+      rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after
+      cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess circulating
+      <i>incognita</i>, panted a little in her rear. It was on Isabel&rsquo;s
+      invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl&rsquo;s
+      uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have
+      been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+      companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had
+      no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking pair on
+      their travels would not have been able to tell you which was patroness and
+      which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance states
+      meagrely the impression she made on her friend, who had found her from the
+      first so ample and so easy. At the end of an intimacy of three months
+      Isabel felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and
+      the admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her
+      history from her own point of view&mdash;a consummation the more desirable
+      as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others.
+      This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M.
+      Merle, a positive adventurer, she might say, though originally so
+      plausible, who had taken advantage, years before, of her youth and of an
+      inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find it
+      difficult to believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable
+      incidents that her companion wondered a person so <i>eprouvée</i> could
+      have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this
+      freshness of Madame Merle&rsquo;s she obtained a considerable insight; she
+      seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in
+      its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like
+      the &ldquo;favourite&rdquo; of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there
+      was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had
+      remained after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge
+      only in character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a
+      distance, that she belonged to the &ldquo;old, old&rdquo; world, and Isabel never lost
+      the impression that she was the product of a different moral or social
+      clime from her own, that she had grown up under other stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course
+      the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our young
+      woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at the
+      shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth, that a
+      morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this
+      conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an
+      occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had
+      raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the
+      narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might, in
+      certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in
+      decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had not
+      even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain; and
+      there were evidently things in the world of which it was not advantageous
+      to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since it so affected
+      her to have to exclaim, of her friend, &ldquo;Heaven forgive her, she doesn&rsquo;t
+      understand me!&rdquo; Absurd as it may seem this discovery operated as a shock,
+      left her with a vague dismay in which there was even an element of
+      foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the light of some sudden
+      proof of Madame Merle&rsquo;s remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a
+      high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once
+      declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately
+      begins to decline&mdash;there being no point of equilibrium between liking
+      more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was
+      impossible&mdash;it must move one way or the other. However that might be,
+      the girl had in these days a thousand uses for her sense of the romantic,
+      which was more active than it had ever been. I do not allude to the
+      impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an
+      excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the broken columns of the
+      Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to her as the
+      Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions had remained. She
+      came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made another stay
+      in Rome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond descended from
+      Florence and remained three weeks, during which the fact of her being with
+      his old friend Madame Merle, in whose house she had gone to lodge, made it
+      virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the last of
+      April came she wrote to Mrs. Touchett that she should now rejoice to
+      accept an invitation given long before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo
+      Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. She found
+      her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was
+      expected in Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for
+      upwards of a year, was prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at
+      the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any of
+      the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past, but
+      to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, and
+      she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she should say
+      to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What he would say
+      to her&mdash;that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing in the
+      least soothing&mdash;she had warrant for this, and the conviction
+      doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+      clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked in
+      no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older&mdash;ever so much,
+      and as if she were &ldquo;worth more&rdquo; for it, like some curious piece in an
+      antiquary&rsquo;s collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her
+      apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his
+      tray. &ldquo;Let the gentleman come in,&rdquo; she said, and continued to gaze out of
+      the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard
+      the door close behind the person who presently entered that she looked
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood stood there&mdash;stood and received a moment, from head
+      to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered
+      a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel&rsquo;s we
+      shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to her
+      critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong
+      and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke positively either
+      of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor weakness, so he had no
+      practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same voluntary cast as in earlier
+      days; but a crisis like the present had in it of course something grim. He
+      had the air of a man who had travelled hard; he said nothing at first, as
+      if he had been out of breath. This gave Isabel time to make a reflexion:
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow, what great things he&rsquo;s capable of, and what a pity he should
+      waste so dreadfully his splendid force! What a pity too that one can&rsquo;t
+      satisfy everybody!&rdquo; It gave her time to do more to say at the end of a
+      minute: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you how I hoped you wouldn&rsquo;t come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no doubt of that.&rdquo; And he looked about him for a seat. Not only had
+      he come, but he meant to settle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be very tired,&rdquo; said Isabel, seating herself, and generously, as
+      she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.
+      These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s in keeping&mdash;you must have felt as if you were coming to bury
+      me!&rdquo; And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their
+      situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly clear
+      that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all this she
+      was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was
+      devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at
+      her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such a
+      want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on her
+      as a physical weight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t feel that; I couldn&rsquo;t think of you as dead. I wish I could!&rdquo;
+       he candidly declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very selfish of you!&rdquo; she returned with the ardour of a real
+      conviction. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not happy yourself others have yet a right to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely it&rsquo;s selfish; but I don&rsquo;t in the least mind your saying so. I
+      don&rsquo;t mind anything you can say now&mdash;I don&rsquo;t feel it. The cruellest
+      things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you&rsquo;ve done
+      I shall never feel anything&mdash;I mean anything but that. That I shall
+      feel all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness, in
+      his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over
+      propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than
+      touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her
+      a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of
+      this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. &ldquo;When did you
+      leave New York?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw up his head as if calculating. &ldquo;Seventeen days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came as fast as I could. I&rsquo;d have come five days ago if I had been
+      able.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,&rdquo; she coldly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to you&mdash;no. But to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You gain nothing that I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s for me to judge!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.&rdquo; And then, to
+      change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole. He
+      looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of Henrietta
+      Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young lady had
+      been with him just before he left America. &ldquo;She came to see you?&rdquo; Isabel
+      then demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had
+      got your letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell her?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Caspar Goodwood simply; &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to do that. She&rsquo;ll
+      hear it quick enough; she hears everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall write to her, and then she&rsquo;ll write to me and scold me,&rdquo; Isabel
+      declared, trying to smile again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. &ldquo;I guess she&rsquo;ll come right out,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On purpose to scold me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you tell me that,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;I must prepare for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,
+      raising them, &ldquo;Does she know Mr. Osmond?&rdquo; he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little. And she doesn&rsquo;t like him. But of course I don&rsquo;t marry to please
+      Henrietta,&rdquo; she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar if she
+      had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn&rsquo;t say so;
+      he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To which she
+      made answer that she didn&rsquo;t know yet. &ldquo;I can only say it will be soon.
+      I&rsquo;ve told no one but yourself and one other person&mdash;an old friend of
+      Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it a marriage your friends won&rsquo;t like?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really haven&rsquo;t an idea. As I say, I don&rsquo;t marry for my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,
+      doing it quite without delicacy. &ldquo;Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert
+      Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable man.
+      He&rsquo;s not in business,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not rich; he&rsquo;s not known for
+      anything in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She disliked Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s questions, but she said to herself that she
+      owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor
+      Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at her.
+      &ldquo;Where does he come from? Where does he belong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never been so little pleased with the way he said &ldquo;belawng.&rdquo; &ldquo;He
+      comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said in your letter he was American. Hasn&rsquo;t he a native place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he never gone back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he go back?&rdquo; Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. &ldquo;He has
+      no profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn&rsquo;t he like the United
+      States?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t know them. Then he&rsquo;s very quiet and very simple&mdash;he
+      contents himself with Italy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Italy and with you,&rdquo; said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and no
+      appearance of trying to make an epigram. &ldquo;What has he ever done?&rdquo; he added
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I should marry him? Nothing at all,&rdquo; Isabel replied while her
+      patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. &ldquo;If he had done
+      great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;
+      I&rsquo;m marrying a perfect nonentity. Don&rsquo;t try to take an interest in him.
+      You can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t appreciate him; that&rsquo;s what you mean. And you don&rsquo;t mean in the
+      least that he&rsquo;s a perfect nonentity. You think he&rsquo;s grand, you think he&rsquo;s
+      great, though no one else thinks so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion, and
+      it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render perceptions
+      she had never taken for fine. &ldquo;Why do you always comeback to what others
+      think? I can&rsquo;t discuss Mr. Osmond with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air of
+      stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were nothing
+      else that they might discuss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how little you gain,&rdquo; she accordingly broke out&mdash;&ldquo;how little
+      comfort or satisfaction I can give you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect you to give me much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand then why you came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came because I wanted to see you once more&mdash;even just as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later we
+      should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been pleasanter
+      for each of us than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waited till after you&rsquo;re married? That&rsquo;s just what I didn&rsquo;t want to do.
+      You&rsquo;ll be different then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will make it all the worse,&rdquo; said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re unaccommodating! I can&rsquo;t promise to dislike you in order to
+      help you to resign yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t care if you did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the
+      window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round her
+      visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again and
+      stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just quitted.
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That&rsquo;s better for you perhaps
+      than for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wished to hear the sound of your voice,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It gives me pleasure, all the same.&rdquo; And with this he got up. She had
+      felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in
+      Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She had
+      been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his messenger
+      that he might come when he would. She had not been better pleased when she
+      saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy implications. It
+      implied things she could never assent to&mdash;rights, reproaches,
+      remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change her purpose.
+      These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed; and now our
+      young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor&rsquo;s remarkable
+      self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that irritated her; there
+      was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart beat faster. She felt
+      her agitation rising, and she said to herself that she was angry in the
+      way a woman is angry when she has been in the wrong. She was not in the
+      wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness to swallow; but, all the
+      same, she wished he would denounce her a little. She had wished his visit
+      would be short; it had no purpose, no propriety; yet now that he seemed to
+      be turning away she felt a sudden horror of his leaving her without
+      uttering a word that would give her an opportunity to defend herself more
+      than she had done in writing to him a month before, in a few carefully
+      chosen words, to announce her engagement. If she were not in the wrong,
+      however, why should she desire to defend herself? It was an excess of
+      generosity on Isabel&rsquo;s part to desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry.
+      And if he had not meanwhile held himself hard it might have made him so to
+      hear the tone in which she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him
+      of having accused her: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not deceived you! I was perfectly free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know that,&rdquo; said Caspar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave you full warning that I&rsquo;d do as I chose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you&rsquo;d probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner
+      that I pretty well believed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She considered this an instant. &ldquo;No one can be more surprised than myself
+      at my present intention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe it,&rdquo;
+       Caspar went on. &ldquo;I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I
+      remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and
+      that&rsquo;s partly why I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that&rsquo;s soon done. There&rsquo;s
+      no mistake whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw that as soon as I came into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good would it do you that I shouldn&rsquo;t marry?&rdquo; she asked with a
+      certain fierceness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it better than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very selfish, as I said before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that. I&rsquo;m selfish as iron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even iron sometimes melts! If you&rsquo;ll be reasonable I&rsquo;ll see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you call me reasonable now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to say to you,&rdquo; she answered with sudden humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t trouble you for a long time,&rdquo; the young man went on. He made a
+      step towards the door, but he stopped. &ldquo;Another reason why I came was that
+      I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having changed
+      your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. &ldquo;In explanation? Do you think I&rsquo;m
+      bound to explain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her one of his long dumb looks. &ldquo;You were very positive. I did
+      believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I suppose not. Well,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done what I wished. I&rsquo;ve seen
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How little you make of these terrible journeys,&rdquo; she felt the poverty of
+      her presently replying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re afraid I&rsquo;m knocked up&mdash;in any such way as that&mdash;you
+      may he at your ease about it.&rdquo; He turned away, this time in earnest, and
+      no hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. &ldquo;I shall leave Florence
+      to-morrow,&rdquo; he said without a quaver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m delighted to hear it!&rdquo; she answered passionately. Five minutes after
+      he had gone out she burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had
+      vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this
+      expression because she had been sure Mrs. Touchett would not be pleased;
+      Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She had
+      an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact public
+      before she should have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about it. He had
+      said rather less than she expected, and she now had a somewhat angry sense
+      of having lost time. But she would lose no more; she waited till Mrs.
+      Touchett came into the drawing-room before the mid-day breakfast, and then
+      she began. &ldquo;Aunt Lydia, I&rsquo;ve something to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. &ldquo;You
+      needn&rsquo;t tell me; I know what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same way that I know when the window&rsquo;s open&mdash;by feeling a
+      draught. You&rsquo;re going to marry that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What man do you mean?&rdquo; Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame Merle&rsquo;s friend&mdash;Mr. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you call him Madame Merle&rsquo;s friend. Is that the
+      principal thing he&rsquo;s known by?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s not her friend he ought to be&mdash;after what she has done for
+      him!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have expected it of her; I&rsquo;m
+      disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement
+      you&rsquo;re greatly mistaken,&rdquo; Isabel declared with a sort of ardent coldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman&rsquo;s
+      having had to be lashed up? You&rsquo;re quite right. They&rsquo;re immense, your
+      attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she
+      hadn&rsquo;t put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he was
+      not a man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has taken a great deal for himself!&rdquo; cried Isabel with a voluntary
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. &ldquo;I think he must, after all, to have made
+      you like him so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought he even pleased <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did, at one time; and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m angry with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be angry with me, not with him,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m always angry with you; that&rsquo;s no satisfaction! Was it for this
+      that you refused Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t go back to that. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I like Mr. Osmond, since
+      others have done so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There&rsquo;s
+      nothing <i>of</i> him,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he can&rsquo;t hurt me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;re going to be happy? No one&rsquo;s happy, in such doings,
+      you should know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>you</i> will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry
+      as they go into partnership&mdash;to set up a house. But in your
+      partnership you&rsquo;ll bring everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it that Mr. Osmond isn&rsquo;t rich? Is that what you&rsquo;re talking about?&rdquo;
+       Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such
+      things and I have the courage to say it; I think they&rsquo;re very precious.
+      Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some
+      other reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated a little. &ldquo;I think I value everything that&rsquo;s valuable. I
+      care very much for money, and that&rsquo;s why I wish Mr. Osmond to have a
+      little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to him then; but marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name&rsquo;s good enough for me,&rdquo; the girl went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very pretty
+      name. Have I such a fine one myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen
+      American names. Do you marry him out of charity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s my duty to
+      explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn&rsquo;t be able. So please don&rsquo;t
+      remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can&rsquo;t
+      talk about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of
+      intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never do, and I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you. You&rsquo;ve been very
+      considerate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not considerate&mdash;it was convenient,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;But
+      I shall talk to Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good friend
+      to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has she done to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She couldn&rsquo;t have prevented it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can do anything; that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve always liked her for. I knew she
+      could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I
+      didn&rsquo;t understand that she would play two at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what part she may have played to you,&rdquo; Isabel said; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s
+      between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and devoted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me
+      she was watching you only in order to interpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She said that to please you,&rdquo; the girl answered; conscious, however, of
+      the inadequacy of the explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;re ever much pleased,&rdquo; Isabel was obliged to reply. &ldquo;If
+      Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by
+      insincerity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you were
+      marching away, and she was really beating the drum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and
+      even if she had given the alarm you wouldn&rsquo;t have tried to stop me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but some one else would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo; Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs.
+      Touchett&rsquo;s little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained her
+      gaze rather than returned it. &ldquo;Would you have listened to Ralph?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ralph doesn&rsquo;t abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know he does,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;and I shall feel the value of it now, for
+      he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it,
+      and he argued the other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did it for the sake of argument,&rdquo; the girl smiled. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t accuse
+      him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never pretended he&rsquo;d prevent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that!&rdquo; cried Isabel gaily. &ldquo;I wish very much,&rdquo; she presently
+      added, &ldquo;that when he comes you&rsquo;d tell him first of my engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll mention it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett. &ldquo;I shall say nothing more
+      to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s as you please. I only meant that it&rsquo;s rather better the
+      announcement should come from you than from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you; it&rsquo;s much more proper!&rdquo; And on this the aunt and
+      the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good as her word,
+      made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence, however,
+      she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an hour before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From an old friend&mdash;an American gentleman,&rdquo; Isabel said with a
+      colour in her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An American gentleman of course. It&rsquo;s only an American gentleman who
+      calls at ten o&rsquo;clock in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t he have come yesterday, at the usual time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He only arrived last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett cried. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s
+      an American gentleman truly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is indeed,&rdquo; said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what
+      Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs.
+      Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed at
+      first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of his
+      health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been shocked
+      by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten how ill he
+      looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if
+      he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with an
+      invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to conventional beauty as he
+      advanced in life, and the now apparently complete loss of his health had
+      done little to mitigate the natural oddity of his person. Blighted and
+      battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a
+      lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker
+      languished upon a lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined
+      itself more sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and
+      loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet
+      jacket had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his
+      pockets; he shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that denoted
+      great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this whimsical gait that
+      helped to mark his character more than ever as that of the humorous
+      invalid&mdash;the invalid for whom even his own disabilities are part of
+      the general joke. They might well indeed with Ralph have been the chief
+      cause of the want of seriousness marking his view of a world in which the
+      reason for his own continued presence was past finding out. Isabel had
+      grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness had become dear to her. They
+      had been sweetened by association; they struck her as the very terms on
+      which it had been given him to be charming. He was so charming that her
+      sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state
+      of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual
+      advantage; it absolved him from all professional and official emotions and
+      left him the luxury of being exclusively personal. The personality so
+      resulting was delightful; he had remained proof against the staleness of
+      disease; he had had to consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow
+      escaped being formally sick. Such had been the girl&rsquo;s impression of her
+      cousin; and when she had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she
+      reflected a good deal she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion;
+      but she always had a dread of wasting that essence&mdash;a precious
+      article, worth more to the giver than to any one else. Now, however, it
+      took no great sensibility to feel that poor Ralph&rsquo;s tenure of life was
+      less elastic than it should be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he
+      had all the illumination of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he
+      was distressfully dying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people, and she
+      felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now promised to
+      become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was not pleased
+      with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of her affection
+      for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not even prepared,
+      or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his
+      privilege&mdash;it would be indeed his natural line&mdash;to find fault
+      with any step she might take toward marriage. One&rsquo;s cousin always
+      pretended to hate one&rsquo;s husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a
+      part of one&rsquo;s cousin&rsquo;s always pretending to adore one. Ralph was nothing
+      if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things being equal,
+      have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any one, it would be
+      absurd to regard as important that her choice should square with his
+      views. What were his views after all? He had pretended to believe she had
+      better have married Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had
+      refused that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would certainly
+      have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could criticise
+      any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be open to criticism.
+      How well she herself, should she only give her mind to it, might criticise
+      this union of her own! She had other employment, however, and Ralph was
+      welcome to relieve her of the care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient
+      and most indulgent. He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd
+      he should say nothing. After three days had elapsed without his speaking
+      our young woman wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at
+      least go through the form. We, who know more about poor Ralph than his
+      cousin, may easily believe that during the hours that followed his arrival
+      at Palazzo Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His
+      mother had literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even
+      more sensibly chilling than Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s maternal kiss. Ralph was
+      shocked and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in
+      the world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the
+      house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of
+      the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head thrown
+      back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the heart; he
+      had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could he say? If the
+      girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim
+      her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to persuade
+      her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose deep art she had
+      succumbed would be decently discreet only in the event of her being
+      persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have damned himself. It cost him an
+      equal effort to speak his thought and to dissemble; he could neither
+      assent with sincerity nor protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew&mdash;or
+      rather he supposed&mdash;that the affianced pair were daily renewing their
+      mutual vows. Osmond at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo
+      Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do
+      after their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage by
+      the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means of pursuing
+      a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and she drove in the morning
+      to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness, during the early hours, was void
+      of all intruders, and our young lady, joined by her lover in its quietest
+      part, strolled with him a while through the grey Italian shade and
+      listened to the nightingales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before luncheon,
+      she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and, instead of
+      ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed beneath another
+      archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this moment could not
+      have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over it, and the warm
+      shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious caves. Ralph was
+      sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore&mdash;a
+      dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of
+      Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at first to
+      Isabel that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the grass had not roused
+      him, and before turning away she stood for a moment looking at him. During
+      this instant he opened his eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair
+      that matched with his own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of
+      indifference she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had
+      something to brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly
+      by the languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with
+      the property inherited from his father&mdash;the fruit of eccentric
+      arrangements of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told
+      Isabel, now encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He
+      ought to have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to
+      Florence; he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in
+      the bank than in the state of Patagonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I waked you,&rdquo; Isabel said; &ldquo;you look too tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you tired of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road&rsquo;s long and I never arrive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you wish to arrive at?&rdquo; she put to him, closing her parasol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your
+      engagement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think too much of it,&rdquo; she lightly returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that it&rsquo;s none of my business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beyond a certain point, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me
+      wanting in good manners. I&rsquo;ve never congratulated you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been a good many reasons. I&rsquo;ll tell you now,&rdquo; Ralph said. He
+      pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at her.
+      He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against his
+      marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands laid
+      upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable; he
+      hesitated long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she was
+      usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to utter
+      a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. &ldquo;I think
+      I&rsquo;ve hardly got over my surprise,&rdquo; he went on at last. &ldquo;You were the last
+      person I expected to see caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you call it caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you&rsquo;re going to be put into a cage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I like my cage, that needn&rsquo;t trouble you,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I wonder at; that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve been thinking of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve been thinking you may imagine how I&rsquo;ve thought! I&rsquo;m satisfied
+      that I&rsquo;m doing well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty
+      beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen it,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t look to me now, I admit, such an
+      inviting expanse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view of
+      it and wanted to survey the whole field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen that one can&rsquo;t do anything so general. One must choose a corner
+      and cultivate that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible. I
+      had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that you
+      were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me off my
+      guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew
+      nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your
+      guard, however,&rdquo; Isabel asked, &ldquo;what would you have done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have said &lsquo;Wait a little longer.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait for what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for a little more light,&rdquo; said Ralph with rather an absurd smile,
+      while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where should my light have come from? From you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might have struck a spark or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay upon
+      her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her expression
+      was not conciliatory. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re beating about the bush, Ralph. You wish to
+      say you don&rsquo;t like Mr. Osmond, and yet you&rsquo;re afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I&rsquo;m willing to wound <i>him</i>,
+      yes&mdash;but not to wound you. I&rsquo;m afraid of you, not of him. If you
+      marry him it won&rsquo;t be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>If</i> I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course that seems to you too fatuous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Isabel after a little; &ldquo;it seems to me too touching.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stroked out her long gloves again. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;ve a great affection
+      for me. I can&rsquo;t get rid of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince
+      you how intensely I want you to do well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how little you trust me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. &ldquo;I trust
+      you, but I don&rsquo;t trust him,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve said it now,
+      and I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve made it so clear. But you&rsquo;ll suffer by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you&rsquo;re just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very just,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;What better proof of it can there be than
+      that I&rsquo;m not angry with you? I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s the matter with me, but
+      I&rsquo;m not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought to
+      be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn&rsquo;t think so. He wants me to know
+      everything; that&rsquo;s what I like him for. You&rsquo;ve nothing to gain, I know
+      that. I&rsquo;ve never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have much
+      reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice; you&rsquo;ve
+      often done so. No, I&rsquo;m very quiet; I&rsquo;ve always believed in your wisdom,&rdquo;
+       she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of
+      contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it touched
+      Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a creature he had
+      injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a moment he was
+      absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had said. But she
+      gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse, as she thought,
+      of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that direction. &ldquo;I see
+      you&rsquo;ve some special idea; I should like very much to hear it. I&rsquo;m sure
+      it&rsquo;s disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about,
+      and of course I ought to tell you definitely that if you expect to
+      dissuade me you may give it up. You&rsquo;ll not move me an inch; it&rsquo;s too late.
+      As you say, I&rsquo;m caught. Certainly it won&rsquo;t be pleasant for you to remember
+      this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts. I shall never reproach
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you ever will,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not in the least the sort
+      of marriage I thought you&rsquo;d make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of marriage was that, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can hardly say. I hadn&rsquo;t exactly a positive view of it, but I had
+      a negative. I didn&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;d decide for&mdash;well, for that type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s type, if it be one? His being so
+      independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,&rdquo; the girl declared.
+      &ldquo;What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Ralph said, &ldquo;I know him very little, and I confess I haven&rsquo;t facts
+      and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can&rsquo;t help feeling
+      that you&rsquo;re running a grave risk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk&rsquo;s as grave as mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s his affair! If he&rsquo;s afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he
+      would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her
+      cousin. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I understand you,&rdquo; she said at last coldly. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believed you&rsquo;d marry a man of more importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped
+      into her face. &ldquo;Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that
+      one&rsquo;s husband should be of importance to one&rsquo;s self!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking
+      he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward,
+      resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an
+      air of the most respectful deliberation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a moment what I mean,&rdquo; he presently said. He felt
+      agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished
+      to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel waited a little&mdash;then she went on with majesty. &ldquo;In everything
+      that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be
+      nobler natures, but I&rsquo;ve never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s is the finest I know; he&rsquo;s good enough for me, and interesting
+      enough, and clever enough. I&rsquo;m far more struck with what he has and what
+      he represents than with what he may lack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,&rdquo; Ralph observed
+      without answering this; &ldquo;I had amused myself with planning out a high
+      destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not
+      to come down so easily or so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come down, you say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me
+      to be soaring far up in the blue&mdash;to be, sailing in the bright light,
+      over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud&mdash;a
+      missile that should never have reached you&mdash;and straight you drop to
+      the ground. It hurts me,&rdquo; said Ralph audaciously, &ldquo;hurts me as if I had
+      fallen myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand you in the least,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;You say you amused
+      yourself with a project for my career&mdash;I don&rsquo;t understand that. Don&rsquo;t
+      amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you&rsquo;re doing it at my expense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph shook his head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid of your not believing that I&rsquo;ve had
+      great ideas for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?&rdquo; she pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never moved on a higher plane than I&rsquo;m moving on now. There&rsquo;s
+      nothing higher for a girl than to marry a&mdash;a person she likes,&rdquo; said
+      poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my
+      dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a
+      more active, larger, freer sort of nature.&rdquo; Ralph hesitated, then added:
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get over the sense that Osmond is somehow&mdash;well, small.&rdquo; He
+      had uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would
+      flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of
+      considering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small?&rdquo; She made it sound immense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a great respect for himself; I don&rsquo;t blame him for that,&rdquo; said
+      Isabel. &ldquo;It makes one more sure to respect others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one&rsquo;s relation to
+      things&mdash;to others. I don&rsquo;t think Mr. Osmond does that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he&rsquo;s excellent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s the incarnation of taste,&rdquo; Ralph went on, thinking hard how he could
+      best express Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s sinister attributes without putting himself
+      in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe
+      him impersonally, scientifically. &ldquo;He judges and measures, approves and
+      condemns, altogether by that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride.
+      But have you ever seen such a taste&mdash;a really exquisite one&mdash;ruffled?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph&rsquo;s lips. &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s
+      wilful, that&rsquo;s unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that
+      way&mdash;you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the
+      sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment
+      looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult. But
+      &ldquo;You go too far,&rdquo; she simply breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said what I had on my mind&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve said it because I love
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden
+      wish to strike him off. &ldquo;Ah then, you&rsquo;re not disinterested!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you, but I love without hope,&rdquo; said Ralph quickly, forcing a smile
+      and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he
+      intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the
+      garden; but after a little she turned back to him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid your talk
+      then is the wildness of despair! I don&rsquo;t understand it&mdash;but it
+      doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;m not arguing with you; it&rsquo;s impossible I should; I&rsquo;ve
+      only tried to listen to you. I&rsquo;m much obliged to you for attempting to
+      explain,&rdquo; she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung
+      up had already subsided. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to try to warn me, if
+      you&rsquo;re really alarmed; but I won&rsquo;t promise to think of what you&rsquo;ve said: I
+      shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you&rsquo;ve
+      done your duty, and no man can do more. I can&rsquo;t explain to you what I
+      feel, what I believe, and I wouldn&rsquo;t if I could.&rdquo; She paused a moment and
+      then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in the midst
+      of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t enter
+      into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can&rsquo;t do it justice, because I see him in
+      quite another way. He&rsquo;s not important&mdash;no, he&rsquo;s not important; he&rsquo;s a
+      man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that&rsquo;s what you mean
+      when you call him &lsquo;small,&rsquo; then he&rsquo;s as small as you please. I call that
+      large&mdash;it&rsquo;s the largest thing I know. I won&rsquo;t pretend to argue with
+      you about a person I&rsquo;m going to marry,&rdquo; Isabel repeated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in the
+      least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he&rsquo;s not so weak as to need my
+      defence. I should think it would seem strange even to yourself that I
+      should talk of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t talk of him at all to any one but you; and you, after what you&rsquo;ve
+      said&mdash;I may just answer you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to
+      make a mercenary marriage&mdash;what they call a marriage of ambition?
+      I&rsquo;ve only one ambition&mdash;to be free to follow out a good feeling. I
+      had others once, but they&rsquo;ve passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond
+      because he&rsquo;s not rich? That&rsquo;s just what I like him for. I&rsquo;ve fortunately
+      money enough; I&rsquo;ve never felt so thankful for it as to-day. There have
+      been moments when I should like to go and kneel down by your father&rsquo;s
+      grave: he did perhaps a better thing than he knew when he put it into my
+      power to marry a poor man&mdash;a man who has borne his poverty with such
+      dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor
+      struggled&mdash;he has cared for no worldly prize. If that&rsquo;s to be narrow,
+      if that&rsquo;s to be selfish, then it&rsquo;s very well. I&rsquo;m not frightened by such
+      words, I&rsquo;m not even displeased; I&rsquo;m only sorry that you should make a
+      mistake. Others might have done so, but I&rsquo;m surprised that you should. You
+      might know a gentleman when you see one&mdash;you might know a fine mind.
+      Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows everything, he understands
+      everything, he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You&rsquo;ve got hold
+      of some false idea. It&rsquo;s a pity, but I can&rsquo;t help it; it regards you more
+      than me.&rdquo; Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye
+      illumined by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness of her
+      manner&mdash;a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain excited by his
+      words and the wounded pride of having needed to justify a choice of which
+      she felt only the nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she
+      paused Ralph said nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but
+      she was highly solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a
+      passion. &ldquo;What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?&rdquo; she
+      asked suddenly. &ldquo;You talk about one&rsquo;s soaring and sailing, but if one
+      marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs,
+      one has a heart in one&rsquo;s bosom, and one must marry a particular
+      individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not having come to a
+      better understanding with Lord Warburton, and she&rsquo;s horrified at my
+      contenting myself with a person who has none of his great advantages&mdash;no
+      property, no title, no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor
+      reputation, nor brilliant belongings of any sort. It&rsquo;s the total absence
+      of all these things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s simply a very lonely, a
+      very cultivated and a very honest man&mdash;he&rsquo;s not a prodigious
+      proprietor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited
+      deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of the things
+      she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight
+      of his total impression&mdash;the impression of her ardent good faith. She
+      was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally
+      consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that, having invented
+      a fine theory, about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really
+      possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph
+      remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it into her
+      power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He had done so, and the
+      girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor Ralph felt sick; he felt
+      ashamed. Isabel had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of
+      conviction which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it
+      formally by turning away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked
+      beside her, and they passed into the court together and reached the big
+      staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused, turning on him a face of
+      elation&mdash;absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His opposition had
+      made her own conception of her conduct clearer to her. &ldquo;Shall you not come
+      up to breakfast?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I want no breakfast; I&rsquo;m not hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to eat,&rdquo; said the girl; &ldquo;you live on air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another
+      mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that if
+      you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That&rsquo;s how I
+      feel to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;m in trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One&rsquo;s in trouble when one&rsquo;s in error.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;I shall never complain of my trouble to you!&rdquo;
+       And she moved up the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with his
+      eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made
+      him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the
+      Florentine sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse
+      to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The
+      discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin
+      made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was simply
+      that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to
+      Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into
+      higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to
+      please herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this
+      for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel&rsquo;s satisfaction was confirmed
+      by her lover&rsquo;s admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was in love, and he
+      had never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them
+      numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism
+      passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s spirit by this criticism was that the passion of love separated
+      its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself
+      disjoined from every one she had ever known before&mdash;from her two
+      sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and
+      a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort who
+      was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Henrietta, who,
+      she was sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from
+      Lord Warburton, who would certainly console himself, and from Caspar
+      Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow
+      ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt;
+      and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but
+      a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished
+      her not to marry at all&mdash;that was what it really meant&mdash;because
+      he was amused with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His
+      disappointment made him say angry things about the man she had preferred
+      even to him: Isabel flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been
+      angry. It was the more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she
+      had now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as
+      an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to
+      prefer Gilbert Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other
+      ties. She tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her
+      conscious, almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the
+      charmed and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and
+      imputed virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness;
+      one&rsquo;s right was always made of the wrong of some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted
+      meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his
+      part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men,
+      was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him
+      an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten and
+      dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot
+      to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance&mdash;which presented
+      indeed no difficulty&mdash;of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was
+      immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present
+      of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a
+      high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for
+      one&rsquo;s self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of
+      superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick,
+      fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one&rsquo;s thought on a
+      polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced
+      literally&mdash;that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be
+      freshened in the reproduction even as &ldquo;words&rdquo; by music. His egotism had
+      never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this lady&rsquo;s
+      intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one&mdash;a plate
+      that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a
+      decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served
+      dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he
+      could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew
+      perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little
+      favour with the girl&rsquo;s relations; but he had always treated her so
+      completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to
+      express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one morning,
+      he made an abrupt allusion to it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the difference in our fortune they
+      don&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They think I&rsquo;m in love with your money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you speaking of my aunt&mdash;of my cousin?&rdquo; Isabel asked. &ldquo;How do
+      you know what they think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not told me they&rsquo;re pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett the
+      other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I should
+      have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you rich is
+      the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course when a poor
+      man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. I don&rsquo;t mind
+      them; I only care for one thing&mdash;for your not having the shadow of a
+      doubt. I don&rsquo;t care what people of whom I ask nothing think&mdash;I&rsquo;m not
+      even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I&rsquo;ve never so concerned myself,
+      God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself
+      a compensation for everything? I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m sorry you&rsquo;re rich; I&rsquo;m
+      delighted. I delight in everything that&rsquo;s yours&mdash;whether it be money
+      or virtue. Money&rsquo;s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.
+      It seems to me, however, that I&rsquo;ve sufficiently proved the limits of my
+      itch for it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be
+      less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and
+      grabbing. I suppose it&rsquo;s their business to suspect&mdash;that of your
+      family; it&rsquo;s proper on the whole they should. They&rsquo;ll like me better some
+      day; so will you, for that matter. Meanwhile my business is not to make
+      myself bad blood, but simply to be thankful for life and love.&rdquo; &ldquo;It has
+      made me better, loving you,&rdquo; he said on another occasion; &ldquo;it has made me
+      wiser and easier and&mdash;I won&rsquo;t pretend to deny&mdash;brighter and
+      nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to
+      be angry I didn&rsquo;t have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told
+      you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to
+      irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of
+      desire. Now I&rsquo;m really satisfied, because I can&rsquo;t think of anything
+      better. It&rsquo;s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the
+      twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes
+      over the book of life and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but
+      now that I can read it properly I see it&rsquo;s a delightful story. My dear
+      girl, I can&rsquo;t tell you how life seems to stretch there before us&mdash;what
+      a long summer afternoon awaits us. It&rsquo;s the latter half of an Italian day&mdash;with
+      a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy
+      in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and
+      which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I don&rsquo;t see why we shouldn&rsquo;t get
+      on. We&rsquo;ve got what we like&mdash;to say nothing of having each other.
+      We&rsquo;ve the faculty of admiration and several capital convictions. We&rsquo;re not
+      stupid, we&rsquo;re not mean, we&rsquo;re not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or
+      dreariness. You&rsquo;re remarkably fresh, and I&rsquo;m remarkably well-seasoned.
+      We&rsquo;ve my poor child to amuse us; we&rsquo;ll try and make up some little life
+      for her. It&rsquo;s all soft and mellow&mdash;it has the Italian colouring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal of
+      latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live for
+      the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had been a
+      party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy should be a
+      party to their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance
+      and Isabel the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future at a
+      high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for unlimited
+      expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense that life was vacant
+      without some private duty that might gather one&rsquo;s energies to a point. She
+      had told Ralph she had &ldquo;seen life&rdquo; in a year or two and that she was
+      already tired, not of the act of living, but of that of observing. What
+      had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high
+      estimate of her independence and her incipient conviction that she should
+      never marry? These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need&mdash;a
+      need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet gratified
+      infinite desires. It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down
+      from above like the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation.
+      There was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own,
+      and that she should be able to be of use to him. She could surrender to
+      him with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she
+      was not only taking, she was giving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine&mdash;Pansy
+      who was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That
+      she would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father,
+      who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her
+      to go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore
+      a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She
+      found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of the
+      alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for
+      approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance had the
+      personal touch that the child&rsquo;s affectionate nature craved. She watched
+      her indications as if for herself also much depended on them&mdash;Pansy
+      already so represented part of the service she could render, part of the
+      responsibility she could face. Her father took so the childish view of her
+      that he had not yet explained to her the new relation in which he stood to
+      the elegant Miss Archer. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said to Isabel; &ldquo;she
+      doesn&rsquo;t guess; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I should come
+      and walk here together simply as good friends. There seems to me something
+      enchantingly innocent in that; it&rsquo;s the way I like her to be. No, I&rsquo;m not
+      a failure, as I used to think; I&rsquo;ve succeeded in two things. I&rsquo;m to marry
+      the woman I adore, and I&rsquo;ve brought up my child, as I wished, in the old
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very fond, in all things, of the &ldquo;old way&rdquo;; that had struck Isabel
+      as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. &ldquo;It occurs to me that you&rsquo;ll not
+      know whether you&rsquo;ve succeeded until you&rsquo;ve told her,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You must
+      see how she takes your news, She may be horrified&mdash;she may be
+      jealous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid of that; she&rsquo;s too fond of you on her own account. I
+      should like to leave her in the dark a little longer&mdash;to see if it
+      will come into her head that if we&rsquo;re not engaged we ought to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was impressed by Osmond&rsquo;s artistic, the plastic view, as it somehow
+      appeared, of Pansy&rsquo;s innocence&mdash;her own appreciation of it being more
+      anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a
+      few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who had
+      made such a pretty little speech&mdash;&ldquo;Oh, then I shall have a beautiful
+      sister!&rdquo; She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she had guessed it,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it
+      would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her good
+      manners are paramount. That&rsquo;s also what I wished. You shall see for
+      yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini&rsquo;s, whither
+      Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come
+      in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning
+      that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the
+      visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been
+      ushered into the Countess&rsquo;s drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her
+      aunt would presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady,
+      who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+      company. It was Isabel&rsquo;s view that the little girl might have given
+      lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified
+      this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself
+      while they waited together for the Countess. Her father&rsquo;s decision, the
+      year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive
+      the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her theory
+      that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa has told me that you&rsquo;ve kindly consented to marry him,&rdquo; said this
+      excellent woman&rsquo;s pupil. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very delightful; I think you&rsquo;ll suit very
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I shall suit <i>you</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will
+      suit each other. You&rsquo;re both so quiet and so serious. You&rsquo;re not so quiet
+      as he&mdash;or even as Madame Merle; but you&rsquo;re more quiet than many
+      others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She&rsquo;s always
+      in motion, in agitation&mdash;to-day especially; you&rsquo;ll see when she comes
+      in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but I
+      suppose there&rsquo;s no harm if we judge them favourably. You&rsquo;ll be a
+      delightful companion for papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you too, I hope,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I speak first of him on purpose. I&rsquo;ve told you already what I myself
+      think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I
+      think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You&rsquo;ll be my
+      model; I shall try to imitate you though I&rsquo;m afraid it will be very
+      feeble. I&rsquo;m very glad for papa&mdash;he needed something more than me.
+      Without you I don&rsquo;t see how he could have got it. You&rsquo;ll be my stepmother,
+      but we mustn&rsquo;t use that word. They&rsquo;re always said to be cruel; but I don&rsquo;t
+      think you&rsquo;ll ever so much as pinch or even push me. I&rsquo;m not afraid at
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good little Pansy,&rdquo; said Isabel gently, &ldquo;I shall be ever so kind to
+      you.&rdquo; A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need
+      it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, I&rsquo;ve nothing to fear,&rdquo; the child returned with her note
+      of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest&mdash;or
+      what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini
+      was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room
+      with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead and
+      then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She
+      drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of
+      the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an
+      easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to a composition
+      of figures already sketched in. &ldquo;If you expect me to congratulate you I
+      must beg you to excuse me. I don&rsquo;t suppose you care if I do or not; I
+      believe you&rsquo;re supposed not to care&mdash;through being so clever&mdash;for
+      all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never
+      tell them unless there&rsquo;s something rather good to be gained. I don&rsquo;t see
+      what&rsquo;s to be gained with you&mdash;especially as you wouldn&rsquo;t believe me.
+      I don&rsquo;t make professions any more than I make paper flowers or flouncey
+      lampshades&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know how. My lampshades would be sure to take
+      fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I&rsquo;m very glad for my
+      own sake that you&rsquo;re to marry Osmond; but I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m glad for
+      yours. You&rsquo;re very brilliant&mdash;you know that&rsquo;s the way you&rsquo;re always
+      spoken of; you&rsquo;re an heiress and very good-looking and original, not
+      banal; so it&rsquo;s a good thing to have you in the family. Our family&rsquo;s very
+      good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and my mother was rather
+      distinguished&mdash;she was called the American Corinne. But we&rsquo;re
+      dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you&rsquo;ll pick us up. I&rsquo;ve great
+      confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to talk to you
+      about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to
+      make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy oughtn&rsquo;t
+      to hear all this; but that&rsquo;s what she has come to me for&mdash;to acquire
+      the tone of society. There&rsquo;s no harm in her knowing what horrors she may
+      be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on you I
+      thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not
+      to listen to him. Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything
+      of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all
+      I&rsquo;m very selfish. By the way, you won&rsquo;t respect me, not one little mite,
+      and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won&rsquo;t. Some day,
+      all the same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first.
+      My husband will come and see you, though, as you probably know, he&rsquo;s on no
+      sort of terms with Osmond. He&rsquo;s very fond of going to see pretty women,
+      but I&rsquo;m not afraid of you. In the first place I don&rsquo;t care what he does.
+      In the second, you won&rsquo;t care a straw for him; he won&rsquo;t be a bit, at any
+      time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he&rsquo;ll see you&rsquo;re not his. Some
+      day, if you can stand it, I&rsquo;ll tell you all about him. Do you think my
+      niece ought to go out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my
+      boudoir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her stay, please,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;I would rather hear nothing that
+      Pansy may not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing
+      appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an
+      old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame Merle;
+      whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a
+      lady&rsquo;s maid&rsquo;s manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and
+      requested the favour of his name. &ldquo;Mr. Edward Rosier,&rdquo; said the young man,
+      who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an ornament
+      of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he
+      sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of several
+      winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might
+      have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort.
+      In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the
+      current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences. He
+      passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a
+      charming young girl. To this little person he began to pay, on the spot,
+      particular attention: she struck him as exactly the household angel he had
+      long been looking for. He was never precipitate, he was nothing if not
+      discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it
+      seemed to him when they parted&mdash;the young lady to go down into Italy
+      and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join
+      other friends&mdash;that he should be romantically wretched if he were not
+      to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to
+      Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr. Rosier started
+      on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the first of
+      November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the young man there was a
+      strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might expose himself,
+      unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in November lay,
+      notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this
+      adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a
+      month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent
+      good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy
+      Osmond&rsquo;s composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last
+      touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous
+      meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china
+      shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom of her juvenility, had a
+      hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for that
+      manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of
+      comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the
+      attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle&rsquo;s drawing-room, which, although
+      furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in articles
+      of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and
+      looked round; and then &ldquo;By Jove, she has some jolly good things!&rdquo; he had
+      yearningly murmured. The room was small and densely filled with furniture;
+      it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might
+      totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful
+      tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions
+      embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him
+      standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace
+      flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it
+      delicately, as if he were smelling it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s old Venetian,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s rather good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too good for this; you ought to wear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but I can&rsquo;t wear mine,&rdquo; smiled the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you shouldn&rsquo;t! I&rsquo;ve better lace than that to wear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve some very
+      good things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I hate them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to get rid of them?&rdquo; the young man quickly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s good to have something to hate: one works it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love my things,&rdquo; said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his
+      recognitions. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not about them, nor about yours, that I came to
+      talk to you.&rdquo; He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: &ldquo;I care
+      more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle opened wide eyes. &ldquo;Did you come to tell me that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to ask your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large
+      white hand. &ldquo;A man in love, you know, doesn&rsquo;t ask advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, if he&rsquo;s in a difficult position? That&rsquo;s often the case with a
+      man in love. I&rsquo;ve been in love before, and I know. But never so much as
+      this time&mdash;really never so much. I should like particularly to know
+      what you think of my prospects. I&rsquo;m afraid that for Mr. Osmond I&rsquo;m not&mdash;well,
+      a real collector&rsquo;s piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish me to intercede?&rdquo; Madame Merle asked with her fine arms
+      folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There
+      will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to
+      believe her father will consent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very considerate; that&rsquo;s in your favour. But you assume in rather
+      an off-hand way that I think you a prize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been very kind to me,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It&rsquo;s very rare
+      now, and there&rsquo;s no telling what one may get by it.&rdquo; With which the
+      left-hand corner of Madame Merle&rsquo;s mouth gave expression to the joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently
+      strenuous. &ldquo;Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like you very much; but, if you please, we won&rsquo;t analyse. Pardon me if
+      I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I must
+      tell you, however, that I&rsquo;ve not the marrying of Pansy Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t suppose that. But you&rsquo;ve seemed to me intimate with her family,
+      and I thought you might have influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle considered. &ldquo;Whom do you call her family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, her father; and&mdash;how do you say it in English?&mdash;her
+      belle-mere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed a
+      member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that,&rdquo; said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. &ldquo;I
+      think Mrs. Osmond would favour me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely&mdash;if her husband doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyebrows. &ldquo;Does she take the opposite line from him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In everything. They think quite differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Rosier, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that; but it&rsquo;s none of my business.
+      She&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves
+      her as if she were her own mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor
+      child,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;Have you declared your sentiments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. &ldquo;Never till I&rsquo;ve
+      assured myself of those of the parents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always wait for that? You&rsquo;ve excellent principles; you observe the
+      proprieties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re laughing at me,&rdquo; the young man murmured, dropping back in
+      his chair and feeling his small moustache. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect that of you,
+      Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them.
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and the
+      best you could adopt. Yes, that&rsquo;s what I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t agitate her&mdash;only to agitate her; I love her too much for
+      that,&rdquo; said Ned Rosier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad, after all, that you&rsquo;ve told me,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on. &ldquo;Leave
+      it to me a little; I think I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said you were the person to come to!&rdquo; her visitor cried with prompt
+      elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were very clever,&rdquo; Madame Merle returned more dryly. &ldquo;When I say I
+      can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a
+      little if it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully decent, you know,&rdquo; said Rosier earnestly. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;ve
+      no faults, but I&rsquo;ll say I&rsquo;ve no vices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that&rsquo;s negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call
+      vices. What&rsquo;s the positive side? What&rsquo;s the virtuous? What have you got
+      besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a comfortable little fortune&mdash;about forty thousand francs a
+      year. With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on
+      such an income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle&rsquo;s mouth rose to the left. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be famous; you&rsquo;d have
+      to make use of the teacups, and they&rsquo;d get broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything pretty
+      it would be enough. When one&rsquo;s as pretty as she one can afford&mdash;well,
+      quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but muslin&mdash;without
+      the sprig,&rdquo; said Rosier reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you even allow her the sprig? She&rsquo;d be much obliged to you at
+      any rate for that theory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the correct one, I assure you; and I&rsquo;m sure she&rsquo;d enter into it. She
+      understands all that; that&rsquo;s why I love her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a very good little girl, and most tidy&mdash;also extremely
+      graceful. But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier scarce demurred. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t in the least desire that he should. But I
+      may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The money&rsquo;s his wife&rsquo;s; she brought him a large fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      exclaimed with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Osmond,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on, &ldquo;will probably prefer to keep her
+      money for her own children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her own children? Surely she has none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six
+      months after his birth. Others therefore may come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She&rsquo;s a splendid woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. &ldquo;Ah, about her there&rsquo;s much to
+      be said. Splendid as you like! We&rsquo;ve not exactly made out that you&rsquo;re a <i>parti</i>.
+      The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, I think it may be,&rdquo; said Rosier quite lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you underrate me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not so innocent as that? Seriously,&rdquo; said Madame Merle, &ldquo;of course
+      forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a combination to be
+      considered. I don&rsquo;t say it&rsquo;s to be jumped at, but there might be a worse
+      offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will probably incline to believe he can do
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can&rsquo;t do
+      better than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,&rdquo; Rosier added
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does&mdash;I know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried the young man, &ldquo;I said you were the person to come to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t know how you know it, if you haven&rsquo;t asked her,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In such a case there&rsquo;s no need of asking and telling; as you say, we&rsquo;re
+      an innocent couple. How did <i>you</i> know it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I&rsquo;ll find
+      out for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. &ldquo;You say that rather coldly.
+      Don&rsquo;t simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do my best. I&rsquo;ll try to make the most of your advantages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I&rsquo;ll say a word to Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Gardez-vous-en bien!</i>&rdquo; And Madame Merle was on her feet. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t set
+      her going, or you&rsquo;ll spoil everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess <i>had</i> been
+      after all the right person to come to. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I understand you.
+      I&rsquo;m an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she would like me to
+      succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the
+      better, for she doesn&rsquo;t get on very well with some of her new. But don&rsquo;t
+      for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband
+      may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you
+      not to multiply points of difference between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier&rsquo;s face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand of
+      Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste for
+      proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which he
+      concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner&rsquo;s &ldquo;best set&rdquo;
+       came to his assistance. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that I&rsquo;m bound to consider Mr. Osmond
+      so very much!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;No, but you should consider <i>her</i>. You
+      say you&rsquo;re an old friend. Would you make her suffer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I&rsquo;ve taken a few
+      soundings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I&rsquo;m in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won&rsquo;t burn up! Why did you come to me, if you&rsquo;re not to heed what
+      I say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very kind; I&rsquo;ll be very good,&rdquo; the young man promised. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m
+      afraid Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s pretty hard,&rdquo; he added in his mild voice as he went to
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a short laugh. &ldquo;It has been said before. But his wife
+      isn&rsquo;t easy either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she&rsquo;s a splendid woman!&rdquo; Ned Rosier repeated, for departure. He
+      resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was already
+      a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he had given
+      Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself in spirits by an
+      occasional visit to Miss Osmond&rsquo;s home. He reflected constantly on what
+      his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his mind the impression of
+      her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her <i>de confiance</i>, as
+      they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been precipitate. He
+      found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash&mdash;he had incurred this
+      reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had known Madame
+      Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her a delightful
+      woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for assuming that
+      she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms, gracefully arranged
+      as these members might be to receive her. She had indeed shown him
+      benevolence, and she was a person of consideration among the girl&rsquo;s
+      people, where she had a rather striking appearance (Rosier had more than
+      once wondered how she managed it) of being intimate without being
+      familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. There was no
+      particular reason why she should take trouble for him; a charming woman
+      was charming to every one, and Rosier felt rather a fool when he thought
+      of his having appealed to her on the ground that she had distinguished
+      him. Very likely&mdash;though she had appeared to say it in joke&mdash;she
+      was really only thinking of his bibelots. Had it come into her head that
+      he might offer her two or three of the gems of his collection? If she
+      would only help him to marry Miss Osmond he would present her with his
+      whole museum. He could hardly say so to her outright; it would seem too
+      gross a bribe. But he should like her to believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s, Mrs.
+      Osmond having an &ldquo;evening&rdquo;&mdash;she had taken the Thursday of each week&mdash;when
+      his presence could be accounted for on general principles of civility. The
+      object of Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in
+      the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure overlooking a sunny
+      <i>piazzetta</i> in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace,
+      too, little Pansy lived&mdash;a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to
+      poor Rosier&rsquo;s apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the
+      young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he doubted of
+      his ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind of domestic
+      fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name, which smelt of
+      historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which was mentioned in
+      &ldquo;Murray&rdquo; and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague survey,
+      disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the <i>piano
+      nobile</i> and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide,
+      nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out
+      of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he could have done
+      justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered into the sentiment
+      of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on settling themselves in Rome
+      she and her husband had chosen this habitation for the love of local
+      colour. It had local colour enough, and though he knew less about
+      architecture than about Limoges enamels he could see that the proportions
+      of the windows and even the details of the cornice had quite the grand
+      air. But Rosier was haunted by the conviction that at picturesque periods
+      young girls had been shut up there to keep them from their true loves, and
+      then, under the threat of being thrown into convents, had been forced into
+      unholy marriages. There was one point, however, to which he always did
+      justice when once he found himself in Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s warm, rich-looking
+      reception-rooms, which were on the second floor. He acknowledged that
+      these people were very strong in &ldquo;good things.&rdquo; It was a taste of Osmond&rsquo;s
+      own&mdash;not at all of hers; this she had told him the first time he came
+      to the house, when, after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether
+      they had even better &ldquo;French&rdquo; than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot
+      to admit that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman
+      should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of
+      her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a
+      large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed a
+      number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his
+      greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice.
+      Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own.
+      For &ldquo;advice&rdquo; read &ldquo;cash,&rdquo; he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert
+      Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season
+      confirmed his most cherished doctrine&mdash;the doctrine that a collector
+      may freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier
+      presented himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the
+      walls of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really
+      yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the extreme
+      seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about for
+      the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted a
+      gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took everything
+      comfortable for granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a concave
+      ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here Mrs. Osmond
+      usually sat&mdash;though she was not in her most customary place to-night&mdash;and
+      that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about the fire. The room
+      was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it contained the larger
+      things and&mdash;almost always&mdash;an odour of flowers. Pansy on this
+      occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the resort of younger
+      visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before the chimney, leaning
+      back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up and was warming the
+      sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were talking together; but
+      he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an expression, frequent with
+      them, that seemed to represent them as engaged with objects more worth
+      their while than the appearances actually thrust upon them. Rosier, coming
+      in unannounced, failed to attract his attention; but the young man, who
+      was very punctilious, though he was even exceptionally conscious that it
+      was the wife, not the husband, he had come to see, went up to shake hands
+      with him. Osmond put out his left hand, without changing his attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d&rsquo;ye do? My wife&rsquo;s somewhere about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never fear; I shall find her,&rdquo; said Rosier cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so
+      efficiently looked at. &ldquo;Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn&rsquo;t like
+      it,&rdquo; he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there, but
+      she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or would
+      come later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond, having a
+      fancy he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly resentful, and
+      where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of being quite in
+      the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without help, and then in a
+      moment, &ldquo;I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte to-day,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his
+      boot-sole, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a fig for Capo di Monte!&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;re not losing your interest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In old pots and plates? Yes, I&rsquo;m losing my interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+      thinking of parting with a&mdash;a piece or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier,&rdquo; said
+      Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,&rdquo; Rosier remarked brightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly. I&rsquo;ve nothing I wish to match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of
+      assurance. &ldquo;Ah, well, I have!&rdquo; was all he could murmur; and he knew his
+      murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the
+      adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She was
+      dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and
+      yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Rosier thought of her and the
+      terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his admiration. Like his
+      appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his
+      eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a
+      sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a &ldquo;lustre&rdquo; beyond any
+      recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had
+      still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might
+      well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich
+      her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on
+      its stem. She had lost something of that quick eagerness to which her
+      husband had privately taken exception&mdash;she had more the air of being
+      able to wait. Now, at all events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck
+      our young man as the picture of a gracious lady. &ldquo;You see I&rsquo;m very
+      regular,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But who should be if I&rsquo;m not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve known you longer than any one here. But we mustn&rsquo;t indulge in
+      tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, please, what young lady?&rdquo; Rosier was immensely obliging; but this was
+      not what he had come for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.&rdquo; Rosier
+      hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t Mr. Osmond speak to her? He&rsquo;s within six feet
+      of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not very lively, and he doesn&rsquo;t like
+      dull people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she&rsquo;s good enough for me? Ah now, that&rsquo;s hard!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only mean that you&rsquo;ve ideas for two. And then you&rsquo;re so obliging.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s not&mdash;to me.&rdquo; And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I tell him,&rdquo; she said, still smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see I want some tea,&rdquo; Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; but after that I&rsquo;ll abandon her to her fate. The simple truth
+      is I&rsquo;m dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, turning away, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help you there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink, whom
+      he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in making to
+      Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of
+      his promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable of occupying this
+      young man&rsquo;s mind for a considerable time. At last, however, he became&mdash;comparatively
+      speaking&mdash;reckless; he cared little what promises he might break. The
+      fate to which he had threatened to abandon the damsel in pink proved to be
+      none so terrible; for Pansy Osmond, who had given him the tea for his
+      companion&mdash;Pansy was as fond as ever of making tea&mdash;presently
+      came and talked to her. Into this mild colloquy Edward Rosier entered
+      little; he sat by moodily, watching his small sweetheart. If we look at
+      her now through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of
+      the obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before, was sent to
+      walk short distances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Archer
+      talked together of matters sacred to elder people. But after a moment we
+      shall perceive that if at nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she
+      doesn&rsquo;t really fill out the part; that if she has grown very pretty she
+      lacks in a deplorable degree the quality known and esteemed in the
+      appearance of females as style; and that if she is dressed with great
+      freshness she wears her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of
+      saving it&mdash;very much as if it were lent her for the occasion. Edward
+      Rosier, it would seem, would have been just the man to note these defects;
+      and in point of fact there was not a quality of this young lady, of any
+      sort, that he had not noted. Only he called her qualities by names of his
+      own&mdash;some of which indeed were happy enough. &ldquo;No, she&rsquo;s unique&mdash;she&rsquo;s
+      absolutely unique,&rdquo; he used to say to himself; and you may be sure that
+      not for an instant would he have admitted to you that she was wanting in
+      style. Style? Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you couldn&rsquo;t
+      see it you had no eye. It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would
+      produce no impression in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff
+      little dress, only looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough
+      for Edward Rosier, who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious
+      eyes, her charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a
+      childish prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she
+      liked him&mdash;a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It
+      made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his
+      handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect
+      <i>jeune fille</i>, and one couldn&rsquo;t make of a <i>jeune fille</i> the
+      enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a point. A <i>jeune fille</i>
+      was what Rosier had always dreamed of&mdash;a <i>jeune fille</i> who
+      should yet not be French, for he had felt that this nationality would
+      complicate the question. He was sure Pansy had never looked at a newspaper
+      and that, in the way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was
+      the very most. An American jeune fille&mdash;what could be better than
+      that? She would be frank and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor
+      have received letters from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to see
+      the comedy of manners. Rosier could not deny that, as the matter stood, it
+      would be a breach of hospitality to appeal directly to this
+      unsophisticated creature; but he was now in imminent danger of asking
+      himself if hospitality were the most sacred thing in the world. Was not
+      the sentiment that he entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater
+      importance? Of greater importance to him&mdash;yes; but not probably to
+      the master of the house. There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had
+      been placed on his guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended the
+      warning to Pansy; it would not have been part of his policy to let her
+      know that a prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he <i>was</i>
+      in love with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions
+      of circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant
+      by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely he
+      himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl in so
+      vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her mother,
+      who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that she must
+      carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter departed
+      together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be virtually
+      alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before; he had never
+      been alone with a <i>jeune fille</i>. It was a great moment; poor Rosier
+      began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in
+      which they stood&mdash;a small room that had been thrown open and lighted,
+      but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty all the
+      evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; there were
+      several lamps; through the open door it looked the very temple of
+      authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through this aperture; he was
+      afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt almost capable of stretching
+      out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other maiden had left
+      them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on the far side of the
+      room. For a little it occurred to him that she was frightened&mdash;too
+      frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured him she was not,
+      and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed for that. After a
+      supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and look at the yellow
+      room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He had been there
+      already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, which was of the First
+      French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he didn&rsquo;t really
+      admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He therefore felt
+      that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, you may go,&rdquo; said Pansy; &ldquo;and if you like I&rsquo;ll show you.&rdquo; She
+      was not in the least frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I hoped you&rsquo;d say; you&rsquo;re so very kind,&rdquo; Rosier
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it
+      seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not for
+      winter evenings; it&rsquo;s more for summer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s papa&rsquo;s taste; he
+      has so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He looked
+      about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t Mrs.
+      Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, a great deal; but it&rsquo;s more for literature,&rdquo; said Pansy&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows
+      everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier was silent a little. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing I&rsquo;m sure he knows!&rdquo; he
+      broke out presently. &ldquo;He knows that when I come here it&rsquo;s, with all
+      respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond, who&rsquo;s so charming&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      really,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;to see you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see me?&rdquo; And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see you; that&rsquo;s what I come for,&rdquo; Rosier repeated, feeling the
+      intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not
+      needed to make her face more modest. &ldquo;I thought it was for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it was not disagreeable to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t tell; I didn&rsquo;t know. You never told me,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was afraid of offending you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t offend me,&rdquo; the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel had
+      kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like me then, Pansy?&rdquo; Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock was
+      perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from
+      without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him the
+      very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and
+      hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with
+      her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive.
+      She liked him&mdash;she had liked him all the while; now anything might
+      happen! She was ready&mdash;she had been ready always, waiting for him to
+      speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the
+      word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Rosier felt
+      that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his heart she would
+      submit without a murmur, would rest there without a question. It was true
+      that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow Empire <i>salottino</i>.
+      She had known it was for her he came, and yet like what a perfect little
+      lady she had carried it off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very dear to me,&rdquo; he murmured, trying to believe that there was
+      after all such a thing as hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. &ldquo;Did you say papa
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me just now he knows everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you must make sure,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, when once I&rsquo;m sure of <i>you</i>!&rdquo; Rosier murmured in her
+      ear; whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of
+      consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame
+      Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered.
+      How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for
+      she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor
+      dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the
+      audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very
+      tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+      because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest
+      thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which was more striking,
+      she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master of the house.
+      There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these two&mdash;they
+      always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the commonplace&mdash;and
+      then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked if little Mr.
+      Rosier had come this evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came nearly an hour ago&mdash;but he has disappeared,&rdquo; Osmond said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where&rsquo;s Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the other room. There are several people there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s probably among them,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to see him?&rdquo; Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the
+      eighth of a note. &ldquo;Yes, I should like to say to him that I&rsquo;ve told you
+      what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell him that. He&rsquo;ll try to interest me more&mdash;which is exactly
+      what I don&rsquo;t want. Tell him I hate his proposal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t hate it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t signify; I don&rsquo;t love it. I let him see that, myself, this
+      evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing&rsquo;s a great bore.
+      There&rsquo;s no hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell him that you&rsquo;ll take time and think it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t do that. He&rsquo;ll hang on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I discourage him he&rsquo;ll do the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but in the one case he&rsquo;ll try to talk and explain&mdash;which would
+      be exceedingly tiresome. In the other he&rsquo;ll probably hold his tongue and
+      go in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with
+      a donkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s a nuisance&mdash;with his eternal majolica.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a gentleman,
+      he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand
+      francs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s misery&mdash;&lsquo;genteel&rsquo; misery,&rdquo; Osmond broke in. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not what I&rsquo;ve
+      dreamed of for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you believe him?&rdquo; Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you consider that that matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has
+      thought of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That opinion&rsquo;s more convenient,&rdquo; said Madame Merle quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has she told you she&rsquo;s in love with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      added in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other
+      knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly&mdash;his long, fine
+      forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it&mdash;and gazed a while
+      before him. &ldquo;This kind of thing doesn&rsquo;t find me unprepared. It&rsquo;s what I
+      educated her for. It was all for this&mdash;that when such a case should
+      come up she should do what I prefer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not afraid that she&rsquo;ll not do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, where&rsquo;s the hitch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of Mr.
+      Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t keep him. Keep him yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I&rsquo;ll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.&rdquo;
+       Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing
+      about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit to
+      interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the last
+      words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out of the
+      adjoining room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a few steps
+      and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken to her,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion never turned his head. &ldquo;So much for your belief in his
+      promises. He ought to be horsewhipped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He intends to confess, poor little man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t
+      matter,&rdquo; he murmured, turning away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner of
+      unfamiliar politeness. This lady&rsquo;s reception of her was not more intimate;
+      she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very late,&rdquo; the young creature gently said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, I&rsquo;m never later than I intend to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward
+      Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it off
+      his mind, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spoken to her!&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it, Mr. Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come
+      and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.&rdquo; She was severe, and in the
+      manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of contempt
+      which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor the
+      place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking with
+      an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady was
+      Italian, and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. &ldquo;You said
+      just now you wouldn&rsquo;t help me,&rdquo; he began to Mrs. Osmond. &ldquo;Perhaps you&rsquo;ll
+      feel differently when you know&mdash;when you know&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel met his hesitation. &ldquo;When I know what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that we&rsquo;ve come to an understanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s all wrong,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush
+      testified to his sense of injury. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been treated so,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;What is there against me, after all? That&rsquo;s not the way I&rsquo;m usually
+      considered. I could have married twenty times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a pity you didn&rsquo;t. I don&rsquo;t mean twenty times, but once,
+      comfortably,&rdquo; Isabel added, smiling kindly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not rich enough for
+      Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t care a straw for one&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but her father does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, he has proved that!&rdquo; cried the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without
+      ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending
+      to look at Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s collection of miniatures, which were neatly
+      arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without
+      seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was
+      certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used to
+      being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such a
+      fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He
+      searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire was
+      now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to Isabel;
+      it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a rude thing
+      to her&mdash;the only point that would now justify a low view of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn&rsquo;t have done, a while ago,&rdquo; he
+      began. &ldquo;But you must remember my situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember what you said,&rdquo; she answered coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re offended, and now you&rsquo;ll never help me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that
+      I won&rsquo;t; I simply can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Her manner was almost passionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you <i>could</i>, just a little, I&rsquo;d never again speak of your husband
+      save as an angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The inducement&rsquo;s great,&rdquo; said Isabel gravely&mdash;inscrutably, as he
+      afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the eyes,
+      a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow that he
+      had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked, and he took
+      himself off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let him
+      off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop there till
+      something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher
+      expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his
+      daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if
+      one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that
+      tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+      felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn&rsquo;t be a
+      miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy her
+      father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by
+      precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a
+      sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of
+      itself&mdash;it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his
+      own situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the
+      world, and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she
+      justly declared, one couldn&rsquo;t have everything one wanted; she had learned
+      that lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert
+      Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter
+      dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have
+      anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn&rsquo;t like it at
+      all,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do that he&rsquo;ll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the
+      house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As little as possible? Who&rsquo;s to measure the possibility?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world,
+      but don&rsquo;t go at all at odd times, and don&rsquo;t fret about Pansy. I&rsquo;ll see
+      that she understands everything. She&rsquo;s a calm little nature; she&rsquo;ll take
+      it quietly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was
+      advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to Palazzo
+      Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he went early
+      the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the
+      first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to
+      be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad that you can take a hint,&rdquo; Pansy&rsquo;s father said, slightly closing
+      his keen, conscious eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You took it? Where did you take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
+      asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. &ldquo;Madame Merle
+      gave me, as I understood it, a message from you&mdash;to the effect that
+      you declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to
+      explain my wishes to you.&rdquo; And he flattered himself he spoke rather
+      sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
+      Madame Merle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked her for an opinion&mdash;for nothing more. I did so because she
+      had seemed to me to know you very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t know me so well as she thinks,&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
+      hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond stared into the fire a moment. &ldquo;I set a great price on my
+      daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t set a higher one than I do. Don&rsquo;t I prove it by wishing to
+      marry her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to marry her very well,&rdquo; Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
+      which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I pretend she&rsquo;d marry well in marrying me. She couldn&rsquo;t marry a
+      man who loves her more&mdash;or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to me,&rdquo; Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
+      his eyes to his boot-toes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have her promise, sir!&rdquo; cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+      exasperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
+      some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
+      had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: &ldquo;I think she has no
+      recollection of having given it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
+      uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again to the
+      room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a gentleman&mdash;a
+      stranger&mdash;had just come in, unannounced, according to the Roman
+      custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter smiled
+      blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face and a
+      large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You apparently don&rsquo;t recognise me,&rdquo; he said with a smile that expressed
+      more than Osmond&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as
+      usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond in
+      his path. He gave his hostess no greeting&mdash;he was too righteously
+      indignant, but said to her crudely: &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s awfully cold-blooded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t expect
+      every one to be as hot as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to be cold, but I&rsquo;m cool. What has he been doing to his
+      daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you take any interest?&rdquo; Rosier demanded with his sense that she too
+      was irritating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she answered nothing; then, &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she said abruptly and with
+      a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me if I don&rsquo;t believe that. Where&rsquo;s Miss Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by intervening
+      groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely given to her
+      occupation. &ldquo;What on earth has he done to her?&rdquo; he asked again
+      imploringly. &ldquo;He declares to me she has given me up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has not given you up,&rdquo; Isabel said in a low tone and without looking
+      at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, thank you for that! Now I&rsquo;ll leave her alone as long as you think
+      proper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that
+      Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just
+      entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and
+      evident social experience, a little embarrassed. &ldquo;Isabel,&rdquo; said her
+      husband, &ldquo;I bring you an old friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend&rsquo;s,
+      not perfectly confident. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy to see Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she said.
+      Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted,
+      felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick
+      impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn&rsquo;t notice what he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe
+      him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a
+      pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her, was
+      plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes
+      had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and
+      attestation strictly sincere. He was &ldquo;heavier&rdquo; than of yore and looked
+      older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you didn&rsquo;t expect to see me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve but just arrived.
+      Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I&rsquo;ve lost no time in
+      coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,&rdquo; Osmond
+      remarked to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we&rsquo;re greatly
+      flattered,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, it&rsquo;s better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,&rdquo; Osmond
+      went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hotel seems very good; I think it&rsquo;s the same at which I saw you four
+      years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it&rsquo;s a long
+      time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?&rdquo; his lordship asked
+      of his hostess. &ldquo;It was in the Capitol, in the first room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember that myself,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;I was there at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome&mdash;so sorry
+      that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I&rsquo;ve never
+      cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,&rdquo; her old
+      friend went on to Isabel, &ldquo;and I assure you I&rsquo;ve often thought of you. It
+      must be a charming place to live in,&rdquo; he added with a look, round him, at
+      her established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his
+      old ruefulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should have been glad to see you at any time,&rdquo; Osmond observed with
+      propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much. I haven&rsquo;t been out of England since then. Till a
+      month ago I really supposed my travels over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of you from time to time,&rdquo; said Isabel, who had already, with
+      her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting
+      him again meant for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ve heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete
+      blank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the good reigns in history,&rdquo; Osmond suggested. He appeared to think
+      his duties as a host now terminated&mdash;he had performed them so
+      conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely
+      measured, than his courtesy to his wife&rsquo;s old friend. It was punctilious,
+      it was explicit, it was everything but natural&mdash;a deficiency which
+      Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may
+      be supposed to have perceived. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll leave you and Mrs. Osmond together,&rdquo;
+       he added. &ldquo;You have reminiscences into which I don&rsquo;t enter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you lose a good deal!&rdquo; Lord Warburton called after him, as he
+      moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation of
+      his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the deepest,
+      consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      really very glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very pleasant. You&rsquo;re very kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that you&rsquo;re changed&mdash;a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She just hesitated. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;a good deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the
+      better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to <i>you</i>,&rdquo; she
+      bravely returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, for me&mdash;it&rsquo;s a long time. It would be a pity there
+      shouldn&rsquo;t be something to show for it.&rdquo; They sat down and she asked him
+      about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He
+      answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she
+      saw&mdash;or believed she saw&mdash;that he would press with less of his
+      whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without
+      chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel
+      felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend&rsquo;s manner was
+      certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or
+      like her at least, to know him for such. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I must tell
+      you without more delay,&rdquo; he resumed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought Ralph Touchett with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brought him with you?&rdquo; Isabel&rsquo;s surprise was great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to see him,&rdquo; she immediately said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what I hoped you&rsquo;d do. I had an idea you hadn&rsquo;t seen much
+      of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a&mdash;a
+      little more formal. That&rsquo;s why I hesitated&mdash;like an awkward Briton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m as fond of Ralph as ever,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;But why has he come to
+      Rome?&rdquo; The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he&rsquo;s very far gone, Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined to
+      give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England, indoors,
+      in what he called an artificial climate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow, he doesn&rsquo;t succeed with the artificial! I went to see him
+      three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has been
+      getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He smokes no
+      more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was
+      as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to
+      start for Sicily. I didn&rsquo;t believe in it&mdash;neither did the doctors,
+      nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America,
+      so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it would be
+      the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania. He said he could take
+      servants and furniture, could make himself comfortable, but in point of
+      fact he hasn&rsquo;t brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to
+      save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome.
+      After that, though I thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come
+      with him. I&rsquo;m acting as&mdash;what do you call it in America?&mdash;as a
+      kind of moderator. Poor Ralph&rsquo;s very moderate now. We left England a
+      fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He can&rsquo;t keep warm,
+      and the further south we come the more he feels the cold. He has got
+      rather a good man, but I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;s beyond human help. I wanted him to
+      take with him some clever fellow&mdash;I mean some sharp young doctor; but
+      he wouldn&rsquo;t hear of it. If you don&rsquo;t mind my saying so, I think it was a
+      most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to decide on going to America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. &ldquo;My
+      aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When the
+      date comes round she starts; I think she&rsquo;d have started if Ralph had been
+      dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes think he <i>is</i> dying,&rdquo; Lord Warburton said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sprang up. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to him then now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his
+      words. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day, in
+      the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching Rome&mdash;he&rsquo;s
+      very fond of Rome, you know&mdash;gave him strength. An hour ago, when I
+      bade him good-night, he told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to
+      him in the morning; that&rsquo;s all I mean. I didn&rsquo;t tell him I was coming
+      here; I didn&rsquo;t decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered he
+      had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very Thursday. It
+      occurred to me to come in and tell you he&rsquo;s here, and let you know you had
+      perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he said he hadn&rsquo;t written
+      to you.&rdquo; There was no need of Isabel&rsquo;s declaring that she would act upon
+      Lord Warburton&rsquo;s information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged
+      creature held back. &ldquo;Let alone that I wanted to see you for myself,&rdquo; her
+      visitor gallantly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand Ralph&rsquo;s plan; it seems to me very wild,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+      was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went to see him; you&rsquo;ve been extremely kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, I had nothing to do,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hear, on the contrary, that you&rsquo;re doing great things. Every one
+      speaks of you as a great statesman, and I&rsquo;m perpetually seeing your name
+      in the Times, which, by the way, doesn&rsquo;t appear to hold it in reverence.
+      You&rsquo;re apparently as wild a radical as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me.
+      Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way
+      from London. I tell him he&rsquo;s the last of the Tories, and he calls me the
+      King of the Goths&mdash;says I have, down to the details of my personal
+      appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there&rsquo;s life in him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from
+      asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived
+      that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject&mdash;he had
+      a conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say
+      to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was
+      able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an
+      image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned
+      with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new trouble. But
+      she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live with her on
+      good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her and was
+      incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was not a
+      form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to punish
+      her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice to
+      believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a
+      good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation
+      of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never
+      fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She gave
+      an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to
+      plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course spoke
+      of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even went so far
+      as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he
+      told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her marriage and
+      that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond&rsquo;s acquaintance&mdash;since
+      he could hardly be said to have made it on the other occasion. He had not
+      written to her at the time of that passage in her history, but he didn&rsquo;t
+      apologise to her for this. The only thing he implied was that they were
+      old friends, intimate friends. It was very much as an intimate friend that
+      he said to her, suddenly, after a short pause which he had occupied in
+      smiling, as he looked about him, like a person amused, at a provincial
+      entertainment, by some innocent game of guesses&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well now, I suppose you&rsquo;re very happy and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her
+      almost as the accent of comedy. &ldquo;Do you suppose if I were not I&rsquo;d tell
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. I don&rsquo;t see why not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do then. Fortunately, however, I&rsquo;m very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got an awfully good house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s very pleasant. But that&rsquo;s not my merit&mdash;it&rsquo;s my
+      husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean he has arranged it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was nothing when we came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a genius for upholstery,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a
+      taste of your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I enjoy things when they&rsquo;re done, but I&rsquo;ve no ideas. I can never propose
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you accept what others propose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very willingly, for the most part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I&rsquo;ve in a few small ways
+      a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you to some
+      of these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please don&rsquo;t; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady
+      in the blue dress. She has a charming face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one talking to the rosy young man? That&rsquo;s my husband&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must make her acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment&mdash;with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.&rdquo; He
+      ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to
+      Mrs. Osmond. &ldquo;Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?&rdquo;
+       he presently went on. &ldquo;You seem to me, after all, very much the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet I find it a great change to be married,&rdquo; said Isabel with mild
+      gaiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven&rsquo;t
+      gone in for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It rather surprises me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry,&rdquo; he
+      added more simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ought to be very easy,&rdquo; Isabel said, rising&mdash;after which she
+      reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the person
+      to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the pang that
+      he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having contributed
+      then to the facility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy&rsquo;s
+      tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she
+      asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an English lord,&rdquo; said Rosier. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if he&rsquo;ll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind that; I&rsquo;ve something particular to say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak so loud every one will hear,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only thought
+      in life was the wish the kettle would boil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has just been filled; the servants never know!&rdquo;&mdash;and she sighed
+      with the weight of her responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn&rsquo;t mean
+      what you said a week ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean
+      what I say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me you had forgotten me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, I don&rsquo;t forget,&rdquo; said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then everything&rsquo;s just the very same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has he done to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he
+      forbade me to marry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t mind that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I must indeed. I can&rsquo;t disobey papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment;
+      then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. &ldquo;I love you just as
+      much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good will that do me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You disappoint me,&rdquo; groaned poor Rosier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t
+      talk any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this to be all my satisfaction?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa said I was not to talk with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it&rsquo;s too much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d wait a little,&rdquo; said the girl in a voice just distinct
+      enough to betray a quaver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll wait if you&rsquo;ll give me hope. But you take my life away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll not give you up&mdash;oh no!&rdquo; Pansy went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll try and make you marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then are we to wait for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she&rsquo;ll help us.&rdquo; It
+      was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She won&rsquo;t help us much. She&rsquo;s afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your father, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy shook her little head. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not afraid of any one. We must have
+      patience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s an awful word,&rdquo; Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted.
+      Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his
+      hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the
+      carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about him
+      and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey&mdash;it was still her
+      little curtsey of the convent&mdash;to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond
+      had introduced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchett
+      should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done
+      before that event&mdash;an event of which he took such a view as could
+      hardly prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we
+      know, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him to
+      resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That
+      discussion had made a difference&mdash;the difference he feared rather
+      than the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl&rsquo;s zeal in carrying out
+      her engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.
+      No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph&rsquo;s opinion of
+      Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they
+      managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a
+      difference, as Ralph often said to himself&mdash;there was a difference.
+      She had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had
+      gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn&rsquo;t care;
+      and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+      represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should justify
+      him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was of the
+      sort that women remember best. As Osmond&rsquo;s wife she could never again be
+      his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity she
+      expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had
+      attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the
+      other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he
+      should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+      her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed his
+      cousin&rsquo;s marriage, Ralph&rsquo;s prevision of the future; and if his meditations
+      appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom of health. He
+      consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed) beautifully, and
+      was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was united to Mr. Osmond, and
+      which was performed in Florence in the month of June. He learned from his
+      mother that Isabel at first had thought of celebrating her nuptials in her
+      native land, but that as simplicity was what she chiefly desired to secure
+      she had finally decided, in spite of Osmond&rsquo;s professed willingness to
+      make a journey of any length, that this characteristic would be best
+      embodied in their being married by the nearest clergyman in the shortest
+      time. The thing was done therefore at the little American chapel, on a
+      very hot day, in the presence only of Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy
+      Osmond and the Countess Gemini. That severity in the proceedings of which
+      I just spoke was in part the result of the absence of two persons who
+      might have been looked for on the occasion and who would have lent it a
+      certain richness. Madame Merle had been invited, but Madame Merle, who was
+      unable to leave Rome, had written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta
+      Stackpole had not been invited, as her departure from America, announced
+      to Isabel by Mr. Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her
+      profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle&rsquo;s,
+      intimating that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have
+      been present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe
+      had taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabel
+      in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged&mdash;perhaps a trifle too
+      freely&mdash;her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject
+      of it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+      Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. &ldquo;It
+      isn&rsquo;t in the least that you&rsquo;ve married&mdash;it is that you have married
+      <i>him</i>,&rdquo; she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be
+      seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few
+      of his hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta&rsquo;s second visit to Europe,
+      however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the
+      moment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+      that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her he
+      took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared upon the scene
+      and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain. Henrietta&rsquo;s
+      letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she had yet published,
+      and there had been one in especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled
+      &lsquo;Moors and Moonlight,&rsquo; which generally passed for her masterpiece. Isabel
+      had been secretly disappointed at her husband&rsquo;s not seeing his way simply
+      to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if his sense of fun, or
+      of the funny&mdash;which would be his sense of humour, wouldn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;were
+      by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a
+      person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta&rsquo;s
+      violated conscience. Osmond had thought their alliance a kind of
+      monstrosity; he couldn&rsquo;t imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr.
+      Bantling&rsquo;s fellow tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had
+      also pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the
+      verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made him wonder afresh
+      at the oddity of some of his wife&rsquo;s tastes. Isabel could explain it only
+      by saying that she liked to know people who were as different as possible
+      from herself. &ldquo;Why then don&rsquo;t you make the acquaintance of your
+      washerwoman?&rdquo; Osmond had enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she
+      was afraid her washerwoman wouldn&rsquo;t care for her. Now Henrietta cared so
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that
+      had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her
+      residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been joined
+      in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him to England,
+      to see what they were doing at the bank&mdash;an operation she couldn&rsquo;t
+      induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a
+      small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but late in the
+      month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome. It was the
+      first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face with Isabel;
+      his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She had written to
+      him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing he wanted to know.
+      He had asked his mother what she was making of her life, and his mother
+      had simply answered that she supposed she was making the best of it. Mrs.
+      Touchett had not the imagination that communes with the unseen, and she
+      now pretended to no intimacy with her niece, whom she rarely encountered.
+      This young woman appeared to be living in a sufficiently honourable way,
+      but Mrs. Touchett still remained of the opinion that her marriage had been
+      a shabby affair. It had given her no pleasure to think of Isabel&rsquo;s
+      establishment, which she was sure was a very lame business. From time to
+      time, in Florence, she rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best
+      always to minimise the contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond,
+      who made her think of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these
+      days; but Mrs. Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she
+      had been talked of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in
+      the person of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle&rsquo;s relations with Mrs.
+      Touchett had undergone a perceptible change. Isabel&rsquo;s aunt had told her,
+      without circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and
+      Madame Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no
+      one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,
+      for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of irritation&mdash;Madame
+      Merle now took a very high tone and declared that this was an accusation
+      from which she couldn&rsquo;t stoop to defend herself. She added, however
+      (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only too simple, that she
+      had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel was not eager to marry
+      and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated visits had been nothing; he
+      was boring himself to death on his hill-top and he came merely for
+      amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to herself, and her journey to
+      Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown dust in her companion&rsquo;s eyes.
+      Madame Merle accepted the event&mdash;she was unprepared to think of it as
+      a scandal; but that she had played any part in it, double or single, was
+      an imputation against which she proudly protested. It was doubtless in
+      consequence of Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s attitude, and of the injury it offered to
+      habits consecrated by many charming seasons, that Madame Merle had, after
+      this, chosen to pass many months in England, where her credit was quite
+      unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had done her a wrong; there are some things that
+      can&rsquo;t be forgiven. But Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always
+      something exquisite in her dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in this
+      pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the girl on
+      her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the game. He
+      should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear
+      a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in her union, so
+      that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should fall out of it,
+      she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he had been a goose. He
+      would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in order to know Isabel&rsquo;s
+      real situation. At present, however, she neither taunted him with his
+      fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was justified; if she wore
+      a mask it completely covered her face. There was something fixed and
+      mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was not an expression,
+      Ralph said&mdash;it was a representation, it was even an advertisement.
+      She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she
+      scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could say to
+      Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred six months
+      before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning. She appeared
+      to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spoken of as having a
+      &ldquo;charming position.&rdquo; He observed that she produced the impression of being
+      peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among many people, to be a
+      privilege even to know her. Her house was not open to every one, and she
+      had an evening in the week to which people were not invited as a matter of
+      course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed to be a
+      member of her circle to perceive it; for there was nothing to gape at,
+      nothing to criticise, nothing even to admire, in the daily proceedings of
+      Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in all this, recognised the hand of the
+      master; for he knew that Isabel had no faculty for producing studied
+      impressions. She struck him as having a great love of movement, of gaiety,
+      of late hours, of long rides, of fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained,
+      to be interested, even to be bored, to make acquaintances, to see people
+      who were talked about, to explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into
+      relation with certain of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all
+      this there was much less discrimination than in that desire for
+      comprehensiveness of development on which he had been used to exercise his
+      wit. There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in
+      some of her experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that
+      she even spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her
+      marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations&mdash;she who used
+      to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great
+      delight in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked
+      so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a
+      crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she
+      appeared now to think there was nothing worth people&rsquo;s either differing
+      about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+      indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was greater
+      than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had gained no
+      great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a brilliancy in
+      her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence to her beauty.
+      Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten her? Her light step
+      drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent head sustained a majesty
+      of ornament. The free, keen girl had become quite another person; what he
+      saw was the fine lady who was supposed to represent something. What did
+      Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself; and he could only answer by saying
+      that she represented Gilbert Osmond. &ldquo;Good heavens, what a function!&rdquo; he
+      then woefully exclaimed. He was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He saw
+      how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated, animated
+      their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he had material
+      to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects were deeply
+      calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as
+      vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior with a sort of
+      invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of exclusion, to
+      make people believe his house was different from every other, to impart to
+      the face that he presented to the world a cold originality&mdash;this was
+      the ingenious effort of the personage to whom Isabel had attributed a
+      superior morality. &ldquo;He works with superior material,&rdquo; Ralph said to
+      himself; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s rich abundance compared with his former resources.&rdquo; Ralph
+      was a clever man; but Ralph had never&mdash;to his own sense&mdash;been so
+      clever as when he observed, <i>in petto</i>, that under the guise of
+      caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world.
+      Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble
+      servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success.
+      He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so
+      stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose&mdash;pose
+      so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it
+      for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of
+      consideration. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his
+      collections, were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence
+      had been the conscious attitude of years. His solitude, his ennui, his
+      love for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many
+      features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model of
+      impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the world,
+      but to please himself by exciting the world&rsquo;s curiosity and then declining
+      to satisfy it. It had made him feel great, ever, to play the world a
+      trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly to please himself
+      was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this case indeed the gullible
+      world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel, who had been mystified to
+      the top of her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in being consistent;
+      he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could not in
+      honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its articles for what they
+      may at the time have been worth. It was certain that he was very skilful
+      in fitting the facts to his theory&mdash;even the fact that during the
+      month he spent in Rome at this period the husband of the woman he loved
+      appeared to regard him not in the least as an enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that he
+      had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all. He
+      was Isabel&rsquo;s cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill&mdash;it was on
+      this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,
+      asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winter
+      climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on
+      the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary; but
+      his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in the
+      presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, toward the
+      end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond&rsquo;s making it of small ease to his wife
+      that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was not jealous&mdash;he
+      had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But he made Isabel
+      pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was still left; and as
+      Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when his suspicion had become
+      sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he had deprived Isabel of a
+      very interesting occupation: she had been constantly wondering what fine
+      principle was keeping him alive. She had decided that it was his love of
+      conversation; his conversation had been better than ever. He had given up
+      walking; he was no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair&mdash;almost
+      any chair would serve, and was so dependent on what you would do for him
+      that, had not his talk been highly contemplative, you might have thought
+      he was blind. The reader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever
+      to know, and the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery.
+      What kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough
+      of the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet
+      satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn&rsquo;t make up his mind to lose
+      that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband&mdash;or what
+      her husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama,
+      and he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had
+      held good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time
+      of his return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an
+      air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+      accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange,
+      unremunerative&mdash;and unremunerated&mdash;son of hers than she had ever
+      been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant
+      land. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal of
+      the same emotion&mdash;the excitement of wondering in what state she
+      should find him&mdash;that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after
+      Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert
+      Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for
+      him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,
+      at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought
+      after all he wouldn&rsquo;t go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together
+      after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had
+      left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,
+      which he instantly removed from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t go to Sicily? Where then will you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I won&rsquo;t go anywhere,&rdquo; said Ralph, from the sofa, all
+      shamelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you&rsquo;ll return to England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear no; I&rsquo;ll stay in Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome won&rsquo;t do for you. Rome&rsquo;s not warm enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have to do. I&rsquo;ll make it do. See how well I&rsquo;ve been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying to
+      see it. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been better than you were on the journey, certainly. I
+      wonder how you lived through that. But I don&rsquo;t understand your condition.
+      I recommend you to try Sicily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t try,&rdquo; said poor Ralph. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done trying. I can&rsquo;t move further. I
+      can&rsquo;t face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don&rsquo;t
+      want to die on the Sicilian plains&mdash;to be snatched away, like
+      Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce then did you come for?&rdquo; his lordship enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the idea took me. I see it won&rsquo;t do. It really doesn&rsquo;t matter
+      where I am now. I&rsquo;ve exhausted all remedies, I&rsquo;ve swallowed all climates.
+      As I&rsquo;m here I&rsquo;ll stay. I haven&rsquo;t a single cousin in Sicily&mdash;much less
+      a married one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your cousin&rsquo;s certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t asked him, and I don&rsquo;t care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmond
+      will bury me. But I shall not die here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not.&rdquo; Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. &ldquo;Well, I
+      must say,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;for myself I&rsquo;m very glad you don&rsquo;t insist on
+      Sicily. I had a horror of that journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but for you it needn&rsquo;t have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you
+      in my train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly didn&rsquo;t mean to let you go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,&rdquo; Ralph
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have gone with you and seen you settled,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good Christian. You&rsquo;re a very kind man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I should have come back here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then you&rsquo;d have gone to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I should have stayed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Ralph, &ldquo;if that&rsquo;s what we are both up to, I don&rsquo;t see where
+      Sicily comes in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking up,
+      &ldquo;I say, tell me this,&rdquo; he broke out; &ldquo;did you really mean to go to Sicily
+      when we started?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ah, vous m&rsquo;en demandez trop!</i> Let me put a question first. Did you
+      come with me quite&mdash;platonically?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect we&rsquo;ve each been playing our little game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here a
+      while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
+      Affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen him three times. He&rsquo;s very amusing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;ve forgotten what you came for,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I have,&rdquo; his companion answered rather gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
+      absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
+      without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
+      There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
+      recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival in Rome,
+      where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half-diffident,
+      half-confident silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recommend you to get the doctor&rsquo;s consent, all the same,&rdquo; Lord
+      Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor&rsquo;s consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then does Mrs. Osmond think?&rdquo; Ralph&rsquo;s friend demanded. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not
+      told her. She&rsquo;ll probably say that Rome&rsquo;s too cold and even offer to go
+      with me to Catania. She&rsquo;s capable of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your place I should like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her husband won&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you&rsquo;re not bound to mind
+      his likings. They&rsquo;re his affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to make any more trouble between them,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there so much already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the
+      explosion. Osmond isn&rsquo;t fond of his wife&rsquo;s cousin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then of course he&rsquo;d make a row. But won&rsquo;t he make a row if you stop
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
+      then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it&rsquo;s my duty to stop
+      and defend her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Touchett, your defensive powers&mdash;!&rdquo; Lord Warburton began
+      with a smile. But he saw something in his companion&rsquo;s face that checked
+      him. &ldquo;Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,&rdquo;
+       he observed instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph for a short time answered nothing. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true that my defensive
+      powers are small,&rdquo; he returned at last; &ldquo;but as my aggressive ones are
+      still smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At
+      any rate,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;there are things I&rsquo;m curious to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not much interested in my health, and I&rsquo;m deeply interested in Mrs.
+      Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. But not as I once was,&rdquo; Lord Warburton added quickly. This was
+      one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she strike you as very happy?&rdquo; Ralph enquired, emboldened by this
+      confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;ve hardly thought. She told me the other night she
+      was happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she told <i>you</i>, of course,&rdquo; Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she
+      might have complained to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Complained? She&rsquo;ll never complain. She has done it&mdash;what she <i>has</i>
+      done&mdash;and she knows it. She&rsquo;ll complain to you least of all. She&rsquo;s
+      very careful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She needn&rsquo;t be. I don&rsquo;t mean to make love to her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of <i>your</i>
+      duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton gravely; &ldquo;none!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Permit me to ask,&rdquo; Ralph went on, &ldquo;whether it&rsquo;s to bring out the fact
+      that you don&rsquo;t mean to make love to her that you&rsquo;re so very civil to the
+      little girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,
+      looking at it hard. &ldquo;Does that strike you as very ridiculous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think her a delightful little person. I don&rsquo;t know when a girl of that
+      age has pleased me more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there&rsquo;s the difference in our ages&mdash;more than twenty
+      years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Warburton,&rdquo; said Ralph, &ldquo;are you serious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly serious&mdash;as far as I&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad. And, heaven help us,&rdquo; cried Ralph, &ldquo;how cheered-up old
+      Osmond will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion frowned. &ldquo;I say, don&rsquo;t spoil it. I shouldn&rsquo;t propose for his
+      daughter to please <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have the perversity to be pleased all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not so fond of me as that,&rdquo; said his lordship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that people
+      needn&rsquo;t be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you. Now, with
+      me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that they loved me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general
+      axioms&mdash;he was thinking of a special case. &ldquo;Do you judge she&rsquo;ll be
+      pleased?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl herself? Delighted, surely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at him a moment. &ldquo;My dear fellow, what has she to do with
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever she chooses. She&rsquo;s very fond of Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true&mdash;very true.&rdquo; And Ralph slowly got up. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an interesting
+      question&mdash;how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her.&rdquo; He stood
+      there a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. &ldquo;I
+      hope, you know, that you&rsquo;re very&mdash;very sure. The deuce!&rdquo; he broke
+      off. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s awkward. I hope you&rsquo;re sure that among Miss Osmond&rsquo;s merits
+      her being&mdash;a&mdash;so near her stepmother isn&rsquo;t a leading one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, Touchett!&rdquo; cried Lord Warburton angrily, &ldquo;for what do you
+      take me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady
+      having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had spent
+      six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a winter in
+      Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and gave
+      countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less
+      inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the past
+      only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of the sunniest
+      niches of the Pincian&mdash;an apartment which often stood empty&mdash;this
+      suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a danger which Isabel at
+      one period had been much inclined to deplore. Familiarity had modified in
+      some degree her first impression of Madame Merle, but it had not
+      essentially altered it; there was still much wonder of admiration in it.
+      That personage was armed at all points; it was a pleasure to see a
+      character so completely equipped for the social battle. She carried her
+      flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, and she used them
+      with a skill which struck Isabel as more and more that of a veteran. She
+      was never weary, never overcome with disgust; she never appeared to need
+      rest or consolation. She had her own ideas; she had of old exposed a great
+      many of them to Isabel, who knew also that under an appearance of extreme
+      self-control her highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility.
+      But her will was mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the
+      way she kept going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it&mdash;as
+      if the art of life were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she
+      herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts;
+      there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with
+      some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old
+      habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with
+      suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As
+      a younger person she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation
+      to the other: there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame
+      Merle had suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing;
+      she lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel
+      would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant friend
+      had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had become aware
+      more than before of the advantage of being like that&mdash;of having made
+      one&rsquo;s self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed
+      acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again a
+      continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done
+      since her marriage; but by this time Isabel&rsquo;s needs and inclinations had
+      considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she would
+      have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this lady&rsquo;s
+      clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself, and if
+      life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself beaten.
+      Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an ornament to any
+      circle; but was she&mdash;would she be&mdash;of use to others in periods
+      of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her friend&mdash;this
+      indeed Isabel had always thought&mdash;was to imitate her, to be as firm
+      and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel,
+      considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside her
+      own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which had
+      virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was almost
+      detached&mdash;pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear of
+      being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had been of the opinion that
+      she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note&mdash;was apt, in the
+      vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had never admitted this charge&mdash;had
+      never indeed quite understood it; Madame Merle&rsquo;s conduct, to her
+      perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always &ldquo;quiet.&rdquo; But
+      in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the Osmond
+      family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a little.
+      That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent. She
+      remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she had now other
+      interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and his
+      little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was not after all
+      of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of their
+      affairs till she was asked, even pressed&mdash;as when her opinion was
+      wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid
+      as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>must</i> be on my guard,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I might so easily, without
+      suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my
+      intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew
+      your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you
+      were a silly woman you might be jealous. You&rsquo;re not a silly woman; I know
+      that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I&rsquo;m determined not to get into
+      trouble. A little harm&rsquo;s very soon done; a mistake&rsquo;s made before one knows
+      it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had ten years
+      to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn&rsquo;t likely I shall begin
+      to-day, when I&rsquo;m so much less attractive than I was. But if I were to
+      annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn&rsquo;t belong to me, you
+      wouldn&rsquo;t make that reflection; you&rsquo;d simply say I was forgetting certain
+      differences. I&rsquo;m determined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend
+      isn&rsquo;t always thinking of that; one doesn&rsquo;t suspect one&rsquo;s friends of
+      injustice. I don&rsquo;t suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect human
+      nature. Don&rsquo;t think I make myself uncomfortable; I&rsquo;m not always watching
+      myself. I think I sufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All
+      I wish to say is, however, that if you were to be jealous&mdash;that&rsquo;s the
+      form it would take&mdash;I should be sure to think it was a little my
+      fault. It certainly wouldn&rsquo;t be your husband&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s theory that
+      Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage. We know how she had at
+      first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage,
+      but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer&rsquo;s. That was the work of&mdash;Isabel
+      scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery
+      of things. It was true her aunt&rsquo;s complaint had been not so much of Madame
+      Merle&rsquo;s activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange
+      event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been
+      great, to Isabel&rsquo;s mind; she couldn&rsquo;t make a crime of Madame Merle&rsquo;s
+      having been the producing cause of the most important friendship she had
+      ever formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage, after her
+      little discussion with her aunt and at a time when she was still capable
+      of that large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic
+      historian, to her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her
+      change of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With
+      her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never
+      concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel
+      discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he
+      seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of
+      their social rosary. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like Madame Merle?&rdquo; Isabel had once said
+      to him. &ldquo;She thinks a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you once for all,&rdquo; Osmond had answered. &ldquo;I liked her once
+      better than I do to-day. I&rsquo;m tired of her, and I&rsquo;m rather ashamed of it.
+      She&rsquo;s so almost unnaturally good! I&rsquo;m glad she&rsquo;s not in Italy; it makes
+      for relaxation&mdash;for a sort of moral detente. Don&rsquo;t talk of her too
+      much; it seems to bring her back. She&rsquo;ll come back in plenty of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late&mdash;too
+      late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But
+      meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel&rsquo;s
+      feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation
+      was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied
+      mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom
+      as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle&rsquo;s having had a
+      hand in Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+      consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not
+      so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and
+      Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would
+      not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an
+      immediate horror at having made it. &ldquo;Whatever happens to me let me not be
+      unjust,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them upon
+      others!&rdquo; This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious
+      apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make and of
+      which I have given a sketch; for there was something irritating&mdash;there
+      was almost an air of mockery&mdash;in her neat discriminations and clear
+      convictions. In Isabel&rsquo;s mind to-day there was nothing clear; there was a
+      confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she
+      turned away from her friend, who had just made the statements I have
+      quoted: Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking of! She was
+      herself moreover so unable to explain. Jealous of her&mdash;jealous of her
+      with Gilbert? The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost
+      wished jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a manner for
+      refreshment. Wasn&rsquo;t it in a manner one of the symptoms of happiness?
+      Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she might have been
+      pretending to know Isabel better than Isabel knew herself. This young
+      woman had always been fertile in resolutions&mdash;any of them of an
+      elevated character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy
+      of her heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a
+      family likeness; they might have been summed up in the determination that
+      if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor
+      winged spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not
+      as yet been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to
+      justice&mdash;not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame
+      Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revenge&mdash;especially as
+      the pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It
+      might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It
+      was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if
+      ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless
+      not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within
+      herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered
+      and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way
+      to repair it&mdash;just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to
+      accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever;
+      a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was
+      a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been
+      right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day about a month after Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s arrival in Rome Isabel came
+      back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general
+      determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for Pansy&mdash;it
+      was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak.
+      Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the
+      rightness of the young creature&rsquo;s attachment or the sweetness of her own
+      clearness about it. It was like a soft presence&mdash;like a small hand in
+      her own; on Pansy&rsquo;s part it was more than an affection&mdash;it was a kind
+      of ardent coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl&rsquo;s
+      dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason when
+      motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take
+      our duty where we find it, and that we must look for it as much as
+      possible. Pansy&rsquo;s sympathy was a direct admonition; it seemed to say that
+      here was an opportunity, not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an
+      opportunity for what Isabel could hardly have said; in general, to be more
+      for the child than the child was able to be for herself. Isabel could have
+      smiled, in these days, to remember that her little companion had once been
+      ambiguous, for she now perceived that Pansy&rsquo;s ambiguities were simply her
+      own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care
+      so much&mdash;so extraordinarily much&mdash;to please. But since then she
+      had seen this delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to
+      think of it. It was the whole creature&mdash;it was a sort of genius.
+      Pansy had no pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly
+      extending her conquests she took no credit for them. The two were
+      constantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter.
+      Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of one&rsquo;s carrying a nosegay
+      composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under
+      any provocation to neglect her&mdash;this she had made an article of
+      religion. The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel&rsquo;s
+      society than in that of any one save her father,&mdash;whom she admired
+      with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an
+      exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild.
+      Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means
+      of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was
+      negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble&mdash;a conviction which
+      certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She was
+      therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was
+      careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Isabel&rsquo;s
+      propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought
+      otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, and though
+      she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale when it came to
+      her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward it wistfully&mdash;an
+      attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the
+      world. When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go
+      to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond
+      should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Isabel appreciated
+      the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a
+      passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a
+      conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she
+      liked even the tiresome parts&mdash;the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of
+      dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage.
+      During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small
+      fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if
+      she had been taken to drive for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the
+      city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await them by
+      the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the Campagna,
+      which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This
+      was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a
+      swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming to
+      Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she
+      liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter
+      undulation beside her father&rsquo;s wife, who afterwards, on their return to
+      Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit of the
+      Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a
+      sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo
+      Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel
+      passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the
+      second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered from the
+      staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s rich devices had not been
+      able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just beyond the threshold
+      of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being
+      that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness,
+      nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the
+      soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene before she
+      interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond
+      was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Isabel
+      had often seen that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at
+      least had not noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment
+      converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she instantly
+      perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was standing
+      on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair,
+      leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect, as usual, but her
+      eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first was that he was sitting
+      while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her.
+      Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their
+      exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old
+      friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was
+      nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing
+      made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of light.
+      Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as
+      something detected. But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen
+      it. Madame Merle had seen her and had welcomed her without moving; her
+      husband, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He presently murmured
+      something about wanting a walk and, after having asked their visitor to
+      excuse him, left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn&rsquo;t I
+      waited for you,&rdquo; Madame Merle said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t he ask you to sit down?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle looked about her. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s very true; I was going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must stay now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. I came for a reason; I&rsquo;ve something on my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told you that before,&rdquo; Isabel said&mdash;&ldquo;that it takes something
+      extraordinary to bring you to this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you know what I&rsquo;ve told <i>you</i>; that whether I come or whether I
+      stay away, I&rsquo;ve always the same motive&mdash;the affection I bear you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;ve told me that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look just now as if you didn&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Isabel answered, &ldquo;the profundity of your motives, that&rsquo;s the last
+      thing I doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head gravely. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;ve always been kind to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As often as you would let me. You don&rsquo;t always take it; then one has to
+      let you alone. It&rsquo;s not to do you a kindness, however, that I&rsquo;ve come
+      to-day; it&rsquo;s quite another affair. I&rsquo;ve come to get rid of a trouble of my
+      own&mdash;to make it over to you. I&rsquo;ve been talking to your husband about
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surprised at that; he doesn&rsquo;t like troubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially other people&rsquo;s; I know very well. But neither do you, I
+      suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It&rsquo;s about
+      poor Mr. Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel reflectively, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s his trouble then, not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a
+      week, to talk about Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle hesitated. &ldquo;I gathered from your husband that perhaps you
+      didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s probably because he doesn&rsquo;t know how to speak of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nevertheless the sort of question in which he&rsquo;s rarely at fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
+      To-day he doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you been telling him?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. &ldquo;Do you know you&rsquo;re a little
+      dry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I can&rsquo;t help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that there&rsquo;s some reason. You&rsquo;re so near the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;for all the comfort I&rsquo;ve given him! If you think me
+      dry, I wonder what <i>he</i> thinks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do more at least than I. I don&rsquo;t know what mysterious connection
+      he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to me from the
+      first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps coming back, to
+      spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very much in love,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much&mdash;for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think she&rsquo;s
+      attractive?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dearest little person possible&mdash;but very limited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s not
+      unlimited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;he has about the extent of one&rsquo;s pocket-handkerchief&mdash;the
+      small ones with lace borders.&rdquo; Her humour had lately turned a good deal to
+      sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent
+      an object as Pansy&rsquo;s suitor. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very kind, very honest,&rdquo; she presently
+      added; &ldquo;and he&rsquo;s not such a fool as he seems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He assures me that she delights in him,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;ve not asked her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve never sounded her a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my place; it&rsquo;s her father&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re too literal!&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must judge for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave her smile again. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t easy to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To help me?&rdquo; said Isabel very seriously. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy to displease you. Don&rsquo;t you see how wise I am to be careful? I
+      notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the
+      love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. <i>Je n&rsquo;y peux rien,
+      moi!</i> I can&rsquo;t talk to Pansy about him. Especially,&rdquo; added Madame Merle,
+      &ldquo;as I don&rsquo;t think him a paragon of husbands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t wash your
+      hands then!&rdquo; she said. After which again she added in another tone: &ldquo;You
+      can&rsquo;t&mdash;you&rsquo;re too much interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the
+      intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before. Only
+      this time the latter saw nothing. &ldquo;Ask him the next time, and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him
+      know that he&rsquo;s not welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said Madame Merle, &ldquo;I forgot that&mdash;though it&rsquo;s the burden
+      of his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,&rdquo; she
+      went on, &ldquo;Osmond doesn&rsquo;t dislike him so much as he thinks.&rdquo; She had got up
+      as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and
+      had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the point
+      she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not opening the
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must have pleased him, if you&rsquo;ve told him,&rdquo; she answered, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I&rsquo;ve told him; as far as that goes I&rsquo;ve encouraged him. I&rsquo;ve
+      preached patience, have said that his case isn&rsquo;t desperate if he&rsquo;ll only
+      hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head
+      to be jealous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jealous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose.
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Merle
+      observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the
+      mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there&rsquo;s nothing impossible in Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s falling in love with Pansy,&rdquo; Madame Merle went on. Isabel was
+      silent a little; she turned away from the glass. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true&mdash;there&rsquo;s
+      nothing impossible,&rdquo; she returned at last, gravely and more gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;ve had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not ask him,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      added, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      behaviour than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see no reason why I shouldn&rsquo;t tell you that he likes my stepdaughter
+      very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. &ldquo;Likes her, you mean&mdash;as
+      Mr. Rosier means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know
+      that he&rsquo;s charmed with Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve never told Osmond?&rdquo; This observation was immediate,
+      precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle&rsquo;s lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s eyes rested on her. &ldquo;I suppose he&rsquo;ll know in time; Lord Warburton
+      has a tongue and knows how to express himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly
+      than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave
+      the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been
+      thinking it over a little: &ldquo;That would be better than marrying poor Mr.
+      Rosier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much better, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It&rsquo;s really
+      very kind of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very kind of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, Pansy Osmond&rsquo;s the most attractive person he has ever known!&rdquo;
+       Isabel exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. &ldquo;Ah, a moment
+      ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said she was limited. And so she is. And so&rsquo;s Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are we all, if you come to that. If it&rsquo;s no more than Pansy deserves,
+      all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier I won&rsquo;t
+      admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s a nuisance!&rdquo; Isabel cried abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite agree with you, and I&rsquo;m delighted to know that I&rsquo;m not expected
+      to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be
+      closed to him.&rdquo; And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared to
+      depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an
+      inconsequent request from Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, you know, be kind to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan&rsquo;t be kind to him,
+      for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord
+      Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better wait till he asks her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If what you say&rsquo;s true, he&rsquo;ll ask her. Especially,&rdquo; said Madame Merle in
+      a moment, &ldquo;if you make him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I make him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite in your power. You&rsquo;ve great influence with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel frowned a little. &ldquo;Where did you learn that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you&mdash;never!&rdquo; said Madame Merle, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly never told you anything of the sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>might</i> have done so&mdash;so far as opportunity went&mdash;when
+      we were by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told
+      me very little; I&rsquo;ve often thought so since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But
+      she didn&rsquo;t admit it now&mdash;perhaps because she wished not to appear to
+      exult in it. &ldquo;You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,&rdquo; she
+      simply returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+      Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of
+      course I think you&rsquo;ve done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn&rsquo;t
+      marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to
+      marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the
+      bright expressiveness of Madame Merle&rsquo;s. But in a moment she said,
+      reasonably and gently enough: &ldquo;I should be very glad indeed if, as regards
+      Pansy, it could be arranged.&rdquo; Upon which her companion, who seemed to
+      regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than
+      might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very
+      late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent
+      the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had been
+      sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his
+      books and which he called his study. At ten o&rsquo;clock Lord Warburton had
+      come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at
+      home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Isabel,
+      after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on purpose;
+      she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to read; she
+      even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if she mightn&rsquo;t
+      leave the room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of
+      Pansy&rsquo;s becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at
+      first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm.
+      Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation of
+      inflammable material. When Isabel was unhappy she always looked about her&mdash;partly
+      from impulse and partly by theory&mdash;for some form of positive
+      exertion. She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a
+      state of disease&mdash;of suffering as opposed to doing. To &ldquo;do&rdquo;&mdash;it
+      hardly mattered what&mdash;would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some
+      degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to convince herself that she had done
+      everything possible to content her husband; she was determined not to be
+      haunted by visions of his wife&rsquo;s limpness under appeal. It would please
+      him greatly to see Pansy married to an English nobleman, and justly please
+      him, since this nobleman was so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel
+      that if she could make it her duty to bring about such an event she should
+      play the part of a good wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able
+      to believe sincerely, and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then
+      such an undertaking had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and
+      she desired occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really
+      amuse herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to
+      Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming
+      girl. It was a little &ldquo;weird&rdquo; he should&mdash;being what he was; but there
+      was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one&mdash;any
+      one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small,
+      too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a
+      little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking
+      for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for
+      what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it. No
+      theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or
+      more natural than anything else. If he had cared for <i>her</i> it might
+      seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different; but he had not
+      cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had completely
+      got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair had failed, he should
+      think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say,
+      had not come at first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her feel
+      almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find in
+      the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however,
+      that Edward Rosier had crossed their path!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path lost
+      something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that Pansy
+      thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young men&mdash;as sure as if she
+      had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome she
+      should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing
+      herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it
+      into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It
+      was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men;
+      the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of the
+      type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It was true
+      that there was no particular reason why Pansy should marry a statesman;
+      still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and she would make
+      a perfect little pearl of a peeress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden strangely
+      cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this difficulty could
+      probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied in poor Rosier could
+      not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there were always means of
+      levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly aware that she had not
+      taken the measure of Pansy&rsquo;s tenacity, which might prove to be
+      inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her as rather letting go,
+      under suggestion, than as clutching under deprecation&mdash;since she had
+      certainly the faculty of assent developed in a very much higher degree
+      than that of protest. She would cling, yes, she would cling; but it really
+      mattered to her very little what she clung to. Lord Warburton would do as
+      well as Mr. Rosier&mdash;especially as she seemed quite to like him; she
+      had expressed this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; she
+      had said she thought his conversation most interesting&mdash;he had told
+      her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the rightest and
+      easiest&mdash;Isabel noticed that for herself, as she also observed that
+      he talked to her not in the least in a patronising way, reminding himself
+      of her youth and simplicity, but quite as if she understood his subjects
+      with that sufficiency with which she followed those of the fashionable
+      operas. This went far enough for attention to the music and the barytone.
+      He was careful only to be kind&mdash;he was as kind as he had been to
+      another fluttered young chit at Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched
+      by that; she remembered how she herself had been touched, and said to
+      herself that if she had been as simple as Pansy the impression would have
+      been deeper still. She had not been simple when she refused him; that
+      operation had been as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had
+      been. Pansy, however, in spite of <i>her</i> simplicity, really did
+      understand, and was glad that Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about
+      her partners and bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of
+      the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of
+      Roman society. She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her
+      tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave
+      little quiet oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his
+      clothes, as if she were considering him. Even his person, Isabel might
+      have reminded her, was better than Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s. But Isabel contented
+      herself at such moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came
+      no more at all to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold
+      it had taken of her&mdash;the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch
+      upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had
+      been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and
+      leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this
+      light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying as
+      much as possible to take her husband&rsquo;s view. She succeeded after a
+      fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all she couldn&rsquo;t
+      rise to it; something held her and made this impossible. It was not
+      exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a general thing
+      practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience, and Isabel was
+      instinctively much more true than false to the common genius of her sex.
+      There was a vague doubt that interposed&mdash;a sense that she was not
+      quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Lord
+      Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give Pansy a full
+      account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered if she had prevented
+      something which would have happened if she had absented herself for a
+      quarter of an hour; and then she pronounced&mdash;always mentally&mdash;that
+      when their distinguished visitor should wish her to go away he would
+      easily find means to let her know it. Pansy said nothing whatever about
+      him after he had gone, and Isabel studiously said nothing, as she had
+      taken a vow of reserve until after he should have declared himself. He was
+      a little longer in coming to this than might seem to accord with the
+      description he had given Isabel of his feelings. Pansy went to bed, and
+      Isabel had to admit that she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was
+      thinking of. Her transparent little companion was for the moment not to be
+      seen through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an
+      hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and then sat
+      down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had transferred her
+      eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to Osmond&rsquo;s face, and she
+      watched him while he kept his silence. Covert observation had become a
+      habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say
+      that it was allied to that of self-defence, had made it habitual. She
+      wished as much as possible to know his thoughts, to know what he would
+      say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her answer. Preparing answers
+      had not been her strong point of old; she had rarely in this respect got
+      further than thinking afterwards of clever things she might have said. But
+      she had learned caution&mdash;learned it in a measure from her husband&rsquo;s
+      very countenance. It was the same face she had looked into with eyes
+      equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating, on the terrace of a
+      Florentine villa; except that Osmond had grown slightly stouter since his
+      marriage. He still, however, might strike one as very distinguished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Lord Warburton been here?&rdquo; he presently asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he stayed half an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he see Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he talk with her much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He talked almost only to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me he&rsquo;s attentive. Isn&rsquo;t that what you call it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call it anything,&rdquo; said Isabel; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve waited for you to give it a
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a consideration you don&rsquo;t always show,&rdquo; Osmond answered after a
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve determined, this time, to try and act as you&rsquo;d like. I&rsquo;ve so often
+      failed of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. &ldquo;Are you trying to quarrel
+      with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m trying to live at peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s more easy; you know I don&rsquo;t quarrel myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you call it when you try to make me angry?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t try; if I&rsquo;ve done so it has been the most natural thing in the
+      world. Moreover I&rsquo;m not in the least trying now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel smiled. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;ve determined never to be angry
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an excellent resolve. Your temper isn&rsquo;t good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;it&rsquo;s not good.&rdquo; She pushed away the book she had been reading
+      and took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s partly why I&rsquo;ve not spoken to you about this business of my
+      daughter&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most
+      frequent with him. &ldquo;I was afraid I should encounter opposition&mdash;that
+      you too would have views on the subject. I&rsquo;ve sent little Rosier about his
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were afraid I&rsquo;d plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven&rsquo;t you noticed that I&rsquo;ve
+      never spoken to you of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never given you a chance. We&rsquo;ve so little conversation in these
+      days. I know he was an old friend of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he&rsquo;s an old friend of mine.&rdquo; Isabel cared little more for him than
+      for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an
+      old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate
+      such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified
+      her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in
+      themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of
+      tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they belonged
+      to her unmarried life. &ldquo;But as regards Pansy,&rdquo; she added in a moment,
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given him no encouragement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s fortunate,&rdquo; Osmond observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no use talking of him,&rdquo; Osmond said. &ldquo;As I tell you, I&rsquo;ve turned
+      him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but a lover outside&rsquo;s always a lover. He&rsquo;s sometimes even more of
+      one. Mr. Rosier still has hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit perfectly
+      quiet to become Lady Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like that?&rdquo; Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not so
+      affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for Osmond
+      had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her. The
+      intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady Warburton
+      had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But that was for
+      herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should have put it into
+      words; she would not take for granted with him that he thought Lord
+      Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was unusual among the
+      Osmonds. It was Gilbert&rsquo;s constant intimation that for him nothing in life
+      was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal with the most
+      distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter had only to look
+      about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore a lapse from
+      consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord Warburton and that
+      if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might not be found; with
+      which moreover it was another of his customary implications that he was
+      never inconsistent. He would have liked his wife to glide over the point.
+      But strangely enough, now that she was face to face with him and although
+      an hour before she had almost invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel
+      was not accommodating, would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the
+      effect on his mind of her question: it would operate as an humiliation.
+      Never mind; he was terribly capable of humiliating her&mdash;all the more
+      so that he was also capable of waiting for great opportunities and of
+      showing sometimes an almost unaccountable indifference to small ones.
+      Isabel perhaps took a small opportunity because she would not have availed
+      herself of a great one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. &ldquo;I should like it
+      extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has
+      another advantage: he&rsquo;s an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for
+      him to come into the family. It&rsquo;s very odd Pansy&rsquo;s admirers should all be
+      your old friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they
+      see Pansy. Seeing her it&rsquo;s natural they should fall in love with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think. But you&rsquo;re not bound to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,&rdquo; Isabel went on
+      frankly. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only to
+      sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won&rsquo;t sit perfectly still. If she loses
+      Mr. Rosier she may jump up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire. &ldquo;Pansy
+      would like to be a great lady,&rdquo; he remarked in a moment with a certain
+      tenderness of tone. &ldquo;She wishes above all to please,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, to please me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me too a little, I think,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she&rsquo;ll do what I like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re sure of that, it&rsquo;s very well,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime,&rdquo; said Osmond, &ldquo;I should like our distinguished visitor to
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken&mdash;to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to
+      him to believe she could care for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, &ldquo;Why
+      didn&rsquo;t you tell me that?&rdquo; he asked sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I&rsquo;ve taken the first
+      chance that has offered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you speak to him of Rosier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was hardly necessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it best he should know, so that, so that&mdash;&rdquo; And Isabel
+      paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that he might act accordingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that he might back out, do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, so that he might advance while there&rsquo;s yet time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the effect it seems to have had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have patience,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You know Englishmen are shy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This one&rsquo;s not. He was not when he made love to <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to
+      her. &ldquo;I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the
+      pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy&rsquo;s tapestry.
+      &ldquo;You must have a great deal of influence with him,&rdquo; Osmond went on at
+      last. &ldquo;The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of his
+      saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said to
+      herself. &ldquo;Why should I have influence?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;What have I ever done
+      to put him under an obligation to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refused to marry him,&rdquo; said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must not presume too much on that,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire with
+      his hands behind him. &ldquo;Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I shall
+      leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think that over
+      and remember how much I count on you.&rdquo; He waited a little, to give her
+      time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before
+      her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them
+      that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust
+      herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and
+      closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still
+      further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation. A
+      servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh
+      candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had
+      said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion from
+      another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton&mdash;this had
+      given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it true
+      that there was something still between them that might be a handle to make
+      him declare himself to Pansy&mdash;a susceptibility, on his part, to
+      approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not
+      asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now that
+      it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer
+      frightened her. Yes, there was something&mdash;something on Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link
+      that united them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had
+      been reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a
+      hair, but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For
+      herself nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always
+      thought; it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in
+      fact a better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she
+      might be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the
+      memory of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?
+      Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But what
+      were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they mingled
+      with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was he in love
+      with Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s wife, and if so what comfort did he expect to derive
+      from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in love with her
+      stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother he was not in love
+      with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed in order to
+      make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would do so for her sake and
+      not for the small creature&rsquo;s own&mdash;was this the service her husband
+      had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty with which she found
+      herself confronted&mdash;from the moment she admitted to herself that her
+      old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was
+      not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She asked herself
+      with dismay whether Lord Warburton were pretending to be in love with
+      Pansy in order to cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called
+      other chances. Of this refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted
+      him; she preferred to believe him in perfect good faith. But if his
+      admiration for Pansy were a delusion this was scarcely better than its
+      being an affectation. Isabel wandered among these ugly possibilities until
+      she had completely lost her way; some of them, as she suddenly encountered
+      them, seemed ugly enough. Then she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her
+      eyes, and declared that her imagination surely did her little honour and
+      that her husband&rsquo;s did him even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested
+      as he need be, and she was no more to him than she need wish. She would
+      rest upon this till the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually
+      than by a cynical intimation of Osmond&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace, for
+      her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of
+      thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set
+      them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange
+      impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband&rsquo;s being in
+      more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That
+      impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it had
+      never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an
+      hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making everything
+      wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It
+      was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact
+      was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption
+      against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were
+      a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in
+      the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the
+      clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between
+      them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either
+      side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition,
+      of the like of which she had never dreamed&mdash;an opposition in which
+      the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It
+      was not her fault&mdash;she had practised no deception; she had only
+      admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the purest
+      confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of a
+      multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end.
+      Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world
+      would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of
+      exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather
+      downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression where
+      the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and
+      where it served to deepen the feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust
+      of her husband&mdash;this was what darkened the world. That is a sentiment
+      easily indicated, but not so easily explained, and so composite in its
+      character that much time and still more suffering had been needed to bring
+      it to its actual perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active
+      condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of
+      thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered
+      herself that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,&mdash;that
+      no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when
+      she thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually&mdash;it was not till the
+      first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had
+      closed that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather;
+      it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+      out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could still
+      see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again it had
+      occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect that were
+      impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from her own mind:
+      she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be just and temperate,
+      to see only the truth. They were a part, they were a kind of creation and
+      consequence, of her husband&rsquo;s very presence. They were not his misdeeds,
+      his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing&mdash;that is but of one thing,
+      which was <i>not</i> a crime. She knew of no wrong he had done; he was not
+      violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated her. That was all
+      she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was
+      not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had
+      discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had
+      believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first he could change
+      her, and she had done her best to be what he would like. But she was,
+      after all, herself&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t help that; and now there was no use
+      pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and had made up his
+      mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension he would hurt
+      her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort. He would if
+      possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the wrong. Isabel,
+      scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he would have the
+      better of her there. She would give him many pretexts, she would often put
+      herself in the wrong. There were times when she almost pitied him; for if
+      she had not deceived him in intention she understood how completely she
+      must have done so in fact. She had effaced herself when he first knew her;
+      she had made herself small, pretending there was less of her than there
+      really was. It was because she had been under the extraordinary charm that
+      he, on his side, had taken pains to put forth. He was not changed; he had
+      not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than
+      she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of
+      the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the
+      full moon now&mdash;she saw the whole man. She had kept still, as it were,
+      so that he should have a free field, and yet in spite of this she had
+      mistaken a part for the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it was
+      there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond
+      delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love to
+      her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he had
+      succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never occurred
+      to her now to deny him that. He admired her&mdash;he had told her why:
+      because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might very
+      well have been true; for during those months she had imagined a world of
+      things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous vision of him,
+      fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred fancy!&mdash;she had not
+      read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in
+      them she had seen the most striking of figures. That he was poor and
+      lonely and yet that somehow he was noble&mdash;that was what had
+      interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There had been an
+      indefinable beauty about him&mdash;in his situation, in his mind, in his
+      face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and ineffectual,
+      but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness which was the very
+      flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager strolling on the beach
+      while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It
+      was in all this she had found her occasion. She would launch his boat for
+      him; she would be his providence; it would be a good thing to love him.
+      And she had loved him, she had so anxiously and yet so ardently given
+      herself&mdash;a good deal for what she found in him, but a good deal also
+      for what she brought him and what might enrich the gift. As she looked
+      back at the passion of those full weeks she perceived in it a kind of
+      maternal strain&mdash;the happiness of a woman who felt that she was a
+      contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her money, as she
+      saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then her mind wandered off
+      to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author
+      of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At bottom her money had
+      been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to
+      transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to some more prepared
+      receptacle. What would lighten her own conscience more effectually than to
+      make it over to the man with the best taste in the world? Unless she
+      should have given it to a hospital there would have been nothing better
+      she could do with it; and there was no charitable institution in which she
+      had been as much interested as in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune
+      in a way that would make her think better of it and rub off a certain
+      grossness attaching to the good luck of an unexpected inheritance. There
+      had been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the
+      delicacy had been all in Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s leaving them to her. But to marry
+      Gilbert Osmond and bring him such a portion&mdash;in that there would be
+      delicacy for her as well. There would be less for him&mdash;that was true;
+      but that was his affair, and if he loved her he wouldn&rsquo;t object to her
+      being rich. Had he not had the courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married on
+      a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with her
+      money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was only half
+      the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of her&mdash;a
+      sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in his personal
+      qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme conviction had
+      filled her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to
+      her that she could not have done otherwise. The finest&mdash;in the sense
+      of being the subtlest&mdash;manly organism she had ever known had become
+      her property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her hands
+      and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion. She had not
+      been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly
+      now. She had lived with it, she had lived <i>in</i> it almost&mdash;it
+      appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been captured it had
+      taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps had some worth. A
+      mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated, more trained to
+      admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was this exquisite
+      instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself in infinite dismay
+      when she thought of the magnitude of <i>his</i> deception. It was a
+      wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn&rsquo;t hate her more. She
+      remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it&mdash;it had been
+      like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their
+      life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she must
+      get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their marriage; but
+      then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only afterwards. This
+      time she might well have noticed it, because he had really meant it. The
+      words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening
+      experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous. He
+      had really meant it&mdash;he would have liked her to have nothing of her
+      own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had too many ideas; she
+      had more even than he had supposed, many more than she had expressed to
+      him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she <i>had</i> been
+      hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas for
+      herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with some
+      one else. One couldn&rsquo;t pluck them up by the roots, though of course one
+      might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been this,
+      however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She had no
+      opinions&mdash;none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in the
+      satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant had been
+      the whole thing&mdash;her character, the way she felt, the way she judged.
+      This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not known
+      until he had found himself&mdash;with the door closed behind, as it were&mdash;set
+      down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at life which
+      he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least it was a very
+      humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that she should not have
+      suspected from the first that his own had been so different. She had
+      thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly that of an honest man
+      and a gentleman. Hadn&rsquo;t he assured her that he had no superstitions, no
+      dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their freshness? Hadn&rsquo;t he
+      all the appearance of a man living in the open air of the world,
+      indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth and knowledge
+      and believing that two intelligent people ought to look for them together
+      and, whether they found them or not, find at least some happiness in the
+      search? He had told her he loved the conventional; but there was a sense
+      in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that sense, that of the love
+      of harmony and order and decency and of all the stately offices of life,
+      she went with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing ominous.
+      But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him further and he
+      had led her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, <i>then</i> she
+      had seen where she really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had
+      taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived
+      ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the
+      house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond&rsquo;s beautiful
+      mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her.
+      Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there
+      might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her
+      husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was
+      something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity,
+      under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism
+      lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him
+      seriously, but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she&mdash;especially
+      when she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought of
+      himself&mdash;as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had
+      thought of him at first, and that indeed was the reason she had married
+      him. But when she began to see what it implied she drew back; there was
+      more in the bond than she had meant to put her name to. It implied a
+      sovereign contempt for every one but some three or four very exalted
+      people whom he envied, and for everything in the world but half a dozen
+      ideas of his own. That was very well; she would have gone with him even
+      there a long distance; for he pointed out to her so much of the baseness
+      and shabbiness of life, opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the
+      depravity, the ignorance of mankind, that she had been properly impressed
+      with the infinite vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one&rsquo;s
+      self unspotted by it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was
+      after all what one was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one&rsquo;s
+      eye, in order not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract
+      from it some recognition of one&rsquo;s own superiority. On the one hand it was
+      despicable, but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to
+      Isabel about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+      dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to her
+      admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite
+      independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities; she
+      had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,
+      avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her fellow
+      creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing, however,
+      to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of a personal
+      life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her believe it
+      was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and the thing
+      certainly would have been easier than to care for society as Osmond cared
+      for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really
+      done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared to be
+      most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have
+      hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such
+      different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity and
+      propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he deemed
+      himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never lapsed from
+      it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame of doing so.
+      That again was very well; here too she would have agreed; but they
+      attached such different ideas, such different associations and desires, to
+      the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the
+      union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one
+      a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it
+      was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. He was
+      fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted; so was she, but she
+      pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an immense esteem for
+      tradition; he had told her once that the best thing in the world was to
+      have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not to have it one must
+      immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he meant by this that she
+      hadn&rsquo;t it, but that he was better off; though from what source he had
+      derived his traditions she never learned. He had a very large collection
+      of them, however; that was very certain, and after a little she began to
+      see. The great thing was to act in accordance with them; the great thing
+      not only for him but for her. Isabel had an undefined conviction that to
+      serve for another person than their proprietor traditions must be of a
+      thoroughly superior kind; but she nevertheless assented to this intimation
+      that she too must march to the stately music that floated down from
+      unknown periods in her husband&rsquo;s past; she who of old had been so free of
+      step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There
+      were certain things they must do, a certain posture they must take,
+      certain people they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system
+      close about her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense
+      of darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her;
+      she seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of
+      course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the
+      situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had
+      pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for
+      the aspect and denomination of their life&mdash;the cause of other
+      instincts and longings, of quite another ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that her husband&rsquo;s personality, touched as it never had been,
+      stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were answered only
+      by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed of her. What did
+      he think of her&mdash;that she was base, vulgar, ignoble? He at least knew
+      now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his prevision of things
+      that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were worthy of a
+      radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real offence, as she
+      ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind
+      was to be his&mdash;attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a
+      deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the flowers; he would
+      weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece
+      of property for a proprietor already far-reaching. He didn&rsquo;t wish her to
+      be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had
+      pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his
+      favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered
+      himself that it would be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to
+      feel with him and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his
+      preferences; and Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great
+      insolence on the part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at
+      least so tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To
+      begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the
+      Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and
+      even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything
+      of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did all
+      women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their price?
+      Were there only three or four that didn&rsquo;t deceive their husbands? When
+      Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for the
+      gossip of a village parlour&mdash;a scorn that kept its freshness in a
+      very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
+      husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied, and
+      she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was enough to
+      find these facts assumed among Osmond&rsquo;s traditions&mdash;it was enough
+      without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn of his
+      assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He had plenty of
+      contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that
+      she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own conception of
+      things&mdash;this was a danger he had not allowed for. He believed he
+      should have regulated her emotions before she came to it; and Isabel could
+      easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his discovering he had been
+      too confident. When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there was
+      nothing left but to hate her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
+      had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and comfort
+      of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he had had the
+      revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If to herself the
+      idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of
+      infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be
+      expected to have had upon <i>him</i>? It was very simple; he despised her;
+      she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor
+      Isabel, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This was the
+      certitude she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to
+      measure. What was coming&mdash;what was before them? That was her constant
+      question. What would he do&mdash;what ought <i>she</i> to do? When a man
+      hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn&rsquo;t hate him, that she was sure
+      of, for every little while she felt a passionate wish to give him a
+      pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt afraid, and it used to
+      come over her, as I have intimated, that she had deceived him at the very
+      first. They were strangely married, at all events, and it was a horrible
+      life. Until that morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his
+      manner was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a special
+      reason; he was displeased at Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s staying on in Rome. He
+      thought she saw too much of her cousin&mdash;he had told her a week before
+      it was indecent she should go to him at his hotel. He would have said more
+      than this if Ralph&rsquo;s invalid state had not appeared to make it brutal to
+      denounce him; but having had to contain himself had only deepened his
+      disgust. Isabel read all this as she would have read the hour on the
+      clock-face; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in
+      her cousin stirred her husband&rsquo;s rage as if Osmond had locked her into her
+      room&mdash;which she was sure was what he wanted to do. It was her honest
+      belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she certainly couldn&rsquo;t
+      pretend to be indifferent to Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and
+      that she should never see him again, and this gave her a tenderness for
+      him that she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now;
+      how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown
+      away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart&mdash;there
+      was a livid light on everything. But Ralph&rsquo;s little visit was a lamp in
+      the darkness; for the hour that she sat with him her ache for herself
+      became somehow her ache for <i>him</i>. She felt to-day as if he had been
+      her brother. She had never had a brother, but if she had and she were in
+      trouble and he were dying, he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes,
+      if Gilbert was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn&rsquo;t
+      make Gilbert look better to sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not
+      that they talked of him&mdash;it was not that she complained. His name was
+      never uttered between them. It was simply that Ralph was generous and that
+      her husband was not. There was something in Ralph&rsquo;s talk, in his smile, in
+      the mere fact of his being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round
+      which she walked more spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he
+      made her feel what might have been. He was after all as intelligent as
+      Osmond&mdash;quite apart from his being better. And thus it seemed to her
+      an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it
+      elaborately; she was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and
+      before her again&mdash;it lived before her again,&mdash;it had never had
+      time to die&mdash;that morning in the garden at Florence when he had
+      warned her against Osmond. She had only to close her eyes to see the
+      place, to hear his voice, to feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have
+      known? What a mystery, what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert?
+      He was much more intelligent&mdash;to arrive at such a judgement as that.
+      Gilbert had never been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from
+      her at least he should never know if he was right; and this was what she
+      was taking care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion,
+      exaltation, religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange
+      exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin, had
+      an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a kindness
+      perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was, the
+      kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had once
+      wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but that, as
+      she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge and even
+      considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face. Ralph smiled to
+      himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary form of
+      consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She didn&rsquo;t wish
+      him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was the great thing,
+      and it didn&rsquo;t matter that such knowledge would rather have righted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire had
+      gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in a fever.
+      She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but her vigil
+      took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of
+      extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to her there,
+      where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of
+      rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could be
+      a better proof of it than that she should linger there half the night,
+      trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why Pansy shouldn&rsquo;t be
+      married as you would put a letter in the post-office? When the clock
+      struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for the lamp had
+      long since gone out and the candles burned down to their sockets. But even
+      then she stopped again in the middle of the room and stood there gazing at
+      a remembered vision&mdash;that of her husband and Madame Merle
+      unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which Osmond,
+      who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as ready for a
+      dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had not extended to
+      other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on those of love. If she
+      was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a
+      prevision of success. Isabel thought this unlikely; it was much more
+      likely that Pansy had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never
+      had such a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried
+      herself no less attentively than usual and kept no less anxious an eye
+      upon her vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet very tight and counted over
+      the flowers for the twentieth time. She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so
+      long since she had been in a flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly
+      admired, was never in want of partners, and very soon after their arrival
+      she gave Isabel, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had
+      rendered her this service for some minutes when she became aware of the
+      near presence of Edward Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his
+      affable smile and wore a look of almost military resolution. The change in
+      his appearance would have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case
+      to be at bottom a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope
+      than of gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to
+      notify her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet.
+      After he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      all pansies; it must be hers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel smiled kindly. &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s hers; she gave it to me to hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?&rdquo; the poor young man asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t trust you; I&rsquo;m afraid you wouldn&rsquo;t give it back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
+      But may I not at least have a single flower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the bouquet.
+      &ldquo;Choose one yourself. It&rsquo;s frightful what I&rsquo;m doing for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!&rdquo; Rosier exclaimed with his
+      glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put it into your button-hole,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t for the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I wish
+      to show her that I believe in her still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very well to show it to her, but it&rsquo;s out of place to show it to
+      others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is that all <i>you</i> can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs.
+      Osmond,&rdquo; said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. &ldquo;You know
+      our acquaintance goes back very far&mdash;quite into the days of our
+      innocent childhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make me out too old,&rdquo; Isabel patiently answered. &ldquo;You come back to
+      that very often, and I&rsquo;ve never denied it. But I must tell you that, old
+      friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry you I
+      should have refused you on the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don&rsquo;t esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere
+      Parisian trifler!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I esteem you very much, but I&rsquo;m not in love with you. What I mean by
+      that, of course, is that I&rsquo;m not in love with you for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I see. You pity me&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo; And Edward Rosier looked
+      all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to
+      him that people shouldn&rsquo;t be more pleased; but he was at least too proud
+      to show that the deficiency struck him as general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the
+      dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things, was
+      against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness, after
+      all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more than
+      before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the most
+      affecting thing in the world&mdash;young love struggling with adversity.
+      &ldquo;Would you really be very kind to her?&rdquo; she finally asked in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held in
+      his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. &ldquo;You pity me; but don&rsquo;t
+      you pity <i>her</i> a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I&rsquo;m not sure. She&rsquo;ll always enjoy life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will depend on what you call life!&rdquo; Mr. Rosier effectively said. &ldquo;She
+      won&rsquo;t enjoy being tortured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be nothing of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it. She knows what she&rsquo;s about. You&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she does, and she&rsquo;ll never disobey her father. But she&rsquo;s coming
+      back to me,&rdquo; Isabel added, &ldquo;and I must beg you to go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her
+      cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he
+      walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved this
+      sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh and
+      cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her bouquet.
+      Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers; whereupon she
+      said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at play than she
+      had recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she said nothing to
+      Isabel about him; she talked only of her partner, after he had made his
+      bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare misfortune of having
+      already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however, she had discovered her
+      lover to have abstracted a flower; though this knowledge was not needed to
+      account for the dutiful grace with which she responded to the appeal of
+      her next partner. That perfect amenity under acute constraint was part of
+      a larger system. She was again led forth by a flushed young man, this time
+      carrying her bouquet; and she had not been absent many minutes when Isabel
+      saw Lord Warburton advancing through the crowd. He presently drew near and
+      bade her good-evening; she had not seen him since the day before. He
+      looked about him, and then &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the little maid?&rdquo; he asked. It was in
+      this manner that he had formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss
+      Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s dancing,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see her somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy&rsquo;s eye. &ldquo;She sees me,
+      but she won&rsquo;t notice me,&rdquo; he then remarked. &ldquo;Are you not dancing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see, I&rsquo;m a wall-flower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you dance with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I&rsquo;d rather you should dance with the little maid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One needn&rsquo;t prevent the other&mdash;especially as she&rsquo;s engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She
+      dances very hard, and you&rsquo;ll be the fresher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She dances beautifully,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton, following her with his
+      eyes. &ldquo;Ah, at last,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;she has given me a smile.&rdquo; He stood there
+      with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel observed him
+      it came over her, as it had done before, that it was strange a man of his
+      mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It struck her as a great
+      incongruity; neither Pansy&rsquo;s small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his
+      good-nature, not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and
+      constant, were sufficient to account for it. &ldquo;I should like to dance with
+      you,&rdquo; he went on in a moment, turning back to Isabel; &ldquo;but I think I like
+      even better to talk with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s better, and it&rsquo;s more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen
+      oughtn&rsquo;t to waltz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s different. If you danced with her it would look simply like a
+      piece of kindness&mdash;as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you
+      dance with me you&rsquo;ll look as if you were doing it for your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray haven&rsquo;t I a right to amuse myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The British Empire be hanged! You&rsquo;re always laughing at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amuse yourself with talking to me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure it&rsquo;s really a recreation. You&rsquo;re too pointed; I&rsquo;ve always to
+      be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous
+      to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave my place. Pansy must find me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a little. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re wonderfully good to her,&rdquo; he said
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared a little and smiled. &ldquo;Can you imagine one&rsquo;s not being?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a
+      great deal for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve taken her out with me,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling still. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve seen
+      that she has proper clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You&rsquo;ve talked to her,
+      advised her, helped her to develop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, if she isn&rsquo;t the rose she has lived near it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain
+      visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete hilarity.
+      &ldquo;We all try to live as near it as we can,&rdquo; he said after a moment&rsquo;s
+      hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she
+      welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she
+      thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there
+      was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case
+      of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She
+      felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in
+      his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of
+      nature. Yet for all that it didn&rsquo;t suit her that he should be too near
+      her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was
+      afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn&rsquo;t. She
+      felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to
+      flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with
+      another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the
+      first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were too
+      many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which were
+      fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent that the
+      resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself to Pansy&rsquo;s
+      desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she
+      smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her attention, her
+      sympathy were immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to
+      a sentiment with which they were in no way connected&mdash;a lively
+      conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make love to
+      her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others as well; it was
+      the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought about while
+      she pinned up Pansy&rsquo;s dress. If it were so, as she feared, he was of
+      course unwitting; he himself had not taken account of his intention. But
+      this made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none less
+      impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with things
+      the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy&mdash;on whom it was
+      certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion.
+      Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspiration; he
+      had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as
+      usual, wandered up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to
+      her for exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright
+      was not of the painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary,
+      she looked as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them
+      together a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with
+      whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for which she
+      knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a
+      little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond&rsquo;s view of
+      his daughter&rsquo;s complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and
+      momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had
+      her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy&rsquo;s
+      extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But
+      Osmond had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter&rsquo;s
+      duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and
+      contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think she
+      obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her
+      doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her
+      again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound his
+      thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. &ldquo;She has promised to
+      dance with me later,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that. I suppose you&rsquo;ve engaged her for the cotillion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this he looked a little awkward. &ldquo;No, I didn&rsquo;t ask her for that. It&rsquo;s a
+      quadrille.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re not clever!&rdquo; said Isabel almost angrily. &ldquo;I told her to keep
+      the cotillion in case you should ask for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little maid, fancy that!&rdquo; And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. &ldquo;Of
+      course I will if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her
+      book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there
+      looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined
+      to ask him to remove them. She didn&rsquo;t do so, however; she only said to
+      him, after a minute, with her own raised: &ldquo;Please let me understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me ten days ago that you&rsquo;d like to marry my stepdaughter. You&rsquo;ve
+      not forgotten it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;he didn&rsquo;t mention to me that he had heard from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton stammered a little. &ldquo;I&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t send my letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you forgot <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t satisfied with it. It&rsquo;s an awkward sort of letter to write,
+      you know. But I shall send it to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At three o&rsquo;clock in the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean later, in the course of the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good. You still wish then to marry her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you afraid that you&rsquo;ll bore her?&rdquo; And as her companion stared at
+      this enquiry Isabel added: &ldquo;If she can&rsquo;t dance with you for half an hour
+      how will she be able to dance with you for life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton readily, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let her dance with other people!
+      About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you&mdash;that you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I would do it with you? I told you I&rsquo;d do nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly; so that while it&rsquo;s going on I might find some quiet corner where
+      we may sit down and talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Isabel gravely, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re much too considerate of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself, thinking,
+      in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions. Isabel
+      recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that he would
+      dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite of the
+      remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the ground
+      that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an
+      exception in Lord Warburton&rsquo;s favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all I don&rsquo;t care to dance,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a barbarous amusement:
+      I&rsquo;d much rather talk.&rdquo; And he intimated that he had discovered exactly the
+      corner he had been looking for&mdash;a quiet nook in one of the smaller
+      rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere with
+      conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished
+      to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though she
+      knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his daughter. It was
+      with his daughter&rsquo;s <i>pretendant</i>, however; that would make it right
+      for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon Edward Rosier,
+      who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance in
+      the attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped a moment and
+      asked him if he were not dancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not, if I can&rsquo;t dance with <i>her</i>!&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better go away then,&rdquo; said Isabel with the manner of good
+      counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not go till she does!&rdquo; And he let Lord Warburton pass without
+      giving him a look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked
+      Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the young man I&rsquo;ve told you about, who&rsquo;s in love with Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has reason. My husband won&rsquo;t listen to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with him?&rdquo; Lord Warburton enquired. &ldquo;He seems very
+      harmless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t money enough, and he isn&rsquo;t very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account
+      of Edward Rosier. &ldquo;Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he is, but my husband&rsquo;s very particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see.&rdquo; And Lord Warburton paused a moment. &ldquo;How much money has he
+      got?&rdquo; he then ventured to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some forty thousand francs a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that&rsquo;s very good, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I&rsquo;ve noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an
+      idiot, the young man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An idiot? Not in the least; he&rsquo;s charming. When he was twelve years old I
+      myself was in love with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t look much more than twelve to-day,&rdquo; Lord Warburton rejoined
+      vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think we
+      might sit here?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever you please.&rdquo; The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a
+      subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our
+      friends came in. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr.
+      Rosier,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered
+      what ailed him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a just man,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve a kind thought even for a
+      rival.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. &ldquo;A rival! Do you call him my
+      rival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely&mdash;if you both wish to marry the same person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but since he has no chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It
+      shows imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like me for it?&rdquo; And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain
+      eye. &ldquo;I think you mean you&rsquo;re laughing at me for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh
+      at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you
+      suppose one could do for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since I have been praising your imagination I&rsquo;ll leave you to imagine
+      that yourself,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;Pansy too would like you for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. &ldquo;Well then, I don&rsquo;t
+      understand you. You don&rsquo;t mean that she cares for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quick blush sprang to his brow. &ldquo;You told me she would have no wish
+      apart from her father&rsquo;s, and as I&rsquo;ve gathered that he would favour me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       He paused a little and then suggested &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo; through his blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it
+      would probably take her very far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That seems to me a very proper feeling,&rdquo; said Lord Warburton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; it&rsquo;s a very proper feeling.&rdquo; Isabel remained silent for some
+      moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them
+      with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she
+      said: &ldquo;But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man
+      would wish to be indebted for a wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; if the wife&rsquo;s a good one and he thinks she does well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course you must think that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do; I can&rsquo;t help it. You call that very British, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I
+      don&rsquo;t know who should know it better than you. But you&rsquo;re not in love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head. &ldquo;You like to think you are while you sit here with
+      me. But that&rsquo;s not how you strike me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
+      it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
+      Osmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree with you. I&rsquo;m delighted to have good reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn&rsquo;t care a straw
+      for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, really in love&mdash;really in love!&rdquo; Lord Warburton exclaimed,
+      folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little.
+      &ldquo;You must remember that I&rsquo;m forty-two years old. I won&rsquo;t pretend I&rsquo;m as I
+      once was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;re sure,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him.
+      Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his
+      friend. &ldquo;Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?&rdquo; She met his eyes, and
+      for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be
+      satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression
+      the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account&mdash;that she
+      was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as
+      it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he
+      suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an
+      implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a
+      betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper
+      meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she said, smiling, &ldquo;you may do, so far as I&rsquo;m
+      concerned, whatever comes into your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
+      within her companion&rsquo;s view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
+      gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had
+      been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
+      regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away&mdash;all
+      the more as Lord Warburton didn&rsquo;t follow her. She was glad of this,
+      however, and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
+      when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
+      planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. &ldquo;You did right
+      not to go away. I&rsquo;ve some comfort for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need it,&rdquo; the young man softly wailed, &ldquo;when I see you so awfully thick
+      with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of him; I&rsquo;ll do what I can for you. I&rsquo;m afraid it won&rsquo;t be
+      much, but what I can I&rsquo;ll do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. &ldquo;What has suddenly brought you
+      round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!&rdquo; she answered,
+      smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy,
+      and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing
+      guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached Lord
+      Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle.
+      He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and
+      she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then
+      Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured
+      gently: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to send your letter to her father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored&mdash;bored, in her own
+      phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
+      struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
+      unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
+      where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
+      talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
+      obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won
+      from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence,
+      was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in
+      other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull
+      Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay
+      frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more
+      explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon
+      Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not an
+      habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed
+      to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were
+      other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all.
+      She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or rather not
+      all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much more to say
+      about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and
+      wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter&rsquo;s. They are reasons,
+      however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the
+      declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence
+      was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently
+      needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was
+      convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you
+      met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At Florence there were no
+      celebrities; none at least that one had heard of. Since her brother&rsquo;s
+      marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure his wife
+      had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as
+      Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome&mdash;not to
+      the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and
+      museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the
+      rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly
+      that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for
+      herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of
+      Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of
+      her brother&rsquo;s marriage, but she had not been encouraged to renew this
+      satisfaction. Osmond didn&rsquo;t want her&mdash;that she was perfectly aware
+      of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn&rsquo;t care
+      two straws about Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn&rsquo;t let her, and the
+      money question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the
+      Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been
+      blinded by envy to Isabel&rsquo;s personal merits. She had always observed that
+      she got on better with clever women than with silly ones like herself; the
+      silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones&mdash;the
+      really clever ones&mdash;always understood her silliness. It appeared to
+      her that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel
+      and she had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their
+      feet upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should
+      both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived,
+      with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was
+      constantly expecting that Isabel would &ldquo;look down&rdquo; on her, and she as
+      constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would
+      begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared
+      much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law
+      regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor
+      Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as soon
+      have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a
+      grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband&rsquo;s sister, however; she
+      was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her
+      very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she was
+      like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably pink
+      lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle was
+      apparently the Countess&rsquo;s spiritual principle, a little loose nut that
+      tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous
+      for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there was no
+      question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not
+      scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species&mdash;a
+      fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another
+      time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it
+      all away&mdash;in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The fact of
+      not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Countess&rsquo;s
+      going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to
+      deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo
+      Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote to his
+      sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she found
+      in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it I am unable to say; but
+      she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for
+      one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother had
+      found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so
+      sorry as to have had serious thoughts&mdash;if any of the Countess&rsquo;s
+      thoughts were serious&mdash;of putting her on her guard. But she had let
+      that pass, and after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as
+      ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very
+      exact at measurements, but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw
+      herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to
+      learn now was whether Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her
+      immense pleasure to see Osmond overtopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the
+      card of a visitor&mdash;a card with the simple superscription &ldquo;Henrietta
+      C. Stackpole.&rdquo; The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she
+      didn&rsquo;t remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant then
+      remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the Countess
+      should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on seeing
+      her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded
+      herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s; the only
+      woman of letters she had ever encountered&mdash;that is the only modern
+      one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognised Miss
+      Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly
+      unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly good-natured, thought it
+      rather fine to be called on by a person of that sort of distinction. She
+      wondered if Miss Stackpole had come on account of her mother&mdash;whether
+      she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like
+      Isabel&rsquo;s friend; the Countess could see at a glance that this lady was
+      much more contemporary; and she received an impression of the improvements
+      that were taking place&mdash;chiefly in distant countries&mdash;in the
+      character (the professional character) of literary ladies. Her mother had
+      been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown over a pair of shoulders timorously
+      bared of their tight black velvet (oh the old clothes!) and a gold
+      laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of glossy ringlets. She had spoken
+      softly and vaguely, with the accent of her &ldquo;Creole&rdquo; ancestors, as she
+      always confessed; she sighed a great deal and was not at all enterprising.
+      But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was always closely buttoned and
+      compactly braided; there was something brisk and business-like in her
+      appearance; her manner was almost conscientiously familiar. It was as
+      impossible to imagine her ever vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter
+      posted without its address. The Countess could not but feel that the
+      correspondent of the <i>Interviewer</i> was much more in the movement than
+      the American Corinne. She explained that she had called on the Countess
+      because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that when she
+      visited a foreign city she liked to see something more than superficial
+      travellers. She knew Mrs. Touchett, but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and
+      even if she had been in Florence Henrietta would not have put herself out
+      for her, since Mrs. Touchett was not one of her admirations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean by that that I am?&rdquo; the Countess graciously asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I like you better than I do her,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I seem to
+      remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don&rsquo;t
+      know whether it was an accident or whether it&rsquo;s your usual style. At any
+      rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it
+      afterwards in print.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; &ldquo;I had no idea I
+      ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was about the position of woman in this city,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole
+      remarked. &ldquo;You threw a good deal of light upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The position of woman&rsquo;s very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And
+      you wrote it down and published it?&rdquo; the Countess went on. &ldquo;Ah, do let me
+      see it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write to them to send you the paper if you like,&rdquo; Henrietta said. &ldquo;I
+      didn&rsquo;t mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I
+      quoted your views.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped hands.
+      &ldquo;Do you know I&rsquo;m rather sorry you didn&rsquo;t mention my name? I should have
+      rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my views were; I
+      have so many! But I&rsquo;m not ashamed of them. I&rsquo;m not at all like my brother&mdash;I
+      suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of scandal to be put in
+      the papers; if you were to quote him he&rsquo;d never forgive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t be afraid; I shall never refer to him,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole
+      with bland dryness. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s another reason,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;why I wanted to
+      come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my dearest friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel&rsquo;s. I was trying to think what I knew
+      about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite willing to be known by that,&rdquo; Henrietta declared. &ldquo;But that
+      isn&rsquo;t what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my
+      relations with Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t permit it,&rdquo; said the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to talk about. I&rsquo;m going to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I!&rdquo; the Countess cried. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I&rsquo;ll mention you
+      by name as my companion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside her
+      visitor. &ldquo;Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won&rsquo;t like it, but he
+      need never see it. Besides, he doesn&rsquo;t know how to read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta&rsquo;s large eyes became immense. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t know how to read? May I
+      put that into my letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into your letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the <i>Interviewer</i>. That&rsquo;s my paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
+      &ldquo;She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered that
+      she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess listened with extreme interest. &ldquo;The reason&rsquo;s Osmond,&rdquo; she
+      pregnantly remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isabel ought to make a stand,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid she has
+      changed a great deal. I told her she would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn&rsquo;t my
+      brother like you?&rdquo; the Countess ingenuously added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know and I don&rsquo;t care. He&rsquo;s perfectly welcome not to like me; I
+      don&rsquo;t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
+      people did. A journalist can&rsquo;t hope to do much good unless he gets a good
+      deal hated; that&rsquo;s the way he knows how his work goes on. And it&rsquo;s just
+      the same for a lady. But I didn&rsquo;t expect it of Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that she hates you?&rdquo; the Countess enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know; I want to see. That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m going to Rome for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what a tiresome errand!&rdquo; the Countess exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t write to me in the same way; it&rsquo;s easy to see there&rsquo;s a
+      difference. If you know anything,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole went on, &ldquo;I should like
+      to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. &ldquo;I know
+      very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn&rsquo;t like me any
+      better than he appears to like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet you&rsquo;re not a lady correspondent,&rdquo; said Henrietta pensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they&rsquo;ve invited me&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      to stay in the house!&rdquo; And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
+      exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s
+      disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have gone if
+      she <i>had</i> asked me. That is I think I shouldn&rsquo;t; and I&rsquo;m glad I
+      hadn&rsquo;t to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn&rsquo;t have been
+      happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that&rsquo;s not
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rome&rsquo;s very good just now,&rdquo; said the Countess; &ldquo;there are all sorts of
+      brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?&rdquo;
+       Henrietta enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know him, but I&rsquo;m told he&rsquo;s extremely grand seigneur. He&rsquo;s making
+      love to Isabel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Making love to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m told; I don&rsquo;t know the details,&rdquo; said the Countess lightly. &ldquo;But
+      Isabel&rsquo;s pretty safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said nothing.
+      &ldquo;When do you go to Rome?&rdquo; she enquired abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for a week, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to-morrow,&rdquo; Henrietta said. &ldquo;I think I had better not wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, I&rsquo;m sorry; I&rsquo;m having some dresses made. I&rsquo;m told Isabel
+      receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you at your
+      pension.&rdquo; Henrietta sat still&mdash;she was lost in thought; and suddenly
+      the Countess cried: &ldquo;Ah, but if you don&rsquo;t go with me you can&rsquo;t describe
+      our journey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking of
+      something else and presently expressed it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that I understand
+      you about Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand me? I mean he&rsquo;s very nice, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?&rdquo; Henrietta
+      enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s certain
+      all the nice men do it. Get married and you&rsquo;ll see!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That idea would be enough to prevent me,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;I should
+      want my own husband; I shouldn&rsquo;t want any one else&rsquo;s. Do you mean that
+      Isabel&rsquo;s guilty&mdash;guilty&mdash;?&rdquo; And she paused a little, choosing
+      her expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I mean she&rsquo;s guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that
+      Osmond&rsquo;s very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great deal
+      at the house. I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;re scandalised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m just anxious,&rdquo; Henrietta said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more
+      confidence. I&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; the Countess added quickly: &ldquo;if it will be a
+      comfort to you I engage to draw him off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her
+      gaze. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me,&rdquo; she said after a while. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the
+      idea you seem to suppose. I&rsquo;m not afraid for Isabel&mdash;in that way. I&rsquo;m
+      only afraid she&rsquo;s unhappy&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I want to get at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and
+      sarcastic. &ldquo;That may very well be; for my part I should like to know
+      whether Osmond is.&rdquo; Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she&rsquo;s really changed that must be at the bottom of it,&rdquo; Henrietta went
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see; she&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; said the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, she may <i>not</i> tell me&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if Osmond isn&rsquo;t amusing himself&mdash;in his own old way&mdash;I
+      flatter myself I shall discover it,&rdquo; the Countess rejoined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care for that,&rdquo; said Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do immensely! If Isabel&rsquo;s unhappy I&rsquo;m very sorry for her, but I can&rsquo;t
+      help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I can&rsquo;t
+      tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and marry him
+      for? If she had listened to me she&rsquo;d have got rid of him. I&rsquo;ll forgive
+      her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she has simply
+      allowed him to trample upon her I don&rsquo;t know that I shall even pity her.
+      But I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s very likely. I count upon finding that if she&rsquo;s
+      miserable she has at least made <i>him</i> so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+      expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Osmond
+      unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of
+      fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose
+      mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a
+      capacity for coarseness even there. &ldquo;It will be better if they love each
+      other,&rdquo; she said for edification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t. He can&rsquo;t love any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for Isabel.
+      I shall positively start to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isabel certainly has devotees,&rdquo; said the Countess, smiling very vividly.
+      &ldquo;I declare I don&rsquo;t pity her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be I can&rsquo;t assist her,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were well
+      not to have illusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have wanted to, at any rate; that&rsquo;s something. I believe that&rsquo;s
+      what you came from America for,&rdquo; the Countess suddenly added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I wanted to look after her,&rdquo; Henrietta said serenely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an
+      eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come. &ldquo;Ah,
+      that&rsquo;s very pretty <i>c&rsquo;est bien gentil</i>! Isn&rsquo;t it what they call
+      friendship?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what they call it. I thought I had better come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very happy&mdash;she&rsquo;s very fortunate,&rdquo; the Countess went on. &ldquo;She
+      has others besides.&rdquo; And then she broke out passionately. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s more
+      fortunate than I! I&rsquo;m as unhappy as she&mdash;I&rsquo;ve a very bad husband;
+      he&rsquo;s a great deal worse than Osmond. And I&rsquo;ve no friends. I thought I had,
+      but they&rsquo;re gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you&rsquo;ve done
+      for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She gazed
+      at her companion a moment, and then: &ldquo;Look here, Countess, I&rsquo;ll do
+      anything for you that you like. I&rsquo;ll wait over and travel with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: &ldquo;only
+      describe me in the newspaper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her understand
+      that she could give no fictitious representation of her journey to Rome.
+      Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On quitting her she took
+      the way to the Lung&rsquo; Arno, the sunny quay beside the yellow river where
+      the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had
+      learned her way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very
+      quick in such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great decision
+      of step out of the little square which forms the approach to the bridge of
+      the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and
+      stopped in front of one of the hotels which overlook that delightful
+      structure. Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card
+      and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our
+      privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the
+      brief query: &ldquo;Could I see you this evening for a few moments on a very
+      important matter?&rdquo; Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for
+      Rome. Armed with this little document she approached the porter, who now
+      had taken up his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at
+      home. The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out
+      about twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and
+      begged it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued
+      her course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through
+      which she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of
+      paintings. Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads
+      to the upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated
+      with antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented
+      an empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble
+      floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but
+      scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of
+      artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had
+      after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the
+      little Correggio of the Tribune&mdash;the Virgin kneeling down before the
+      sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands to
+      him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had a special
+      devotion to this intimate scene&mdash;she thought it the most beautiful
+      picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she
+      was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that
+      they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite
+      work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it involved
+      a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn into the
+      Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a little
+      exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just been at your hotel,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I left a card for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very much honoured,&rdquo; Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not to honour you I did it; I&rsquo;ve called on you before and I know
+      you don&rsquo;t like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. &ldquo;I shall be very glad to
+      hear what you wish to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t like to talk with me,&rdquo; said Henrietta. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t care for
+      that; I don&rsquo;t talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come
+      and see me; but since I&rsquo;ve met you here this will do as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just going away,&rdquo; Goodwood stated; &ldquo;but of course I&rsquo;ll stop.&rdquo; He
+      was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was so
+      much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on any terms.
+      She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I want to. I&rsquo;ve been here an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you&rsquo;ve seen my Correggio,&rdquo; said Henrietta. &ldquo;I came up on
+      purpose to have a look at it.&rdquo; She went into the Tribune and he slowly
+      accompanied her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I&rsquo;ve seen it, but I didn&rsquo;t know it was yours. I don&rsquo;t remember
+      pictures&mdash;especially that sort.&rdquo; She had pointed out her favourite
+      work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s about something less harmonious!&rdquo; They had the
+      small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves;
+      there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus. &ldquo;I want you to
+      do me a favour,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at the
+      sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man than our
+      earlier friend. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s something I shan&rsquo;t like,&rdquo; he said rather
+      loudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;ll like it. If you did it would be no favour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let&rsquo;s hear it,&rdquo; he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious of
+      his patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say there&rsquo;s no particular reason why you should do me a favour.
+      Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you&rsquo;d let me I&rsquo;d gladly do you
+      one.&rdquo; Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had
+      an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a hard
+      surface, couldn&rsquo;t help being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely
+      showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked
+      away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly; he
+      seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued therefore
+      disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. &ldquo;I may say now, indeed&mdash;it
+      seems a good time&mdash;that if I&rsquo;ve ever annoyed you (and I think
+      sometimes I have) it&rsquo;s because I knew I was willing to suffer annoyance
+      for you. I&rsquo;ve troubled you&mdash;doubtless. But I&rsquo;d <i>take</i> trouble
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood hesitated. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re taking trouble now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am&mdash;some. I want you to consider whether it&rsquo;s better on the
+      whole that you should go to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were going to say that!&rdquo; he answered rather artlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>have</i> considered it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I have, very carefully. I&rsquo;ve looked all round it. Otherwise I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t have come so far as this. That&rsquo;s what I stayed in Paris two
+      months for. I was thinking it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you
+      were so much attracted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best for whom, do you mean?&rdquo; Goodwood demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it won&rsquo;t do <i>her</i> any good! I don&rsquo;t flatter myself that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it do her some harm?&mdash;that&rsquo;s the question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what it will matter to her. I&rsquo;m nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But
+      if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and that&rsquo;s why you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How will it help you?&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I want to know,&rdquo; said Miss
+      Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I can&rsquo;t tell you. It&rsquo;s just what I was thinking about in
+      Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will make you more discontented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you say &lsquo;more&rsquo; so?&rdquo; Goodwood asked rather sternly. &ldquo;How do you
+      know I&rsquo;m discontented?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta, hesitating a little, &ldquo;you seem never to have cared
+      for another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know what I care for?&rdquo; he cried with a big blush. &ldquo;Just now I
+      care to go to Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression.
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she observed at last, &ldquo;I only wanted to tell you what I think; I
+      had it on my mind. Of course you think it&rsquo;s none of my business. But
+      nothing is any one&rsquo;s business, on that principle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you; I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you for your interest,&rdquo;
+       said Caspar Goodwood. &ldquo;I shall go to Rome and I shan&rsquo;t hurt Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?&mdash;that&rsquo;s the real
+      issue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she in need of help?&rdquo; he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most women always are,&rdquo; said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness
+      and generalising less hopefully than usual. &ldquo;If you go to Rome,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll be a true friend&mdash;not a selfish one!&rdquo; And she
+      turned off and began to look at the pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round
+      the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard something
+      about her here,&rdquo; he then resumed. &ldquo;I should like to know what you&rsquo;ve
+      heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion
+      there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking
+      some minutes, to make no superficial exception. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve heard,&rdquo; she
+      answered; &ldquo;but as I don&rsquo;t want you to go to Rome I won&rsquo;t tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as you please. I shall see for myself,&rdquo; he said. Then
+      inconsistently, for him, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard she&rsquo;s unhappy!&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you won&rsquo;t see that!&rdquo; Henrietta exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not. When do you start?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss
+      Stackpole&rsquo;s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the
+      same character as Gilbert Osmond&rsquo;s, but it had at this moment an equal
+      distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s virtues than a
+      reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant,
+      and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged.
+      Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things
+      in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he
+      supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was
+      this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Stackpole
+      didn&rsquo;t take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always
+      ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when they met in
+      Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the
+      assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to
+      allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was <i>not</i> always thinking of her; he was
+      perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of
+      men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into
+      the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn&rsquo;t care so much; he even
+      wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave
+      him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections&mdash;which
+      show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour was from Gilbert
+      Osmond&rsquo;s. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go
+      alone, in the night-train. He hated the European railway-carriages, in
+      which one sat for hours in a vise, knee to knee and nose to nose with a
+      foreigner to whom one presently found one&rsquo;s self objecting with all the
+      added vehemence of one&rsquo;s wish to have the window open; and if they were
+      worse at night even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and
+      dream of an American saloon-car. But he couldn&rsquo;t take a night-train when
+      Miss Stackpole was starting in the morning; it struck him that this would
+      be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she
+      had gone unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. It
+      wouldn&rsquo;t do to start the next day. She worried him; she oppressed him; the
+      idea of spending the day in a European railway-carriage with her offered a
+      complication of irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it
+      was his duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions
+      about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave
+      for some moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry
+      but in a tone of extreme distinctness, &ldquo;Of course if you&rsquo;re going
+      to-morrow I&rsquo;ll go too, as I may be of assistance to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!&rdquo; Henrietta returned imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be
+      displeased by the continuance of Ralph&rsquo;s visit to Rome. That knowledge was
+      very present to her as she went to her cousin&rsquo;s hotel the day after she
+      had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and
+      at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the
+      sources of Osmond&rsquo;s opposition. He wished her to have no freedom of mind,
+      and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of freedom. It was
+      just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, that it was a
+      refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that she partook of
+      this refreshment in spite of her husband&rsquo;s aversion to it, that is partook
+      of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken
+      to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was her appointed and
+      inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous
+      blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however;
+      constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and
+      sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her with shame
+      as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had lost sight of
+      this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband&rsquo;s intentions were
+      as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the less, the rapid
+      approach of the day when she should have to take back something she had
+      solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous; she tried
+      to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do nothing to help it by
+      beginning first; he would put that burden upon her to the end. He had not
+      yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph; but she felt sure that
+      unless Ralph should very soon depart this prohibition would come. How
+      could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could
+      perfectly understand her husband&rsquo;s wish for the event; she didn&rsquo;t, to be
+      just, see how he <i>could</i> like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never
+      said a word against him, but Osmond&rsquo;s sore, mute protest was none the less
+      founded. If he should positively interpose, if he should put forth his
+      authority, she would have to decide, and that wouldn&rsquo;t be easy. The
+      prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance;
+      there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture, she found
+      herself wishing Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use
+      that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a
+      feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that
+      almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act&mdash;the
+      single sacred act&mdash;of her life. That appeared to make the whole
+      future hideous. To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any
+      open acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that
+      their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no
+      condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal readjustment.
+      They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was to have been
+      exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there was no
+      conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel went to
+      the Hôtel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure of propriety
+      was in the canon of taste, and there couldn&rsquo;t have been a better proof
+      that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation. Isabel&rsquo;s
+      application of that measure had been particularly free to-day, for in
+      addition to the general truth that she couldn&rsquo;t leave Ralph to die alone
+      she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was Gilbert&rsquo;s
+      business as well as her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. &ldquo;I want you to answer
+      me a question. It&rsquo;s about Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I guess your question,&rdquo; Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out of
+      which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t say I can do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re intimate with him,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve a great deal of observation
+      of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he dissimulate? That&rsquo;s not his nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,&rdquo; said Ralph
+      with an air of private amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a certain extent&mdash;yes. But is he really in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much, I think. I can make that out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+      mystification. &ldquo;You say that as if you were disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s after all no business of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very philosophic,&rdquo; said her cousin. And then in a moment: &ldquo;May I
+      enquire what you&rsquo;re talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared. &ldquo;I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he wants, of
+      all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I&rsquo;ve told you that before,
+      without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I
+      think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, for Pansy, no!&rdquo; cried Ralph very positively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said just now he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph waited a moment. &ldquo;That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head gravely. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s nonsense, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton&rsquo;s, not mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be very tiresome.&rdquo; She spoke, as she flattered herself, with
+      much subtlety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you indeed,&rdquo; Ralph went on, &ldquo;that to me he has denied
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you
+      that he&rsquo;s in love with Pansy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has spoken very well of her&mdash;very properly. He has let me know,
+      of course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he really think it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what Warburton really thinks&mdash;!&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves on
+      which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked up, and
+      then, &ldquo;Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!&rdquo; she cried abruptly and
+      passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the words
+      shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of relief, of
+      pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf between them
+      had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a moment: &ldquo;How
+      unhappy you must be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the
+      first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. &ldquo;When I
+      talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense,&rdquo; she said with a quick
+      smile. &ldquo;The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments! The
+      matter&rsquo;s very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can&rsquo;t
+      undertake to see him through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to succeed easily,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but he has not always succeeded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss
+      Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he&rsquo;ll let the
+      matter drop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll do nothing dishonourable,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to
+      leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it&rsquo;s cruel
+      to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cruel to the other person perhaps&mdash;the one she cares for. But
+      Warburton isn&rsquo;t obliged to mind that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, cruel to her,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;She would be very unhappy if she were to
+      allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea seems
+      to amuse you; of course you&rsquo;re not in love with him. He has the merit&mdash;for
+      Pansy&mdash;of being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance that Lord
+      Warburton isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;d be very good to her,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a
+      word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with
+      perfect propriety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would your husband like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain
+      satisfaction himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he commissioned you to obtain it?&rdquo; Ralph ventured to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s&mdash;an older
+      friend, that is, than Gilbert&mdash;I should take an interest in his
+      intentions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. &ldquo;Let me understand. Are you pleading
+      his cause?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in the least. I&rsquo;m very glad he shouldn&rsquo;t become your stepdaughter&rsquo;s
+      husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!&rdquo; said Ralph, smiling.
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven&rsquo;t pushed
+      him enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. &ldquo;He knows me well enough
+      not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention of pushing, I
+      presume. I&rsquo;m not afraid I shall not be able to justify myself!&rdquo; she said
+      lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to
+      Ralph&rsquo;s infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural
+      face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage
+      desire to hear her complain of her husband&mdash;hear her say that she
+      should be held accountable for Lord Warburton&rsquo;s defection. Ralph was
+      certain that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the
+      form that in such an event Osmond&rsquo;s displeasure would take. It could only
+      take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of it&mdash;to
+      let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It little
+      mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+      satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not
+      deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt
+      cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely
+      mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did she
+      seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention? Why
+      did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her? How
+      could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her
+      humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
+      mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+      trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
+      bound to consider. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be decidedly at variance, all the same,&rdquo; he
+      said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
+      understood, &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find yourselves thinking very differently,&rdquo; he
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may easily happen, among the most united couples!&rdquo; She took up her
+      parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a
+      matter we can hardly quarrel about, however,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;for almost all
+      the interest is on his side. That&rsquo;s very natural. Pansy&rsquo;s after all his
+      daughter&mdash;not mine.&rdquo; And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn&rsquo;t leave him without his
+      letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
+      opportunity to lose. &ldquo;Do you know what his interest will make him say?&rdquo; he
+      asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly&mdash;not
+      discouragingly&mdash;and he went on. &ldquo;It will make him say that your want
+      of zeal is owing to jealousy.&rdquo; He stopped a moment; her face made him
+      afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To jealousy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To jealousy of his daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed red and threw back her head. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not kind,&rdquo; she said in a
+      voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be frank with me and you&rsquo;ll see,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
+      tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
+      mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to
+      the girl&rsquo;s room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was always
+      in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and
+      the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she
+      was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had blown
+      out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the
+      economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now
+      more careful than ever to observe; so that the room was lighted only by a
+      couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they
+      were numerous, and Pansy&rsquo;s virginal bower was an immense chamber with a
+      dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of
+      it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick
+      deference, to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with
+      her shy sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task&mdash;the only thing was to
+      perform it as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she
+      warned herself against betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking
+      too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But
+      Pansy seemed to have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for
+      after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little
+      nearer to the fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down
+      on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on
+      her stepmother&rsquo;s knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own
+      lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she
+      desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke
+      it. The girl&rsquo;s father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and
+      indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a
+      disposition to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her
+      tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+      Pansy&rsquo;s supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Isabel
+      had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the
+      effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with
+      her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half
+      in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of
+      the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked out for
+      sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When Isabel
+      said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might have been
+      going on in relation to her getting married, but that her silence had not
+      been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire to leave her at
+      liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer, and with a
+      little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she
+      had greatly wished her to speak and that she begged her to advise her now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s difficult for me to advise you,&rdquo; Isabel returned. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how
+      I can undertake that. That&rsquo;s for your father; you must get his advice and,
+      above all, you must act on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. &ldquo;I think I
+      should like your advice better than papa&rsquo;s,&rdquo; she presently remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not as it should be,&rdquo; said Isabel coldly. &ldquo;I love you very much,
+      but your father loves you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t because you love me&mdash;it&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;re a lady,&rdquo; Pansy
+      answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. &ldquo;A lady can
+      advise a young girl better than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father&rsquo;s wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; said the child eagerly, &ldquo;I must do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I speak to you now about your getting married it&rsquo;s not for your
+      own sake, it&rsquo;s for mine,&rdquo; Isabel went on. &ldquo;If I try to learn from you what
+      you expect, what you desire, it&rsquo;s only that I may act accordingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stared, and then very quickly, &ldquo;Will you do everything I want?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before I say yes I must know what such things are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to
+      marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so if
+      her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn&rsquo;t allow it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, it&rsquo;s impossible,&rdquo; Isabel pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s impossible,&rdquo; said Pansy without a sigh and with the same
+      extreme attention in her clear little face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must think of something else then,&rdquo; Isabel went on; but Pansy,
+      sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the
+      least success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think of those who think of you,&rdquo; she said with a faint smile. &ldquo;I
+      know Mr. Rosier thinks of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought not to,&rdquo; said Isabel loftily. &ldquo;Your father has expressly
+      requested he shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t help it, because he knows I think of <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t think of him. There&rsquo;s some excuse for him, perhaps; but
+      there&rsquo;s none for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would try to find one,&rdquo; the girl exclaimed as if she were
+      praying to the Madonna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be very sorry to attempt it,&rdquo; said the Madonna with unusual
+      frigidity. &ldquo;If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think
+      of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but I don&rsquo;t admit Mr. Rosier&rsquo;s right!&rdquo; Isabel hypocritically cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel, taking
+      advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of
+      disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her with the assurance that
+      she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And
+      she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might
+      never marry Mr. Rosier, she would never cease to think of him. She
+      appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of
+      course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning. She
+      was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This might
+      seem an important step toward taking another, but for Pansy, evidently, it
+      failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness toward her
+      father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only the sweetness
+      of fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite intimation that she
+      could prove it better by remaining single than even by marrying him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father would like you to make a better marriage,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Rosier&rsquo;s fortune is not at all large.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean better&mdash;if that would be good enough? And I have
+      myself so little money; why should I look for a fortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.&rdquo; With which
+      Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face
+      were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Osmond; it was
+      what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy&rsquo;s solemn eyes, fixed on her own,
+      almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light of
+      the girl&rsquo;s preference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should you like me to do?&rdquo; her companion softly demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous
+      vagueness. &ldquo;To remember all the pleasure it&rsquo;s in your power to give your
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To marry some one else, you mean&mdash;if he should ask me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Isabel&rsquo;s answer caused itself to be waited for; then she
+      heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy&rsquo;s attention seemed to
+      make. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;to marry some one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&rsquo;s eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was doubting
+      her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting up
+      from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands unclasped
+      and then quavered out: &ldquo;Well, I hope no one will ask me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready to
+      ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he can have been ready,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would appear so if he had been sure he&rsquo;d succeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he had been sure? Then he wasn&rsquo;t ready!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment
+      looking into the fire. &ldquo;Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,&rdquo; she
+      resumed; &ldquo;of course you know it&rsquo;s of him I speak.&rdquo; She found herself,
+      against her expectation, almost placed in the position of justifying
+      herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more crudely than she
+      had intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean
+      that he&rsquo;ll propose for me I think you&rsquo;re mistaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. &ldquo;Lord Warburton won&rsquo;t
+      propose simply to please papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father would like you to encourage him,&rdquo; Isabel went on
+      mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I encourage him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Your father must tell you that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if she
+      were in possession of a bright assurance. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no danger&mdash;no
+      danger!&rdquo; she declared at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her
+      believing it, which conduced to Isabel&rsquo;s awkwardness. She felt accused of
+      dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect she
+      was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that there
+      was a danger. But she didn&rsquo;t; she only said&mdash;in her embarrassment
+      rather wide of the mark&mdash;that he surely had been most kind, most
+      friendly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he has been very kind,&rdquo; Pansy answered. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I like him
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then is the difficulty so great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always felt sure of his knowing that I don&rsquo;t want&mdash;what did you
+      say I should do?&mdash;to encourage him. He knows I don&rsquo;t want to marry,
+      and he wants me to know that he therefore won&rsquo;t trouble me. That&rsquo;s the
+      meaning of his kindness. It&rsquo;s as if he said to me: &lsquo;I like you very much,
+      but if it doesn&rsquo;t please you I&rsquo;ll never say it again.&rsquo; I think that&rsquo;s very
+      kind, very noble,&rdquo; Pansy went on with deepening positiveness. &ldquo;That is all
+      we&rsquo;ve said to each other. And he doesn&rsquo;t care for me either. Ah no,
+      there&rsquo;s no danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this
+      submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy&rsquo;s wisdom&mdash;began
+      almost to retreat before it. &ldquo;You must tell your father that,&rdquo; she
+      remarked reservedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;d rather not,&rdquo; Pansy unreservedly answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You oughtn&rsquo;t to let him have false hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he
+      believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa
+      won&rsquo;t propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,&rdquo; said
+      the child very lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion
+      draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility.
+      Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that she
+      herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock. Nevertheless
+      it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Osmond, that she was on
+      her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the influence of this
+      sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she retired&mdash;a
+      suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have done her
+      utmost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a
+      nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for Isabel
+      to pass. &ldquo;I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!&rdquo; she remarked very gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s drawing-room for several
+      days, and Isabel couldn&rsquo;t fail to observe that her husband said nothing to
+      her about having received a letter from him. She couldn&rsquo;t fail to observe,
+      either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that, though it was
+      not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend
+      kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four days he alluded to his
+      absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a
+      tradesman with a bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about him,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;I saw him last Friday at the
+      German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has never written to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I supposed, from your not having told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s an odd fish,&rdquo; said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel&rsquo;s making no
+      rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five days to
+      indite a letter. &ldquo;Does he form his words with such difficulty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Isabel was reduced to replying. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had a letter
+      from him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate
+      correspondence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation
+      drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the
+      afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you say
+      to him?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She just faltered. &ldquo;I think I told him not to forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you believe there was a danger of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you say, he&rsquo;s an odd fish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently he has forgotten it,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;Be so good as to remind
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like me to write to him?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no objection whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You expect too much of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I shall disappoint you,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself! If you
+      really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t
+      be easy, with you working against me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of
+      looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of her
+      but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully cruel
+      intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable necessity of
+      thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence. That effect had
+      never been so marked as now. &ldquo;I think you accuse me of something very
+      base,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn&rsquo;t after all come
+      forward it will be because you&rsquo;ve kept him off. I don&rsquo;t know that it&rsquo;s
+      base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I&rsquo;ve no
+      doubt you&rsquo;ve the finest ideas about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you I would do what I could,&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that gained you time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him
+      beautiful. &ldquo;How much you must want to make sure of him!&rdquo; she exclaimed in
+      a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her words,
+      of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made a
+      comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had once
+      held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich enough to let
+      it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her&mdash;a horrible
+      delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her that none
+      of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing otherwise,
+      however; he only said quickly: &ldquo;Yes, I want it immensely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed
+      the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing Osmond.
+      He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress; a movement
+      that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a perception of
+      ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English address, in which a
+      vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element of good-breeding; in
+      which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving transitions. Osmond
+      was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel remarked, promptly
+      enough, that they had been in the act of talking about their visitor. Upon
+      this her husband added that they hadn&rsquo;t known what was become of him&mdash;they
+      had been afraid he had gone away. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he explained, smiling and looking
+      at Osmond; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m only on the point of going.&rdquo; And then he mentioned that he
+      found himself suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow
+      or the day after. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry to leave poor Touchett!&rdquo; he ended by
+      exclaiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back in
+      his chair, listening. Isabel didn&rsquo;t look at him; she could only fancy how
+      he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor&rsquo;s face, where they were the more
+      free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel
+      was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it expressive.
+      &ldquo;You had better take poor Touchett with you,&rdquo; she heard her husband say,
+      lightly enough, in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had better wait for warmer weather,&rdquo; Lord Warburton answered. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t advise him to travel just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see
+      them again&mdash;unless indeed they should come to England, a course he
+      strongly recommended. Why shouldn&rsquo;t they come to England in the autumn?&mdash;that
+      struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such pleasure to do
+      what he could for them&mdash;to have them come and spend a month with him.
+      Osmond, by his own admission, had been to England but once; which was an
+      absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and intelligence. It was
+      just the country for him&mdash;he would be sure to get on well there. Then
+      Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what a good time she had had
+      there and if she didn&rsquo;t want to try it again. Didn&rsquo;t she want to see
+      Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really very good. Touchett didn&rsquo;t
+      take proper care of it, but it was the sort of place you could hardly
+      spoil by letting it alone. Why didn&rsquo;t they come and pay Touchett a visit?
+      He surely must have asked them. Hadn&rsquo;t asked them? What an ill-mannered
+      wretch!&mdash;and Lord Warburton promised to give the master of
+      Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a mere accident; he
+      would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with Touchett and a
+      month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the people they must know
+      there, they really wouldn&rsquo;t find it half bad. Lord Warburton added that it
+      would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told him that she had never been
+      to England and whom he had assured it was a country she deserved to see.
+      Of course she didn&rsquo;t need to go to England to be admired&mdash;that was
+      her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense success there, she
+      certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked if she were not at
+      home: couldn&rsquo;t he say good-bye? Not that he liked good-byes&mdash;he
+      always funked them. When he left England the other day he hadn&rsquo;t said
+      good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind to leave Rome
+      without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a final interview. What could be more
+      dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted&mdash;one
+      remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said
+      a lot of things one shouldn&rsquo;t, simply from a sense that one had to say
+      something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled one&rsquo;s wits. He had it at
+      present, and that was the effect it produced on him. If Mrs. Osmond didn&rsquo;t
+      think he spoke as he ought she must set it down to agitation; it was no
+      light thing to part with Mrs. Osmond. He was really very sorry to be
+      going. He had thought of writing to her instead of calling&mdash;but he
+      would write to her at any rate, to tell her a lot of things that would be
+      sure to occur to him as soon as he had left the house. They must think
+      seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the
+      announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord
+      Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other manner,
+      and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was capable of
+      executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked him quite
+      well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He would do that
+      on any occasion&mdash;not from impudence but simply from the habit of
+      success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband&rsquo;s power to frustrate this
+      faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on in her mind. On
+      one side she listened to their visitor; said what was proper to him; read,
+      more or less, between the lines of what he said himself; and wondered how
+      he would have spoken if he had found her alone. On the other she had a
+      perfect consciousness of Osmond&rsquo;s emotion. She felt almost sorry for him;
+      he was condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of cursing.
+      He had had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish into smoke, he was
+      obliged to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs. Not that he troubled
+      himself to smile very brightly; he treated their friend on the whole to as
+      vacant a countenance as so clever a man could very well wear. It was
+      indeed a part of Osmond&rsquo;s cleverness that he could look consummately
+      uncompromised. His present appearance, however, was not a confession of
+      disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond&rsquo;s habitual system, which
+      was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He
+      had been intent on this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his
+      eagerness to irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible
+      son-in-law as he treated every one&mdash;with an air of being interested
+      in him only for his own advantage, not for any profit to a person already
+      so generally, so perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no
+      sign now of an inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of
+      gain&mdash;not the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if
+      it was any satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a
+      satisfaction; she wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and
+      at the same time she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord
+      Warburton. Osmond, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor,
+      the advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it
+      was something almost as good&mdash;that of not attempting. As he leaned
+      back in his place, listening but vaguely to the other&rsquo;s friendly offers
+      and suppressed explanations&mdash;as if it were only proper to assume that
+      they were addressed essentially to his wife&mdash;he had at least (since
+      so little else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he
+      personally had kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he
+      was now able to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was
+      something to be able to look as if the leave-taker&rsquo;s movements had no
+      relation to his own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Osmond&rsquo;s
+      performance was in its very nature more finished. Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      position was after all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why
+      he shouldn&rsquo;t leave Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had
+      stopped short of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour
+      was safe. Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal
+      that they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success
+      Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but left
+      Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration. Isabel,
+      even while she made this remark, could see the great vista which had
+      suddenly opened out in her husband&rsquo;s mind, with Pansy&rsquo;s little figure
+      marching up the middle of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither
+      Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of
+      giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if it
+      were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed and
+      stayed; Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it was not
+      to see Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would rather not
+      see Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone&mdash;he had something to
+      say to her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she was afraid it
+      would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense with
+      explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of good taste
+      to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish to say
+      just the last word of all to the ladies. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a letter to write before
+      dinner,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you must excuse me. I&rsquo;ll see if my daughter&rsquo;s
+      disengaged, and if she is she shall know you&rsquo;re here. Of course when you
+      come to Rome you&rsquo;ll always look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you about
+      the English expedition: she decides all those things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little
+      speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole it
+      was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he left the
+      room Lord Warburton would have no pretext for saying, &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s very
+      angry&rdquo;; which would have been extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless,
+      if he had done so, she would have said: &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be anxious. He doesn&rsquo;t
+      hate you: it&rsquo;s me that he hates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend showed
+      a certain vague awkwardness&mdash;sitting down in another chair, handling
+      two or three of the objects that were near him. &ldquo;I hope he&rsquo;ll make Miss
+      Osmond come,&rdquo; he presently remarked. &ldquo;I want very much to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s the last time,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I. She doesn&rsquo;t care for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she doesn&rsquo;t care for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wonder at it,&rdquo; he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come to England, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we had better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you owe me a visit. Don&rsquo;t you remember that you were to have come to
+      Lockleigh once, and you never did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything&rsquo;s changed since then,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not changed for the worse, surely&mdash;as far as we&rsquo;re concerned. To see
+      you under my roof&rdquo;&mdash;and he hung fire but an instant&mdash;&ldquo;would be a
+      great satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred.
+      They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in,
+      already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek. She
+      shook hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his face with a
+      fixed smile&mdash;a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship probably
+      never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going away,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want to bid you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Lord Warburton.&rdquo; Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Lord Warburton,&rdquo; Pansy answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. &ldquo;You ought to be very
+      happy&mdash;you&rsquo;ve got a guardian angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I shall be happy,&rdquo; said Pansy in the tone of a person whose
+      certainties were always cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should
+      ever fail you, remember&mdash;remember&mdash;&rdquo; And her interlocutor
+      stammered a little. &ldquo;Think of me sometimes, you know!&rdquo; he said with a
+      vague laugh. Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her
+      stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you <i>are</i> my guardian angel!&rdquo; she exclaimed very sweetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not an angel of any kind. I&rsquo;m at the most your
+      good friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good friend then&mdash;to have asked papa to be gentle with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve asked your father nothing,&rdquo; said Isabel, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a
+      very kind kiss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;that was quite his own idea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she was
+      to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn&rsquo;t put himself
+      the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after their
+      dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till late in
+      the evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him before going
+      to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his usual munificence,
+      and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his daughter had been
+      injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was a partial
+      expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his wife. She
+      was about to follow Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she would
+      remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the
+      drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand what you wish to do,&rdquo; he said in a moment. &ldquo;I should
+      like to know&mdash;so that I may know how to act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just now I wish to go to bed. I&rsquo;m very tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there&mdash;take a
+      comfortable place.&rdquo; And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were
+      scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not,
+      however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair. The
+      fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew her
+      cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re trying to
+      humiliate me,&rdquo; Osmond went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a most absurd undertaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea what you mean,&rdquo; she returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve played a very deep game; you&rsquo;ve managed it beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that I&rsquo;ve managed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.&rdquo; And he
+      stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
+      her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know
+      that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that Lord Warburton&rsquo;s under an obligation to come back you&rsquo;re
+      wrong,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s under none whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I complain of. But when I say he&rsquo;ll come back I don&rsquo;t
+      mean he&rsquo;ll come from a sense of duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, that&rsquo;s a shallow judgement. Rome&rsquo;s inexhaustible.&rdquo; And Osmond
+      began to walk about again. &ldquo;However, about that perhaps there&rsquo;s no hurry,&rdquo;
+       he added. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather a good idea of his that we should go to England. If
+      it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I think I should try
+      to persuade you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be that you&rsquo;ll not find my cousin,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as possible.
+      At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told me so much
+      about at one time: what do you call it?&mdash;Gardencourt. It must be a
+      charming thing. And then, you know, I&rsquo;ve a devotion to the memory of your
+      uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to see where
+      he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was right. Pansy
+      ought to see England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no doubt she would enjoy it,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s a long time hence; next autumn&rsquo;s far off,&rdquo; Osmond continued;
+      &ldquo;and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you think
+      me so very proud?&rdquo; he suddenly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you very strange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not even when you insult me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t insult you; I&rsquo;m incapable of it. I merely speak of certain facts,
+      and if the allusion&rsquo;s an injury to you the fault&rsquo;s not mine. It&rsquo;s surely a
+      fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going back to Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Isabel asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired of
+      his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall hear it again before we&rsquo;ve done with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that
+      this ceased to be a pain. He was going down&mdash;down; the vision of such
+      a fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange,
+      too different; he didn&rsquo;t touch her. Still, the working of his morbid
+      passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in what
+      light he saw himself justified. &ldquo;I might say to you that I judge you&rsquo;ve
+      nothing to say to me that&rsquo;s worth hearing,&rdquo; she returned in a moment. &ldquo;But
+      I should perhaps be wrong. There&rsquo;s a thing that would be worth my hearing&mdash;to
+      know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of having prevented Pansy&rsquo;s marriage to Warburton. Are those words plain
+      enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when
+      you told me that you counted on me&mdash;that I think was what you said&mdash;I
+      accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me more
+      willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get him out
+      of the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I see what you mean,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the letter you told me he had written me?&rdquo; her husband demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least idea; I haven&rsquo;t asked him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stopped it on the way,&rdquo; said Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered her
+      to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first cousin
+      to that of pity. &ldquo;Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine&mdash;!&rdquo; she
+      exclaimed in a long murmur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was never so fine as you. You&rsquo;ve done everything you wanted. You&rsquo;ve got
+      him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you&rsquo;ve placed me in the
+      position in which you wished to see me&mdash;that of a man who has tried
+      to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pansy doesn&rsquo;t care for him. She&rsquo;s very glad he&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has nothing to do with the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he doesn&rsquo;t care for Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do; you told me he did. I don&rsquo;t know why you wanted this
+      particular satisfaction,&rdquo; Osmond continued; &ldquo;you might have taken some
+      other. It doesn&rsquo;t seem to me that I&rsquo;ve been presumptuous&mdash;that I have
+      taken too much for granted. I&rsquo;ve been very modest about it, very quiet.
+      The idea didn&rsquo;t originate with me. He began to show that he liked her
+      before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend to
+      such things yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. &ldquo;I thought you were very
+      fond of my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been more so than to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that
+      perhaps is natural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this all you wished to say to me?&rdquo; Isabel asked, taking a candle that
+      stood on one of the tables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that on the whole you&rsquo;re disappointed. You&rsquo;ve had another
+      opportunity to try to stupefy me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that. It&rsquo;s proved that Pansy can aim high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little Pansy!&rdquo; said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood had
+      come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton&rsquo;s
+      departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some
+      importance to Isabel&mdash;the temporary absence, once again, of Madame
+      Merle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor
+      of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel&rsquo;s
+      happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of women
+      might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at night, she
+      had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her friend&mdash;his
+      friend&mdash;in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to her that
+      she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve. Isabel&rsquo;s
+      imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but every now
+      and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming
+      woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She
+      had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was in
+      Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to her immediately after
+      meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to Isabel, and though he was
+      in Europe she thought it very possible he might not desire to see her.
+      Their last interview, before her marriage, had had quite the character of
+      a complete rupture; if she remembered rightly he had said he wished to
+      take his last look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant
+      survival of her earlier time&mdash;the only one in fact with which a
+      permanent pain was associated. He had left her that morning with a sense
+      of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels
+      in broad daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden current to excuse it,
+      and she herself had only wished to steer wide. He had bumped against her
+      prow, however, while her hand was on the tiller, and&mdash;to complete the
+      metaphor&mdash;had given the lighter vessel a strain which still
+      occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to
+      see him, because he represented the only serious harm that (to her belief)
+      she had ever done in the world: he was the only person with an unsatisfied
+      claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she couldn&rsquo;t help it; and his
+      unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried with rage, after he had left
+      her, at&mdash;she hardly knew what: she tried to think it had been at his
+      want of consideration. He had come to her with his unhappiness when her
+      own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of
+      those pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there had been a
+      violence in the impression. There had been a violence at any rate in
+      something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own fit of weeping and in
+      that after-sense of the same which had lasted three or four days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first
+      year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless
+      subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who
+      was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to
+      relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even
+      a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton&rsquo;s;
+      unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising
+      look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to
+      herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to
+      say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s
+      compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a
+      compensation for anything&mdash;least of all for having failed to marry
+      Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had&mdash;save
+      of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never
+      thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended his
+      business&mdash;that, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion
+      could take with him&mdash;it would be because it was an enterprising
+      thing, or good for the business; not in the least because he might hope it
+      would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of bareness and
+      bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory or in
+      apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social drapery
+      commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of human
+      contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never heard
+      from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this
+      impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from time to
+      time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston&mdash;her imagination was all
+      bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had thought
+      of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more than once
+      the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband about him&mdash;never
+      let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a reserve not dictated
+      in the early period by a want of confidence in Osmond, but simply by the
+      consideration that the young man&rsquo;s disappointment was not her secret but
+      his own. It would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to
+      another, and Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s affairs could have, after all, little interest
+      for Gilbert. When it had come to the point she had never written to him;
+      it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least she could do
+      was to let him alone. Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some
+      way nearer to him. It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might
+      have married him; even after the consequences of her actual union had
+      grown vivid to her that particular reflection, though she indulged in so
+      many, had not had the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself
+      in trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with which she
+      wished to set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed
+      to feel that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own
+      fault. She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her
+      peace with the world&mdash;to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came
+      back to her from time to time that there was an account still to be
+      settled with Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it
+      to-day on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned
+      he was coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable
+      for him than for any one else to make out&mdash;since he <i>would</i> make
+      it out, as over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort&mdash;the
+      intimate disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he
+      had invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only
+      a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her
+      stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent
+      several days without coming to see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and
+      Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw
+      herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping her
+      conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been superficial&mdash;the
+      more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted
+      those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by persons less
+      interested than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty
+      a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as keen and quick and fresh as ever, and
+      as neat and bright and fair. Her remarkably open eyes, lighted like great
+      glazed railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had lost none
+      of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference. She was
+      by no means quite unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague.
+      Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at
+      once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a
+      reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly,
+      when she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now,
+      having already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn&rsquo;t for a moment
+      pretend that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to
+      do with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of
+      her independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations
+      to it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to come to Europe,&rdquo; she said to Isabel; &ldquo;it doesn&rsquo;t
+      seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at
+      home; this is much more important.&rdquo; It was not therefore with a sense of
+      doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
+      pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected
+      it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing all
+      about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be there. This
+      was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a perfect right to
+      be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after all a better
+      reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend
+      easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the other&rsquo;s fidelity. She
+      had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that
+      Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed
+      so happily as that. Isabel&rsquo;s satisfactions just now were few, but even if
+      they had been more numerous there would still have been something of
+      individual joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought
+      highly of Henrietta. She had made large concessions with regard to her,
+      and had yet insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable. It
+      was not her own triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the
+      relief of confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had
+      owned it, that she was not in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself
+      approached this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused
+      her to her face of being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she
+      was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could
+      speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m wretched,&rdquo; she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say
+      it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he do to you?&rdquo; Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were
+      enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does nothing. But he doesn&rsquo;t like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very hard to please!&rdquo; cried Miss Stackpole. &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you leave
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t change that way,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, I should like to know? You won&rsquo;t confess that you&rsquo;ve made a
+      mistake. You&rsquo;re too proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether I&rsquo;m too proud. But I can&rsquo;t publish my mistake. I
+      don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s decent. I&rsquo;d much rather die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t think so always,&rdquo; said Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me
+      I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one&rsquo;s deeds. I married him
+      before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do
+      anything more deliberate. One can&rsquo;t change that way,&rdquo; Isabel repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>have</i> changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don&rsquo;t
+      mean to say you like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t like him. I can tell you, because I&rsquo;m weary
+      of my secret. But that&rsquo;s enough; I can&rsquo;t announce it on the housetops.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gave a laugh. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think you&rsquo;re rather too considerate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not of him that I&rsquo;m considerate&mdash;it&rsquo;s of myself!&rdquo; Isabel
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in Miss
+      Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a young
+      lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal roof. When
+      she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she would leave
+      her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered that he at least
+      had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta that as Osmond didn&rsquo;t
+      like her she couldn&rsquo;t invite her to dine, but they could easily see each
+      other in other ways. Isabel received Miss Stackpole freely in her own
+      sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to drive, face to face with Pansy,
+      who, bending a little forward, on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed
+      at the celebrated authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta
+      occasionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond
+      had a little look as if she should remember everything one said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      want to be remembered that way,&rdquo; Miss Stackpole declared; &ldquo;I consider that
+      my conversation refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your
+      stepdaughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers
+      and would bring them out some day against me.&rdquo; She could not teach herself
+      to think favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of
+      conversation, of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty,
+      unnatural and even uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have
+      liked her to urge a little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon
+      his receiving her, so that he might appear to suffer for good manners&rsquo; 
+      sake. Her immediate acceptance of his objections put him too much in the
+      wrong&mdash;it being in effect one of the disadvantages of expressing
+      contempt that you cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing
+      sympathy. Osmond held to his credit, and yet he held to his objections&mdash;all
+      of which were elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have
+      been that Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or
+      twice, so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she
+      might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the moment,
+      however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was nothing
+      for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herself off. It
+      was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife&rsquo;s friends; he
+      took occasion to call Isabel&rsquo;s attention to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make a
+      new collection,&rdquo; he said to her one morning in reference to nothing
+      visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the
+      remark of all brutal abruptness. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as if you had taken the trouble to
+      pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your
+      cousin I have always thought a conceited ass&mdash;besides his being the
+      most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it&rsquo;s insufferably tiresome that one
+      can&rsquo;t tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health
+      seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no
+      one else. If he&rsquo;s so desperately ill there&rsquo;s only one way to prove it; but
+      he seems to have no mind for that. I can&rsquo;t say much more for the great
+      Warburton. When one really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that
+      performance was something rare! He comes and looks at one&rsquo;s daughter as if
+      she were a suite of apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks out of
+      the windows, raps on the walls and almost thinks he&rsquo;ll take the place.
+      Will you be so good as to draw up a lease? Then, on the whole, he decides
+      that the rooms are too small; he doesn&rsquo;t think he could live on a third
+      floor; he must look out for a <i>piano nobile</i>. And he goes away after
+      having got a month&rsquo;s lodging in the poor little apartment for nothing.
+      Miss Stackpole, however, is your most wonderful invention. She strikes me
+      as a kind of monster. One hasn&rsquo;t a nerve in one&rsquo;s body that she doesn&rsquo;t
+      set quivering. You know I never have admitted that she&rsquo;s a woman. Do you
+      know what she reminds me of? Of a new steel pen&mdash;the most odious
+      thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes; aren&rsquo;t her letters, by
+      the way, on ruled paper? She thinks and moves and walks and looks exactly
+      as she talks. You may say that she doesn&rsquo;t hurt me, inasmuch as I don&rsquo;t
+      see her. I don&rsquo;t see her, but I hear her; I hear her all day long. Her
+      voice is in my ears; I can&rsquo;t get rid of it. I know exactly what she says,
+      and every inflexion of the tone in which she says it. She says charming
+      things about me, and they give you great comfort. I don&rsquo;t like at all to
+      think she talks about me&mdash;I feel as I should feel if I knew the
+      footman were wearing my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather
+      less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of which
+      the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let her friend
+      know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that she was unhappy,
+      though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he hoped to
+      give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice
+      in the street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were driving,
+      and he had a habit of looking straight in front of him, as if he proposed
+      to take in but one object at a time. Isabel could have fancied she had
+      seen him the day before; it must have been with just that face and step
+      that he had walked out of Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s door at the close of their last
+      interview. He was dressed just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel
+      remembered the colour of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar
+      look there was a strangeness in his figure too, something that made her
+      feel it afresh to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He
+      looked bigger and more overtopping than of old, and in those days he
+      certainly reached high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed
+      looked back after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a
+      face like a February sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the
+      latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United States the
+      year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him
+      considerable attention. She didn&rsquo;t know how much he had enjoyed it, but
+      she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn&rsquo;t the same man
+      when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and shown
+      him that England wasn&rsquo;t everything. He had been very much liked in most
+      places, and thought extremely simple&mdash;more simple than the English
+      were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+      affected; she didn&rsquo;t know whether they meant that his simplicity was an
+      affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all
+      the chambermaids were farmers&rsquo; daughters&mdash;or all the farmers&rsquo; 
+      daughters were chambermaids&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t exactly remember which. He
+      hadn&rsquo;t seemed able to grasp the great school system; it had been really
+      too much for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of
+      everything&mdash;as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had
+      chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed really
+      fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one he had
+      visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest; he wanted to
+      do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled together from New
+      York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting cities on the route;
+      and whenever they started afresh he had wanted to know if they could go by
+      the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of geography&mdash;had an
+      impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was perpetually expecting
+      to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never to have heard of any river
+      in America but the Mississippi and was unprepared to recognise the
+      existence of the Hudson, though obliged to confess at last that it was
+      fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent some pleasant hours in the
+      palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream from the coloured man. He
+      could never get used to that idea&mdash;that you could get ice-cream in
+      the cars. Of course you couldn&rsquo;t, nor fans, nor candy, nor anything in the
+      English cars! He found the heat quite overwhelming, and she had told him
+      she indeed expected it was the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now
+      in England, hunting&mdash;&ldquo;hunting round&rdquo; Henrietta called it. These
+      amusements were those of the American red men; we had left that behind
+      long ago, the pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed
+      in England that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was
+      more in keeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to
+      join her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to
+      come over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond
+      of the ancient regime. They didn&rsquo;t agree about that, but that was what she
+      liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been swept
+      away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered on the
+      contrary one day when there were five American families, walking all
+      round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up the subject
+      of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it now;
+      England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was
+      determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+      Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight. The
+      mystery about that other one had never been explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel a
+      note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be at
+      home at six o&rsquo;clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what he
+      was coming for&mdash;what good he expected to get of it. He had presented
+      himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who
+      would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel&rsquo;s hospitality,
+      however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in
+      appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at least that
+      she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had been misinformed.
+      But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not disappointed, as some
+      other men, she was sure, would have been; he had not come to Rome to look
+      for an opportunity. She never found out what he had come for; he offered
+      her no explanation; there could be none but the very simple one that he
+      wanted to see her. In other words he had come for his amusement. Isabel
+      followed up this induction with a good deal of eagerness, and was
+      delighted to have found a formula that would lay the ghost of this
+      gentleman&rsquo;s ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome for his amusement
+      this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared for amusement he had got
+      over his heartache. If he had got over his heartache everything was as it
+      should be and her responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he
+      took his recreation a little stiffly, but he had never been loose and easy
+      and she had every reason to believe he was satisfied with what he saw.
+      Henrietta was not in his confidence, though he was in hers, and Isabel
+      consequently received no side-light upon his state of mind. He was open to
+      little conversation on general topics; it came back to her that she had
+      said of him once, years before, &ldquo;Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he
+      doesn&rsquo;t talk.&rdquo; He spoke a good deal now, but he talked perhaps as little
+      as ever; considering, that is, how much there was in Rome to talk about.
+      His arrival was not calculated to simplify her relations with her husband,
+      for if Mr. Osmond didn&rsquo;t like her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon
+      his attention save as having been one of the first of them. There was
+      nothing for her to say of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather
+      meagre synthesis exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce
+      him to Gilbert; it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her
+      Thursday evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her
+      husband still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not
+      inviting them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early; he
+      appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every now and
+      then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about him; she
+      thought he might know that she didn&rsquo;t know what to do with him. But she
+      couldn&rsquo;t call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was only
+      extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very different
+      from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with <i>him</i>. She
+      made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering herself
+      she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of women. He
+      never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any personal
+      questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemed probable.
+      Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case he had an
+      irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of this principle
+      that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy to a
+      perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat with
+      coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry her,
+      and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would have been
+      an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which would strike
+      all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air. He declared he
+      liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn&rsquo;t easy at first, you had to
+      climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the top of the tower; but
+      when you got there you had a big view and felt a little fresh breeze.
+      Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, and he gave Caspar Goodwood
+      the benefit of them all. Isabel could see that Mr. Goodwood thought better
+      of her husband than he had ever wished to; he had given her the impression
+      that morning in Florence of being inaccessible to a good impression.
+      Gilbert asked him repeatedly to dinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar
+      with him afterwards and even desired to be shown his collections. Gilbert
+      said to Isabel that he was very original; he was as strong and of as good
+      a style as an English portmanteau,&mdash;he had plenty of straps and
+      buckles which would never wear out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar
+      Goodwood took to riding on the Campagna and devoted much time to this
+      exercise; it was therefore mainly in the evening that Isabel saw him. She
+      bethought herself of saying to him one day that if he were willing he
+      could render her a service. And then she added smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the person in the world who has most right,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      given you assurances that I&rsquo;ve never given any one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill at
+      the Hôtel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr. Goodwood
+      had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow was; if she was
+      not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt. Caspar remembered
+      the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a man of
+      imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of a poor gentleman
+      who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the Hôtel de Paris and, on
+      being shown into the presence of the master of Gardencourt, found Miss
+      Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singular change had in fact occurred
+      in this lady&rsquo;s relations with Ralph Touchett. She had not been asked by
+      Isabel to go and see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to come out
+      had immediately gone of her own motion. After this she had paid him a
+      daily visit&mdash;always under the conviction that they were great
+      enemies. &ldquo;Oh yes, we&rsquo;re intimate enemies,&rdquo; Ralph used to say; and he
+      accused her freely&mdash;as freely as the humour of it would allow&mdash;of
+      coming to worry him to death. In reality they became excellent friends,
+      Henrietta much wondering that she should never have liked him before.
+      Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had always done; he had never
+      doubted for a moment that she was an excellent fellow. They talked about
+      everything and always differed; about everything, that is, but Isabel&mdash;a
+      topic as to which Ralph always had a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr.
+      Bantling on the other hand proved a great resource; Ralph was capable of
+      discussing Mr. Bantling with Henrietta for hours. Discussion was
+      stimulated of course by their inevitable difference of view&mdash;Ralph
+      having amused himself with taking the ground that the genial ex-guardsman
+      was a regular Machiavelli. Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to
+      such a debate; but after he had been left alone with his host he found
+      there were various other matters they could take up. It must be admitted
+      that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted
+      all Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s merits in advance, but had no further remark to make
+      about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate
+      upon Mrs. Osmond&mdash;a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers
+      as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn&rsquo;t
+      bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond
+      anything to be done. There was always something to be done, for Goodwood,
+      and he did it in this case by repeating several times his visit to the
+      Hôtel de Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had
+      artfully disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an
+      occupation; she had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a
+      plan of making him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first
+      mild weather should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and
+      Mr. Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,
+      and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a
+      constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the
+      occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely
+      entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in one of
+      those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would cluster
+      round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel in these
+      days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more
+      perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent
+      there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, upon
+      her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster; for several
+      events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The Countess Gemini
+      arrived from Florence&mdash;arrived with her trunks, her dresses, her
+      chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the unholy legend of
+      the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been away somewhere,&mdash;no
+      one, not even Pansy, knew where,&mdash;reappeared in Rome and began to
+      write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame Merle returned
+      from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: &ldquo;What on earth did you
+      do with Lord Warburton?&rdquo; As if it were any business of hers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his mind to
+      return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which he was
+      not bound to communicate; but Henrietta Stackpole, to whom he mentioned
+      his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She forbore to
+      express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by his
+      sofa: &ldquo;I suppose you know you can&rsquo;t go alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no idea of doing that,&rdquo; Ralph answered. &ldquo;I shall have people with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by &lsquo;people&rsquo;? Servants whom you pay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Ralph jocosely, &ldquo;after all, they&rsquo;re human beings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there any women among them?&rdquo; Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven&rsquo;t a <i>soubrette</i>
+      in my employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta calmly, &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t go to England that way. You must
+      have a woman&rsquo;s care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a
+      good while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not had enough of it yet. I guess I&rsquo;ll go with you,&rdquo; said
+      Henrietta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go with me?&rdquo; Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know you don&rsquo;t like me, but I&rsquo;ll go with you all the same. It
+      would be better for your health to lie down again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. &ldquo;I like you very
+      much,&rdquo; he said in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t think that
+      by saying that you can buy me off. I&rsquo;ll go with you, and what is more I&rsquo;ll
+      take care of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very good woman,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won&rsquo;t be easy.
+      But you had better go, all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she left him, Ralph said to her: &ldquo;Do you really mean to take care
+      of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I mean to try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!&rdquo; And it was perhaps a sign
+      of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he burst
+      into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent, such a
+      conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and renounced all
+      exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe under the
+      supervision of Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that the prospect
+      pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt even
+      impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to see his own
+      house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed to him he could
+      stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to die at home; it
+      was the only wish he had left&mdash;to extend himself in the large quiet
+      room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his eyes upon the
+      summer dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his visitor
+      that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back to
+      England. &ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; said Caspar, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I shall be a fifth wheel to
+      the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me promise to go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens&mdash;it&rsquo;s the golden age! You&rsquo;re all too kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kindness on my part is to her; it&rsquo;s hardly to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting that, <i>she&rsquo;s</i> kind,&rdquo; smiled Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get people to go with you? Yes, that&rsquo;s a sort of kindness,&rdquo; Goodwood
+      answered without lending himself to the joke. &ldquo;For myself, however,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with you
+      and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;d rather stay here than do either,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s really
+      no need of your coming. Henrietta&rsquo;s extraordinarily efficient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure of that. But I&rsquo;ve promised Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can easily get her to let you off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you,
+      but that isn&rsquo;t the principal thing. The principal thing is that she wants
+      me to leave Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you see too much in it,&rdquo; Ralph suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bore her,&rdquo; Goodwood went on; &ldquo;she has nothing to say to me, so she
+      invented that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh then, if it&rsquo;s a convenience to her I certainly will take you with me.
+      Though I don&rsquo;t see why it should be a convenience,&rdquo; Ralph added in a
+      moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Caspar Goodwood simply, &ldquo;she thinks I&rsquo;m watching her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Watching her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trying to make out if she&rsquo;s happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s easy to make out,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s the most visibly happy woman
+      I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so; I&rsquo;m satisfied,&rdquo; Goodwood answered dryly. For all his dryness,
+      however, he had more to say. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been watching her; I was an old friend
+      and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was
+      what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself
+      what it amounts to. I&rsquo;ve seen,&rdquo; he continued with a harsh ring in his
+      voice, &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t want to see any more. I&rsquo;m now quite ready to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?&rdquo; Ralph rejoined. And
+      this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel Osmond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found it
+      proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at Miss
+      Stackpole&rsquo;s pension the visit which this lady had paid her in Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,&rdquo; she remarked to the Countess.
+      &ldquo;I think it right you should know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house three
+      times a day. He has left traces of his passage!&rdquo; the Countess cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wished to marry your niece; that&rsquo;s why he came to the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: &ldquo;Is that the
+      story that Isabel tells? It isn&rsquo;t bad, as such things go. If he wishes to
+      marry my niece, pray why doesn&rsquo;t he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy the
+      wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I&rsquo;m gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;ll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn&rsquo;t wish to marry him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn&rsquo;t
+      know she carried it so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you,&rdquo; said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that the
+      Countess was unpleasantly perverse. &ldquo;I really must stick to my point&mdash;that
+      Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my
+      brother&rsquo;s capable of everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what your brother&rsquo;s capable of,&rdquo; said Henrietta with
+      dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it&rsquo;s her sending
+      him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought I
+      would make him faithless?&rdquo; the Countess continued with audacious
+      insistence. &ldquo;However, she&rsquo;s only keeping him, one can feel that. The house
+      is full of him there; he&rsquo;s quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces;
+      I&rsquo;m sure I shall see him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations
+      which had made the fortune of her letters to the <i>Interviewer</i>,
+      &ldquo;perhaps he&rsquo;ll be more successful with you than with Isabel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied
+      that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It had
+      always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were made
+      to understand each other. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care whether he understands me or not,&rdquo;
+       Henrietta declared. &ldquo;The great thing is that he shouldn&rsquo;t die in the
+      cars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t do that,&rdquo; Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      you want to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be alone,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be that so long as you&rsquo;ve so much company at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they&rsquo;re part of the comedy. You others are spectators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?&rdquo; Henrietta rather grimly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tragedy then if you like. You&rsquo;re all looking at me; it makes me
+      uncomfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re like the stricken deer,
+      seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of
+      helplessness!&rdquo; she broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not you I&rsquo;m speaking of; it&rsquo;s myself. It&rsquo;s too much, having come on
+      purpose, to leave you just as I find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t do that; you leave me much refreshed,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very mild refreshment&mdash;sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+      something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a solemn
+      one four years ago, and I&rsquo;ve succeeded so ill in keeping it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the greatest.
+      Leave your husband before the worst comes; that&rsquo;s what I want you to
+      promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The worst? What do you call the worst?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before your character gets spoiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean my disposition? It won&rsquo;t get spoiled,&rdquo; Isabel answered,
+      smiling. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m taking very good care of it. I&rsquo;m extremely struck,&rdquo; she
+      added, turning away, &ldquo;with the off-hand way in which you speak of a
+      woman&rsquo;s leaving her husband. It&rsquo;s easy to see you&rsquo;ve never had one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, &ldquo;nothing is
+      more common in our Western cities, and it&rsquo;s to them, after all, that we
+      must look in the future.&rdquo; Her argument, however, does not concern this
+      history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to
+      Ralph Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might
+      designate, and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure.
+      Isabel went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that
+      Henrietta had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+      rid of them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low
+      tone, with a quick smile: &ldquo;My dear Ralph&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the
+      same way, jocosely, ingenuously: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen less of you than I might, but
+      it&rsquo;s better than nothing. And then I&rsquo;ve heard a great deal about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know from whom, leading the life you&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other
+      people speak of you. They always say you&rsquo;re &lsquo;charming,&rsquo; and that&rsquo;s so
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might have seen more of you certainly,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;But when one&rsquo;s
+      married one has so much occupation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fortunately I&rsquo;m not married. When you come to see me in England I shall
+      be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.&rdquo; He continued
+      to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded in making
+      the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to his term being
+      near, to the probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he
+      preferred it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently
+      distinct without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had
+      been well enough for the earlier time, though about this, as about his
+      other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic. Isabel spoke of his
+      journey, of the stages into which he should divide it, of the precautions
+      he should take. &ldquo;Henrietta&rsquo;s my greatest precaution,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;The
+      conscience of that woman&rsquo;s sublime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly she&rsquo;ll be very conscientious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will be? She has been! It&rsquo;s only because she thinks it&rsquo;s her duty that
+      she goes with me. There&rsquo;s a conception of duty for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a generous one,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;and it makes me deeply ashamed.
+      I ought to go with you, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband wouldn&rsquo;t like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he wouldn&rsquo;t like it. But I might go, all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause
+      of disagreement between a lady and her husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I don&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; said Isabel simply&mdash;yet not very lucidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph understood well enough, however. &ldquo;I should think so, with all those
+      occupations you speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t that. I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as
+      if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+      deliberate&mdash;apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public
+      penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her words
+      simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this might be,
+      Ralph could not resist so easy an opportunity. &ldquo;Afraid of your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of myself!&rdquo; she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and
+      then added: &ldquo;If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty.
+      That&rsquo;s what women are expected to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; laughed Ralph; &ldquo;but to make up for it there&rsquo;s always some man
+      awfully afraid of some woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different turn.
+      &ldquo;With Henrietta at the head of your little band,&rdquo; she exclaimed abruptly,
+      &ldquo;there will be nothing left for Mr. Goodwood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear Isabel,&rdquo; Ralph answered, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s used to that. There is nothing
+      left for Mr. Goodwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They
+      stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been
+      my best friend,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for you that I wanted&mdash;that I wanted to live. But I&rsquo;m of no
+      use to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again.
+      She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. &ldquo;If you
+      should send for me I&rsquo;d come,&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband won&rsquo;t consent to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I can arrange it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall keep that for my last pleasure!&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that
+      evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the first
+      to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert Osmond, who
+      almost always was present when his wife received. They sat down together,
+      and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed possessed with a
+      kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his legs crossed,
+      lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but not at all
+      lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the little sofa
+      creak beneath him. Osmond&rsquo;s face wore a sharp, aggressive smile; he was as
+      a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good news. He remarked to
+      Goodwood that he was sorry they were to lose him; he himself should
+      particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent men&mdash;they were
+      surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come back; there was
+      something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like himself, in
+      talking with a genuine outsider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very fond of Rome, you know,&rdquo; Osmond said; &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s nothing I
+      like better than to meet people who haven&rsquo;t that superstition. The modern
+      world&rsquo;s after all very fine. Now you&rsquo;re thoroughly modern and yet are not
+      at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If
+      they&rsquo;re the children of the future we&rsquo;re willing to die young. Of course
+      the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything
+      that&rsquo;s really new&mdash;not the mere pretence of it. There&rsquo;s nothing new,
+      unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms
+      that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of light. A revelation
+      of vulgarity! There&rsquo;s a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe is
+      really new; I don&rsquo;t think there ever was anything like it before. Indeed I
+      don&rsquo;t find vulgarity, at all, before the present century. You see a faint
+      menace of it here and there in the last, but to-day the air has grown so
+      dense that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we&rsquo;ve liked
+      you&mdash;!&rdquo; With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on
+      Goodwood&rsquo;s knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to say something extremely offensive and patronising, but you
+      must let me have the satisfaction of it. We&rsquo;ve liked you because&mdash;because
+      you&rsquo;ve reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
+      number of people like you&mdash;<i>à la bonne heure</i>! I&rsquo;m talking for
+      my wife as well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I speak for her? We&rsquo;re as united, you know, as the candlestick
+      and the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I&rsquo;ve
+      understood from you that your occupations have been&mdash;a&mdash;commercial?
+      There&rsquo;s a danger in that, you know; but it&rsquo;s the way you have escaped that
+      strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
+      fortunately my wife doesn&rsquo;t hear me. What I mean is that you might have
+      been&mdash;a&mdash;what I was mentioning just now. The whole American
+      world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you&rsquo;ve
+      something about you that saved you. And yet you&rsquo;re so modern, so modern;
+      the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
+      ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
+      usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
+      closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
+      odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what he was
+      about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness
+      not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Goodwood
+      had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he scarcely knew
+      where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew what Osmond was
+      talking about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and that idea spoke
+      louder to him than her husband&rsquo;s perfectly-pitched voice. He watched her
+      talking with other people and wondered when she would be at liberty and
+      whether he might ask her to go into one of the other rooms. His humour was
+      not, like Osmond&rsquo;s, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in his
+      consciousness of things. Up to this time he had not disliked Osmond
+      personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and
+      more than he had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would
+      naturally marry. His host had won in the open field a great advantage over
+      him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved
+      to underrate him on that account. He had not tried positively to think
+      well of him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even
+      in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had
+      happened, Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a
+      brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of
+      leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of
+      conversation. But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why
+      the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon <i>him</i>. It
+      made him suspect that he found some private entertainment in it, and it
+      ministered to a general impression that his triumphant rival had in his
+      composition a streak of perversity. He knew indeed that Osmond could have
+      no reason to wish him evil; he had nothing to fear from him. He had
+      carried off a supreme advantage and could afford to be kind to a man who
+      had lost everything. It was true that Goodwood had at times grimly wished
+      he were dead and would have liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of
+      knowing this, for practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of
+      appearing inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this
+      art in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first.
+      He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there
+      could be no better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in
+      his soul when he heard Osmond speak of his wife&rsquo;s feelings as if he were
+      commissioned to answer for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this
+      evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even than
+      usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo
+      Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his
+      wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each of
+      them to say &ldquo;we&rdquo; as to say &ldquo;I&rdquo;. In all this there was an air of intention
+      that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect
+      for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s relations with her husband were none of
+      his business. He had no proof whatever that her husband misrepresented
+      her, and if he judged her by the surface of things was bound to believe
+      that she liked her life. She had never given him the faintest sign of
+      discontent. Miss Stackpole had told him that she had lost her illusions,
+      but writing for the papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational. She was
+      too fond of early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been
+      much on her guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at him.
+      This indeed, it may be said for her, would have been quite against her
+      conscience. She had now seen the reality of Isabel&rsquo;s situation, and it had
+      inspired her with a just reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the
+      most useful form of assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers
+      with a sense of her wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep
+      interest in the state of Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s feelings, but she showed it at
+      present only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the
+      American journals, of which she received several by every post and which
+      she always perused with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she
+      cut out she placed in an envelope addressed to Mr. Goodwood, which she
+      left with her own hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about
+      Isabel: hadn&rsquo;t he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus
+      not in the least authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very
+      absence of authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the
+      harsh-ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care,
+      he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had
+      nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the
+      truth; apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she <i>were</i>
+      unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character she
+      had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome.
+      He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it
+      made him grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have
+      asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. There had been
+      no danger of her choosing one that would have kept him in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her
+      to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge that
+      he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no knowledge;
+      she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the old
+      bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his
+      throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life.
+      Osmond went on talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching
+      again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+      moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible
+      that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what
+      did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether she
+      loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without one&rsquo;s
+      gaining a straw one&rsquo;s self. &ldquo;You travel, by the by, with Ralph Touchett,&rdquo;
+       Osmond said. &ldquo;I suppose that means you&rsquo;ll move slowly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I shall do just as he likes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very accommodating. We&rsquo;re immensely obliged to you; you must
+      really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we feel.
+      Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than once as
+      if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it&rsquo;s worse than
+      an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it&rsquo;s a kind of
+      indelicacy. I wouldn&rsquo;t for the world be under such an obligation to
+      Touchett as he has been to&mdash;to my wife and me. Other people
+      inevitably have to look after him, and every one isn&rsquo;t so generous as
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing else to do,&rdquo; Caspar said dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond looked at him a moment askance. &ldquo;You ought to marry, and then you&rsquo;d
+      have plenty to do! It&rsquo;s true that in that case you wouldn&rsquo;t be quite so
+      available for deeds of mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you find that as a married man you&rsquo;re so much occupied?&rdquo; the young man
+      mechanically asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you see, being married&rsquo;s in itself an occupation. It isn&rsquo;t always
+      active; it&rsquo;s often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my
+      wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music,
+      we walk, we drive&mdash;we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I
+      delight, to this hour, in my wife&rsquo;s conversation. If you&rsquo;re ever bored
+      take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that
+      case; but you&rsquo;ll never bore yourself. You&rsquo;ll always have something to say
+      to yourself&mdash;always have a subject of reflection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not bored,&rdquo; said Goodwood. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve plenty to think about and to say to
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than to say to others!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh. &ldquo;Where
+      shall you go next? I mean after you&rsquo;ve consigned Touchett to his natural
+      caretakers&mdash;I believe his mother&rsquo;s at last coming back to look after
+      him. That little lady&rsquo;s superb; she neglects her duties with a finish&mdash;!
+      Perhaps you&rsquo;ll spend the summer in England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;ve no plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy man! That&rsquo;s a little bleak, but it&rsquo;s very free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;m very free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free to come back to Rome I hope,&rdquo; said Osmond as he saw a group of new
+      visitors enter the room. &ldquo;Remember that when you do come we count on you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without his
+      having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several
+      associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy
+      with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
+      intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was
+      absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear
+      hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help
+      her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he
+      opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked to
+      the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather
+      self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he
+      often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera, and
+      it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to contain
+      himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to go, he
+      drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might not speak to
+      her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured himself was
+      empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found her self
+      absolutely prevented. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s impossible. People are saying
+      good-night, and I must be where they can see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall wait till they are all gone then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Ah, that will be delightful!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several people,
+      at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess Gemini, who
+      was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no consciousness
+      that the entertainment was over; she had still a little circle of
+      gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke into a united
+      laugh. Osmond had disappeared&mdash;he never bade good-bye to people; and
+      as the Countess was extending her range, according to her custom at this
+      period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a little
+      apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law would sound a lower note
+      and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I not say a word to you now?&rdquo; Goodwood presently asked her. She got
+      up immediately, smiling. &ldquo;Certainly, we&rsquo;ll go somewhere else if you like.&rdquo;
+       They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle, and for a
+      moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them spoke. Isabel
+      would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room slowly fanning
+      herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to wait for
+      him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the passion he had never
+      stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and made things swim
+      round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and blurred, and through the
+      heaving veil he felt her hover before him with gleaming eyes and parted
+      lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would have perceived her smile was
+      fixed and a trifle forced&mdash;that she was frightened at what she saw in
+      his own face. &ldquo;I suppose you wish to bid me goodbye?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but I don&rsquo;t like it. I don&rsquo;t want to leave Rome,&rdquo; he answered
+      with almost plaintive honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can well imagine. It&rsquo;s wonderfully good of you. I can&rsquo;t tell you how
+      kind I think you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment more he said nothing. &ldquo;With a few words like that you make me
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come back some day,&rdquo; she brightly returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; I don&rsquo;t mean all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? I don&rsquo;t understand! But I said I&rsquo;d go, and I&rsquo;ll go,&rdquo;
+       Goodwood added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back whenever you like,&rdquo; said Isabel with attempted lightness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a straw for your cousin!&rdquo; Caspar broke out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you wished to tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I didn&rsquo;t want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he paused a moment, and then&mdash;&ldquo;what have you really made of your
+      life?&rdquo; he said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an
+      answer; but she said nothing, and he went on: &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand, I can&rsquo;t
+      penetrate you! What am I to believe&mdash;what do you want me to think?&rdquo;
+       Still she said nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without
+      pretending to ease. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m told you&rsquo;re unhappy, and if you are I should like
+      to know it. That would be something for me. But you yourself say you&rsquo;re
+      happy, and you&rsquo;re somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You&rsquo;re completely
+      changed. You conceal everything; I haven&rsquo;t really come near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come very near,&rdquo; Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet I don&rsquo;t touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I&rsquo;ve always asked a great deal. Of course you won&rsquo;t tell me. I
+      shall never know if you can help it. And then it&rsquo;s none of my business.&rdquo;
+       He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
+      considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it
+      was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would
+      think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and
+      added a deep vibration to his low voice. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re perfectly inscrutable,
+      and that&rsquo;s what makes me think you&rsquo;ve something to hide. I tell you I
+      don&rsquo;t care a straw for your cousin, but I don&rsquo;t mean that I don&rsquo;t like
+      him. I mean that it isn&rsquo;t because I like him that I go away with him. I&rsquo;d
+      go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you should ask me
+      I&rsquo;d go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to leave the place? You
+      must have some reason for that; if you were as contented as you pretend
+      you are you wouldn&rsquo;t care. I&rsquo;d rather know the truth about you, even if
+      it&rsquo;s damnable, than have come here for nothing. That isn&rsquo;t what I came
+      for. I thought I shouldn&rsquo;t care. I came because I wanted to assure myself
+      that I needn&rsquo;t think of you any more. I haven&rsquo;t thought of anything else,
+      and you&rsquo;re quite right to wish me to go away. But if I must go, there&rsquo;s no
+      harm in my letting myself out for a single moment, is there? If you&rsquo;re
+      really hurt&mdash;if <i>he</i> hurts you&mdash;nothing I say will hurt
+      you. When I tell you I love you it&rsquo;s simply what I came for. I thought it
+      was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn&rsquo;t say it if I
+      didn&rsquo;t believe I should never see you again. It&rsquo;s the last time&mdash;let
+      me pluck a single flower! I&rsquo;ve no right to say that, I know; and you&rsquo;ve no
+      right to listen. But you don&rsquo;t listen; you never listen, you&rsquo;re always
+      thinking of something else. After this I must go, of course; so I shall at
+      least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can&rsquo;t
+      judge by your husband,&rdquo; he went on irrelevantly, almost incoherently; &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he tell
+      me that? What business is it of mine? When I say that to you, you look
+      strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you&rsquo;ve something to hide. It&rsquo;s
+      none of my business&mdash;very true. But I love you,&rdquo; said Caspar
+      Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which
+      they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve behaved so well; don&rsquo;t spoil it,&rdquo; she uttered softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one hears me. It&rsquo;s wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I love
+      you as I&rsquo;ve never loved you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t help it&mdash;of course not. You would if you could, but you
+      can&rsquo;t, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing&mdash;nothing,
+      that is, I shouldn&rsquo;t. But I do ask one sole satisfaction:&mdash;that you
+      tell me&mdash;that you tell me&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I tell you what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether I may pity you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like that?&rdquo; Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something. I&rsquo;d
+      give my life to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes. They
+      rested a moment on his. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give your life to it; but give a thought to
+      it every now and then.&rdquo; And with that she went back to the Countess
+      Gemini.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the
+      evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,
+      and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.
+      Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability, and
+      to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been
+      mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord
+      Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel (whom,
+      to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first utterance had
+      been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she
+      appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t talk of him,&rdquo; said Isabel for answer; &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve heard so much
+      of him of late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and smiled
+      at the left corner of her mouth. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve heard, yes. But you must remember
+      that I&rsquo;ve not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be able to
+      congratulate Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How you say that! Don&rsquo;t you know I had set my heart on it?&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation of
+      good-humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.
+      &ldquo;You shouldn&rsquo;t have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to
+      watch the affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it&rsquo;s too late?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask Pansy,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall ask her what you&rsquo;ve said to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s part by her perceiving that her visitor&rsquo;s attitude was a critical
+      one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto; she had
+      never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling. But
+      apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since she now
+      had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation which even
+      her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had suffered a
+      disappointment which excited Isabel&rsquo;s surprise&mdash;our heroine having no
+      knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy&rsquo;s marriage; and she betrayed it
+      in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond&rsquo;s alarm. More clearly than ever
+      before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not where,
+      in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong,
+      definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal,
+      the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny. She was nearer to her
+      than Isabel had yet discovered, and her nearness was not the charming
+      accident she had so long supposed. The sense of accident indeed had died
+      within her that day when she happened to be struck with the manner in
+      which the wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No
+      definite suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was enough to make
+      her view this friend with a different eye, to have been led to reflect
+      that there was more intention in her past behaviour than she had allowed
+      for at the time. Ah yes, there had been intention, there had been
+      intention, Isabel said to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long
+      pernicious dream. What was it that brought home to her that Madame Merle&rsquo;s
+      intention had not been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately
+      taken body and which married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by
+      her visitor&rsquo;s challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in
+      this challenge which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance;
+      a nameless vitality which she could see to have been absent from her
+      friend&rsquo;s professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been
+      unwilling to interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing
+      to interfere with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went
+      fast in casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several
+      years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+      strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle&rsquo;s interest was
+      identical with Osmond&rsquo;s: that was enough. &ldquo;I think Pansy will tell you
+      nothing that will make you more angry,&rdquo; she said in answer to her
+      companion&rsquo;s last remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in the least angry. I&rsquo;ve only a great desire to retrieve the
+      situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you; I don&rsquo;t understand you. It&rsquo;s all over; please let it
+      rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I&rsquo;ve nothing more
+      to say or to hear. I&rsquo;ve no doubt,&rdquo; Isabel added, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;ll be very happy
+      to discuss the subject with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn&rsquo;t
+      apply to me for information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t information I want. At bottom it&rsquo;s sympathy. I had set my heart
+      on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do&mdash;it satisfied
+      the imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean by that of course that I&rsquo;m not concerned. Of course not
+      directly. But when one&rsquo;s such an old friend one can&rsquo;t help having
+      something at stake. You forget how long I&rsquo;ve known Pansy. You mean, of
+      course,&rdquo; Madame Merle added, &ldquo;that <i>you</i> are one of the persons
+      concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; that&rsquo;s the last thing I mean. I&rsquo;m very weary of it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle hesitated a little. &ldquo;Ah yes, your work&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care what you say,&rdquo; said Isabel very gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your
+      husband judges you severely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+      bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle&rsquo;s informing her that
+      Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife that
+      struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was meant for
+      insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was
+      exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet.
+      What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was
+      the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his
+      thoughts. &ldquo;Should you like to know how I judge <i>him</i>?&rdquo; she asked at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, because you&rsquo;d never tell me. And it would be painful for me to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel
+      thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.
+      &ldquo;Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don&rsquo;t despair,&rdquo; she said abruptly,
+      with a desire that this should close their interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Madame Merle&rsquo;s expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only
+      gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the
+      air a faint, agreeable fragrance. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t despair; I feel encouraged. And
+      I didn&rsquo;t come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I know
+      you&rsquo;ll tell it if I ask you. It&rsquo;s an immense blessing with you that one
+      can count upon that. No, you won&rsquo;t believe what a comfort I take in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What truth do you speak of?&rdquo; Isabel asked, wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own
+      movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to
+      please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite of
+      having lost a little of it,&rdquo; Madame Merle continued with a smile, &ldquo;to ask
+      such a question as that!&rdquo; She sat looking at her friend, to judge the
+      effect of her words, and then went on: &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t be heroic, don&rsquo;t be
+      unreasonable, don&rsquo;t take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in
+      speaking so. I don&rsquo;t know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven&rsquo;t
+      the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don&rsquo;t you
+      see how well it is that your husband should know it? It&rsquo;s true that he
+      doesn&rsquo;t appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract it; he
+      has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn&rsquo;t alter the fact
+      that it would make a difference in his view of his daughter&rsquo;s prospects to
+      know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord Warburton simply got tired
+      of the poor child, that&rsquo;s one thing, and it&rsquo;s a pity. If he gave her up to
+      please you it&rsquo;s another. That&rsquo;s a pity too, but in a different way. Then,
+      in the latter case, you&rsquo;d perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased&mdash;to
+      simply seeing your step-daughter married. Let him off&mdash;let us have
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and
+      apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew
+      pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her
+      visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was
+      not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. &ldquo;Who are you&mdash;what
+      are you?&rdquo; Isabel murmured. &ldquo;What have you to do with my husband?&rdquo; It was
+      strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as if she had loved
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then, you take it heroically! I&rsquo;m very sorry. Don&rsquo;t think, however,
+      that I shall do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you to do with me?&rdquo; Isabel went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes
+      from Isabel&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Everything!&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a
+      prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman&rsquo;s eyes seemed only a
+      darkness. &ldquo;Oh misery!&rdquo; she murmured at last; and she fell back, covering
+      her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave
+      that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married her. Before she
+      uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under
+      the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the
+      daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for
+      in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural
+      catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for
+      centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into
+      the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached
+      itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a
+      winter&rsquo;s day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could
+      almost smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large
+      Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot
+      easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply,
+      tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion.
+      But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where people had
+      suffered. This was what came to her in the starved churches, where the
+      marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a
+      companionship in endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of
+      long-unanswered prayers. There was no gentler nor less consistent heretic
+      than Isabel; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or
+      clustered candles, could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness
+      of these objects nor have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual
+      visitation. Pansy, as we know, was almost always her companion, and of
+      late the Countess Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to
+      their equipage; but she still occasionally found herself alone when it
+      suited her mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had
+      several resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the
+      low parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front
+      of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+      far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain, between,
+      which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After the departure
+      of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than usual; she carried
+      her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the other. Even when Pansy
+      and the Countess were with her she felt the touch of a vanished world. The
+      carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes
+      where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the hedges, or
+      waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while she
+      strolled further and further over the flower-freckled turf, or sat on a
+      stone that had once had a use and gazed through the veil of her personal
+      sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene&mdash;at the dense, warm
+      light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless
+      shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloud-shadows had the
+      lightness of a blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution not
+      to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this lady&rsquo;s
+      image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an almost
+      childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of
+      several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied.
+      She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best
+      of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. She
+      had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her
+      having flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success this
+      elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it was not wicked&mdash;in
+      the historic sense&mdash;to be even deeply false; for that was what Madame
+      Merle had been&mdash;deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel&rsquo;s Aunt Lydia had made
+      this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Isabel
+      had flattered herself at this time that she had a much richer view of
+      things, especially of the spontaneity of her own career and the nobleness
+      of her own interpretations, than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett.
+      Madame Merle had done what she wanted; she had brought about the union of
+      her two friends; a reflection which could not fail to make it a matter of
+      wonder that she should so much have desired such an event. There were
+      people who had the match-making passion, like the votaries of art for art;
+      but Madame Merle, great artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She
+      thought too ill of marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that
+      particular marriage but had not desired others. She had therefore had a
+      conception of gain, and Isabel asked herself where she had found her
+      profit. It took her naturally a long time to discover, and even then her
+      discovery was imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she
+      had seemed to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been
+      doubly affectionate after Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s death and after learning that her
+      young friend had been subject to the good old man&rsquo;s charity. She had found
+      her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in the more
+      refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young woman&rsquo;s
+      fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her closest
+      intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert occupied
+      this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with the
+      conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the least
+      sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money. Strange
+      to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought a good
+      deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular injury. This
+      was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying to herself that
+      the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman for her money
+      perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least he should let her
+      know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her money, her money would
+      now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let her go. Ah, if Mr.
+      Touchett&rsquo;s great charity would but help her to-day it would be blessed
+      indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame Merle had wished to
+      do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the boon must have lost its
+      warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in regard to his too zealous
+      benefactress, and what expression must they have found on the part of such
+      a master of irony? It is a singular, but a characteristic, fact that
+      before Isabel returned from her silent drive she had broken its silence by
+      the soft exclamation: &ldquo;Poor, poor Madame Merle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same afternoon
+      she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of
+      time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the
+      lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which we
+      once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that
+      apartment, towards six o&rsquo;clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his hostess
+      stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion commemorated
+      in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to its apparent
+      as to its real importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you&rsquo;re unhappy; I believe you like it,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say I was unhappy?&rdquo; Osmond asked with a face grave enough to
+      suggest that he might have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but you don&rsquo;t say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk about gratitude,&rdquo; he returned dryly. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t aggravate me,&rdquo;
+       he added in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white
+      hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to
+      the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. &ldquo;On your
+      side, don&rsquo;t try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trouble about them no more than I can help. I&rsquo;ve quite enough of my
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s because they&rsquo;re so delightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at his
+      companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an expression
+      of fatigue. &ldquo;You do aggravate me,&rdquo; he remarked in a moment. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very
+      tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Eh moi donc!</i>&rdquo; cried Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With you it&rsquo;s because you fatigue yourself. With me it&rsquo;s not my own
+      fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I fatigue myself it&rsquo;s for you. I&rsquo;ve given you an interest. That&rsquo;s a
+      great gift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call it an interest?&rdquo; Osmond enquired with detachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve never looked better; you&rsquo;ve never been so agreeable, so
+      brilliant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn my brilliancy!&rdquo; he thoughtfully murmured. &ldquo;How little, after all,
+      you know me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t know you I know nothing,&rdquo; smiled Madame Merle. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve the
+      feeling of complete success.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I shall not have that till I&rsquo;ve made you stop judging me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself
+      more too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond just hung fire. &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d express yourself less!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I&rsquo;ve never been a
+      chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to
+      say to you first. Your wife doesn&rsquo;t know what to do with herself,&rdquo; she
+      went on with a change of tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means
+      to carry out her ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was unable to show me any this morning,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;She
+      seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was
+      completely bewildered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better say at once that she was pathetic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah no, I don&rsquo;t want to encourage you too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one
+      foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. &ldquo;I should like to
+      know what&rsquo;s the matter with you,&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter&mdash;the matter&mdash;!&rdquo; And here Madame Merle stopped. Then
+      she went on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder
+      in a clear sky: &ldquo;The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able
+      to weep, and that I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good would it do you to weep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve dried your tears, that&rsquo;s something. But I&rsquo;ve seen you shed them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I believe you&rsquo;ll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a wolf.
+      I&rsquo;ve a great hope, I&rsquo;ve a great need, of that. I was vile this morning; I
+      was horrid,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably didn&rsquo;t
+      perceive it,&rdquo; Osmond answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn&rsquo;t help it; I
+      was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don&rsquo;t know.
+      You&rsquo;ve not only dried up my tears; you&rsquo;ve dried up my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not I then that am responsible for my wife&rsquo;s condition,&rdquo; Osmond
+      said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your
+      influence upon her. Don&rsquo;t you know the soul is an immortal principle? How
+      can it suffer alteration?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe at all that it&rsquo;s an immortal principle. I believe it can
+      perfectly be destroyed. That&rsquo;s what has happened to mine, which was a very
+      good one to start with; and it&rsquo;s you I have to thank for it. You&rsquo;re <i>very</i>
+      bad,&rdquo; she added with gravity in her emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this the way we&rsquo;re to end?&rdquo; Osmond asked with the same studied
+      coldness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how we&rsquo;re to end. I wish I did&mdash;How do bad people end?&mdash;especially
+      as to their <i>common</i> crimes. You have made me as bad as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,&rdquo; said Osmond,
+      his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle&rsquo;s self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and she
+      was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the
+      pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile
+      betrayed a painful effort. &ldquo;Good enough for anything that I&rsquo;ve done with
+      myself? I suppose that&rsquo;s what you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good enough to be always charming!&rdquo; Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh God!&rdquo; his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+      freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on
+      Isabel&rsquo;s part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to weep after all?&rdquo; Osmond asked; and on her remaining
+      motionless he went on: &ldquo;Have I ever complained to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her hands quickly. &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;ve taken your revenge otherwise&mdash;you
+      have taken it on <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling and
+      might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the
+      heavenly powers. &ldquo;Oh, the imagination of women! It&rsquo;s always vulgar, at
+      bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you haven&rsquo;t complained. You&rsquo;ve enjoyed your triumph too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather curious to know what you call my triumph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made your wife afraid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his
+      knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He
+      had an air of refusing to accept any one&rsquo;s valuation of anything, even of
+      time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him
+      at moments an irritating person to converse with. &ldquo;Isabel&rsquo;s not afraid of
+      me, and it&rsquo;s not what I wish,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;To what do you want to
+      provoke me when you say such things as that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought over all the harm you can do me,&rdquo; Madame Merle answered.
+      &ldquo;Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she
+      feared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I&rsquo;m not responsible
+      for that. I didn&rsquo;t see the use of your going to see her at all: you&rsquo;re
+      capable of acting without her. I&rsquo;ve not made you afraid of me that I can
+      see,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;how then should I have made her? You&rsquo;re at least as
+      brave. I can&rsquo;t think where you&rsquo;ve picked up such rubbish; one might
+      suppose you knew me by this time.&rdquo; He got up as he spoke and walked to the
+      chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them
+      for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which
+      it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then,
+      still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he pursued: &ldquo;You
+      always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the
+      real. I&rsquo;m much simpler than you think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re very simple.&rdquo; And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it&rsquo;s
+      only since your marriage that I&rsquo;ve understood you. I&rsquo;ve seen better what
+      you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be
+      very careful of that precious object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,&rdquo; said Osmond dryly as he put it
+      down. &ldquo;If you didn&rsquo;t understand me before I married it was cruelly rash of
+      you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself; I
+      thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked
+      that she should like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she should like you so much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should
+      adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never adored you,&rdquo; said Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you pretended to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,&rdquo; Madame
+      Merle went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife has declined&mdash;declined to do anything of the sort,&rdquo; said
+      Osmond. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy&rsquo;s
+      hardly for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tragedy&rsquo;s for me!&rdquo; Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long low
+      sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her
+      mantel-shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It appears that I&rsquo;m to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false
+      position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for our
+      comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn&rsquo;t like me, at least my
+      child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven&rsquo;t
+      a fault to find with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she said softly, &ldquo;if I had a child&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, &ldquo;The children of others
+      may be a great interest!&rdquo; he announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re more like a copy-book than I. There&rsquo;s something after all that
+      holds us together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?&rdquo; Osmond asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s the idea of the good I may do for you. It&rsquo;s that,&rdquo; Madame Merle
+      pursued, &ldquo;that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be <i>my</i>
+      work,&rdquo; she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing
+      to its habit of smoothness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former
+      article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, &ldquo;On the whole, I think,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;you had better leave it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the
+      mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the
+      existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. &ldquo;Have I
+      been so vile all for nothing?&rdquo; she vaguely wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER L
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments
+      Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics
+      and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who
+      professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an
+      objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they
+      had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense, though
+      she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself the
+      apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired
+      to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day
+      in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a condition of
+      her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe
+      cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an
+      excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs of the ladies
+      of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering
+      information. It must be added that during these visits the Countess
+      forbade herself every form of active research; her preference was to sit
+      in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most interesting. It was
+      in this manner that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the
+      infinite regret of her niece, who&mdash;with all the respect that she owed
+      her&mdash;could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle and
+      enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble that her view of
+      the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be divined that she had a
+      secret hope that, once inside, her parents&rsquo; guest might be induced to
+      climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Countess announced her
+      willingness to undertake this feat&mdash;a mild afternoon in March when
+      the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three
+      ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her companions to
+      wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges
+      from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and where now the wild
+      flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she
+      felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an
+      intermission too, for the Countess often asked more from one&rsquo;s attention
+      than she gave in return; and Isabel believed that when she was alone with
+      her niece she let the dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of
+      the Arnide. She so remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her
+      undiscriminating aunt to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which
+      the custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half
+      in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great
+      blocks of travertine&mdash;the latent colour that is the only living
+      element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a
+      tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a
+      multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became
+      aware that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena,
+      had turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with a
+      certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before perceived
+      to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such an
+      attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and this
+      gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of speaking
+      to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied he drew
+      near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters she would
+      perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied
+      that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only give him
+      five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon a broken
+      block.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very soon told,&rdquo; said Edward Rosier. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sold all my bibelots!&rdquo;
+       Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had
+      told her he had had all his teeth drawn. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve sold them by auction at the
+      Hôtel Drouot,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;The sale took place three days ago, and
+      they&rsquo;ve telegraphed me the result. It&rsquo;s magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the money instead&mdash;fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond
+      think me rich enough now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it for that you did it?&rdquo; Isabel asked gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what else in the world could it be? That&rsquo;s the only thing I think of.
+      I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn&rsquo;t stop for the sale; I
+      couldn&rsquo;t have seen them going off; I think it would have killed me. But I
+      put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you
+      I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my pocket, and he can&rsquo;t
+      say I&rsquo;m poor!&rdquo; the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll say now that you&rsquo;re not wise,&rdquo; said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond
+      had never said this before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier gave her a sharp look. &ldquo;Do you mean that without my bibelots I&rsquo;m
+      nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That&rsquo;s what they
+      told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn&rsquo;t seen
+      <i>her</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,&rdquo; said Isabel very kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that so sadly that it&rsquo;s the same as if you said I shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; And
+      he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had the
+      air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and is
+      full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful
+      suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons
+      still have the perversity to think him diminutive. &ldquo;I know what happened
+      here while I was away,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;What does Mr. Osmond expect after she
+      has refused Lord Warburton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel debated. &ldquo;That she&rsquo;ll marry another nobleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What other nobleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One that he&rsquo;ll pick out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+      laughing at some one, but this time I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to laugh,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;I laugh very seldom. Now you had
+      better go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very safe!&rdquo; Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but it
+      evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather a loud
+      voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and looking all
+      round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Isabel
+      saw him change colour; there was more of an audience than he had
+      suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions had returned
+      from their excursion. &ldquo;You must really go away,&rdquo; she said quickly. &ldquo;Ah, my
+      dear lady, pity me!&rdquo; Edward Rosier murmured in a voice strangely at
+      variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then he added
+      eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by a happy
+      thought: &ldquo;Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I&rsquo;ve a great desire to be
+      presented to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked at him a moment. &ldquo;She has no influence with her brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what a monster you make him out!&rdquo; And Rosier faced the Countess, who
+      advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps to the
+      fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in conversation
+      with a very pretty young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve kept your enamels!&rdquo; Isabel called as she left him. She
+      went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short,
+      with lowered eyes. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go back to the carriage,&rdquo; she said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s getting late,&rdquo; Pansy returned more gently still. And she went
+      on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Isabel, however,
+      allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had immediately
+      taken place between the Countess and Mr. Rosier. He had removed his hat
+      and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself, while the
+      Countess&rsquo;s expressive back displayed to Isabel&rsquo;s eye a gracious
+      inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost to sight, for
+      Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage. Pansy, who faced
+      her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her lap; then she raised
+      them and rested them on Isabel&rsquo;s. There shone out of each of them a little
+      melancholy ray&mdash;a spark of timid passion which touched Isabel to the
+      heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over her soul, as she
+      compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal of the child with her
+      own dry despair. &ldquo;Poor little Pansy!&rdquo; she affectionately said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh never mind!&rdquo; Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology. And then
+      there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. &ldquo;Did you show
+      your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?&rdquo; Isabel asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;re not tired, I hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, thank you, I&rsquo;m not tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman
+      to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently
+      returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not
+      to wait&mdash;she would come home in a cab!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About a week after this lady&rsquo;s quick sympathies had enlisted themselves
+      with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found
+      Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her; she
+      got up from her low chair. &ldquo;Pardon my taking the liberty,&rdquo; she said in a
+      small voice. &ldquo;It will be the last&mdash;for some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited,
+      frightened look. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going away!&rdquo; Isabel exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to the convent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the convent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round Isabel
+      and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment, perfectly
+      still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver of her little
+      body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel nevertheless
+      pressed her. &ldquo;Why are you going to the convent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl&rsquo;s better, every now and
+      then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the world, is
+      very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little seclusion&mdash;a
+      little reflexion.&rdquo; Pansy spoke in short detached sentences, as if she
+      could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph of
+      self-control: &ldquo;I think papa&rsquo;s right; I&rsquo;ve been so much in the world this
+      winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a
+      larger meaning than the girl herself knew. &ldquo;When was this decided?&rdquo; she
+      asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard nothing of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn&rsquo;t be too
+      much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine&rsquo;s to come for me at a
+      quarter past seven, and I&rsquo;m only to take two frocks. It&rsquo;s only for a few
+      weeks; I&rsquo;m sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who
+      used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being
+      educated. I&rsquo;m very fond of little girls,&rdquo; said Pansy with an effect of
+      diminutive grandeur. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m also very fond of Mother Catherine. I shall
+      be very quiet and think a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
+      &ldquo;Think of <i>me</i> sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, come and see me soon!&rdquo; cried Pansy; and the cry was very different
+      from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how
+      little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long,
+      tender kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had
+      arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to
+      the drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and
+      this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss
+      of the head, &ldquo;<i>En voilà, ma chère, une pose!</i>&rdquo; But if it was an
+      affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could
+      only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed. It had
+      become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him that, strange
+      as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after he had come in,
+      to allude to his daughter&rsquo;s sudden departure: she spoke of it only after
+      they were seated at table. But she had forbidden herself ever to ask
+      Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a declaration, and there
+      was one that came very naturally. &ldquo;I shall miss Pansy very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of
+      flowers in the middle of the table. &ldquo;Ah yes,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;I had
+      thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I
+      dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I
+      can make you understand. It doesn&rsquo;t matter; don&rsquo;t trouble yourself about
+      it. That&rsquo;s why I had not spoken of it. I didn&rsquo;t believe you would enter
+      into it. But I&rsquo;ve always had the idea; I&rsquo;ve always thought it a part of
+      the education of one&rsquo;s daughter. One&rsquo;s daughter should be fresh and fair;
+      she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present time
+      she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy&rsquo;s a little dusty, a
+      little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing
+      rabble that calls itself society&mdash;one should take her out of it
+      occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I
+      like to think of her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among
+      those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several
+      of them are noble. She will have her books and her drawing, she will have
+      her piano. I&rsquo;ve made the most liberal arrangements. There is to be nothing
+      ascetic; there&rsquo;s just to be a certain little sense of sequestration.
+      She&rsquo;ll have time to think, and there&rsquo;s something I want her to think
+      about.&rdquo; Osmond spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one
+      side, as if he were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone, however,
+      was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as putting a thing
+      into words&mdash;almost into pictures&mdash;to see, himself, how it would
+      look. He considered a while the picture he had evoked and seemed greatly
+      pleased with it. And then he went on: &ldquo;The Catholics are very wise after
+      all. The convent is a great institution; we can&rsquo;t do without it; it
+      corresponds to an essential need in families, in society. It&rsquo;s a school of
+      good manners; it&rsquo;s a school of repose. Oh, I don&rsquo;t want to detach my
+      daughter from the world,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to make her fix her
+      thoughts on any other. This one&rsquo;s very well, as <i>she</i> should take it,
+      and she may think of it as much as she likes. Only she must think of it in
+      the right way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it
+      indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her husband&rsquo;s
+      desire to be effective was capable of going&mdash;to the point of playing
+      theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not
+      understand his purpose, no&mdash;not wholly; but she understood it better
+      than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the whole
+      proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and
+      destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden
+      and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to mark the difference
+      between his sympathies and her own, and show that if he regarded his
+      daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be more and
+      more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective he
+      had succeeded; the incident struck a chill into Isabel&rsquo;s heart. Pansy had
+      known the convent in her childhood and had found a happy home there; she
+      was fond of the good sisters, who were very fond of her, and there was
+      therefore for the moment no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same
+      the girl had taken fright; the impression her father desired to make would
+      evidently be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had never faded
+      from Isabel&rsquo;s imagination, and as her thoughts attached themselves to this
+      striking example of her husband&rsquo;s genius&mdash;she sat looking, like him,
+      at the basket of flowers&mdash;poor little Pansy became the heroine of a
+      tragedy. Osmond wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his
+      wife found it hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain
+      relief presently, in hearing the high, strained voice of her
+      sister-in-law. The Countess too, apparently, had been thinking the thing
+      out, but had arrived at a different conclusion from Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very absurd, my dear Osmond,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to invent so many pretty
+      reasons for poor Pansy&rsquo;s banishment. Why don&rsquo;t you say at once that you
+      want to get her out of my way? Haven&rsquo;t you discovered that I think very
+      well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me <i>simpaticissimo</i>. He
+      has made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you&rsquo;ve
+      made up your mind that with those convictions I&rsquo;m dreadful company for
+      Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured.
+      &ldquo;My dear Amy,&rdquo; he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece of
+      gallantry, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about your convictions, but if I
+      suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to banish
+      <i>you</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure
+      of her brother&rsquo;s hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received a
+      telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of
+      Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s authorship. &ldquo;Ralph cannot last many days,&rdquo; it ran, &ldquo;and if
+      convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only
+      if you&rsquo;ve not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good
+      deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to see
+      whether you&rsquo;ve found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there&rsquo;s no other
+      company.&rdquo; Isabel was prepared for this news, having received from
+      Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England with her
+      appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive, but she had
+      managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed,
+      which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She
+      added that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one,
+      inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly use, was quite as
+      ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she
+      had been obliged to surrender the field to Mrs. Touchett, who had just
+      returned from America and had promptly given her to understand that she
+      didn&rsquo;t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had written to her
+      aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical
+      condition and suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to
+      Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgement of this
+      admonition, and the only further news Isabel received from her was the
+      second telegram I have just quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it
+      into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband&rsquo;s study.
+      Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went
+      in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume
+      before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a
+      page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been
+      copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and
+      fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of
+      immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned
+      toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me for disturbing you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I come to your room I always knock,&rdquo; he answered, going on with his
+      work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin&rsquo;s dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don&rsquo;t believe that,&rdquo; said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a
+      magnifying glass. &ldquo;He was dying when we married; he&rsquo;ll outlive us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful
+      cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own
+      intention &ldquo;My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why must you go to Gardencourt?&rdquo; Osmond asked in the tone of impartial
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To see Ralph before he dies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his
+      chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no
+      negligence. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see the need of it,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;He came to see
+      you here. I didn&rsquo;t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake.
+      But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him.
+      Now you tell me it&rsquo;s not to have been the last. Ah, you&rsquo;re not grateful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to be grateful for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from
+      his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife.
+      &ldquo;For my not having interfered while he was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you
+      didn&rsquo;t like it. I was very glad when he went away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave him alone then. Don&rsquo;t run after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing.
+      &ldquo;I must go to England,&rdquo; she said, with a full consciousness that her tone
+      might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly obstinate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not like it if you do,&rdquo; Osmond remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I mind that? You won&rsquo;t like it if I don&rsquo;t. You like nothing I
+      do or don&rsquo;t do. You pretend to think I lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why you must go
+      then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Osmond. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give me an occasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit
+      some folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I disobeyed you?&rdquo; said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of
+      mildness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the most
+      deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt&rsquo;s telegram but three
+      minutes ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You calculate rapidly; it&rsquo;s a great accomplishment. I don&rsquo;t see why we
+      should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.&rdquo; And he stood there as if
+      he expected to see her withdraw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she never moved; she couldn&rsquo;t move, strange as it may seem; she still
+      wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary degree,
+      of making her feel this need. There was something in her imagination he
+      could always appeal to against her judgement. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve no reason for such a
+      wish,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve every reason for going. I can&rsquo;t tell you how
+      unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It&rsquo;s your own opposition
+      that&rsquo;s calculated. It&rsquo;s malignant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the
+      sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no
+      surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed his
+      wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to
+      draw her out. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all the more intense then,&rdquo; he answered. And he added
+      almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel: &ldquo;This is a very
+      important matter.&rdquo; She recognised that; she was fully conscious of the
+      weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a
+      crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on.
+      &ldquo;You say I&rsquo;ve no reason? I have the very best. I dislike, from the bottom
+      of my soul, what you intend to do. It&rsquo;s dishonourable; it&rsquo;s indelicate;
+      it&rsquo;s indecent. Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I&rsquo;m under no
+      obligation to make concessions to him. I&rsquo;ve already made the very
+      handsomest. Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins
+      and needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I expected him
+      to go. I&rsquo;ve never liked him and he has never liked me. That&rsquo;s why you like
+      him&mdash;because he hates me,&rdquo; said Osmond with a quick, barely audible
+      tremor in his voice. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an ideal of what my wife should do and should
+      not do. She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my
+      deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin&rsquo;s nothing
+      to you; he&rsquo;s nothing to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about
+      <i>us</i>, but I assure you that <i>we</i>, <i>we</i>, Mrs. Osmond, is all
+      I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of
+      not doing so. I&rsquo;m not aware that we&rsquo;re divorced or separated; for me we&rsquo;re
+      indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any human creature, and I&rsquo;m
+      nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable proximity; it&rsquo;s one, at any rate,
+      of our own deliberate making. You don&rsquo;t like to be reminded of that, I
+      know; but I&rsquo;m perfectly willing, because&mdash;because&mdash;&rdquo; And he
+      paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say which would be very
+      much to the point. &ldquo;Because I think we should accept the consequences of
+      our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out
+      of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife&rsquo;s quick emotion; the
+      resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a
+      mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command, they constituted
+      a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on
+      his part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something
+      transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one&rsquo;s
+      country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious&mdash;the
+      observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling
+      as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet
+      separated in act. Isabel had not changed; her old passion for justice
+      still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her
+      husband&rsquo;s blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a
+      moment promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to
+      preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it
+      went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of
+      irreflective action&mdash;a joy to which she had so long been a stranger;
+      but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by
+      the blight of Osmond&rsquo;s touch. If she must renounce, however, she would let
+      him know she was a victim rather than a dupe. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;re a master of
+      the art of mockery,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How can you speak of an indissoluble union&mdash;how
+      can you speak of your being contented? Where&rsquo;s our union when you accuse
+      me of falsity? Where&rsquo;s your contentment when you have nothing but hideous
+      suspicion in your heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t live decently together!&rdquo; cried Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed we don&rsquo;t if you go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s very little; that&rsquo;s nothing. I might do much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long
+      enough in Italy to catch this trick. &ldquo;Ah, if you&rsquo;ve come to threaten me I
+      prefer my drawing.&rdquo; And he walked back to his table, where he took up the
+      sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that if I go you&rsquo;ll not expect me to come back,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was not
+      designed. He looked at her a little, and then, &ldquo;Are you out of your mind?&rdquo;
+       he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can it be anything but a rupture?&rdquo; she went on; &ldquo;especially if all
+      you say is true?&rdquo; She was unable to see how it could be anything but a
+      rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down before his table. &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t argue with you on the
+      hypothesis of your defying me,&rdquo; he said. And he took up one of his little
+      brushes again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his
+      whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she
+      quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion, were all
+      dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed
+      her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any
+      weakness. On her way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini
+      standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a small
+      collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had an
+      open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page
+      which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of Isabel&rsquo;s step
+      she raised her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah my dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing
+      book to read! Everything here&rsquo;s of a dreariness&mdash;! Do you think this
+      would do me any good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without
+      reading or understanding it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I can&rsquo;t advise you. I&rsquo;ve had bad
+      news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess threw down her book. &ldquo;Ah, he was so simpatico. I&rsquo;m awfully
+      sorry for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would be sorrier still if you knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there to know? You look very badly,&rdquo; the Countess added. &ldquo;You
+      must have been with Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+      intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her
+      sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
+      embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady&rsquo;s
+      fluttering attention. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been with Osmond,&rdquo; she said, while the
+      Countess&rsquo;s bright eyes glittered at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure then he has been odious!&rdquo; the Countess cried. &ldquo;Did he say he was
+      glad poor Mr. Touchett&rsquo;s dying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said it&rsquo;s impossible I should go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess&rsquo;s mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she
+      already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to
+      Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then
+      there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a
+      moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid,
+      picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After
+      all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had already
+      overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Isabel&rsquo;s trouble
+      to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel&rsquo;s trouble was deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had no
+      hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression of
+      her sister-in-law&rsquo;s eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous
+      expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the conditions
+      looked favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to England she
+      herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce
+      her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire
+      to hear that Isabel would go to England. &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s impossible for you, my
+      dear,&rdquo; she said caressingly. &ldquo;Why else are you rich and clever and good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why does Osmond say it&rsquo;s impossible?&rdquo; the Countess asked in a tone which
+      sufficiently declared that she couldn&rsquo;t imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew back;
+      she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately taken. But
+      she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. &ldquo;Because we&rsquo;re so happy
+      together that we can&rsquo;t separate even for a fortnight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, &ldquo;when I want to make a
+      journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may
+      appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is
+      certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily
+      to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the
+      great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as
+      this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one&rsquo;s
+      husband. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid&mdash;yes, I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; she said to herself more than
+      once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her
+      husband&mdash;his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even
+      her own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often
+      held her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when
+      Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them,
+      but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror
+      to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he
+      could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was
+      capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all
+      that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom,
+      uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank down on her
+      sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her. She
+      had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin lips and
+      her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She lived
+      assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now she was
+      leaning far out. &ldquo;I knocked,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;but you didn&rsquo;t answer me. So I
+      ventured in. I&rsquo;ve been looking at you for the past five minutes. You&rsquo;re
+      very unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but I don&rsquo;t think you can comfort me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give me leave to try?&rdquo; And the Countess sat down on the sofa
+      beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something communicative
+      and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have a deal to say, and it
+      occurred to Isabel for the first time that her sister-in-law might say
+      something really human. She made play with her glittering eyes, in which
+      there was an unpleasant fascination. &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she soon resumed, &ldquo;I
+      must tell you, to begin with, that I don&rsquo;t understand your state of mind.
+      You seem to have so many scruples, so many reasons, so many ties. When I
+      discovered, ten years ago, that my husband&rsquo;s dearest wish was to make me
+      miserable&mdash;of late he has simply let me alone&mdash;ah, it was a
+      wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel, you&rsquo;re not simple enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not simple enough,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I want you to know,&rdquo; the Countess declared&mdash;&ldquo;because
+      I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you&rsquo;ve guessed it.
+      But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you
+      shouldn&rsquo;t do as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you wish me to know?&rdquo; Isabel felt a foreboding that made her
+      heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this
+      alone was portentous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject. &ldquo;In
+      your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really
+      suspected?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don&rsquo;t know what you
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman with
+      such a pure mind!&rdquo; cried the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel slowly got up. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going to tell me something horrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can call it by whatever name you will!&rdquo; And the Countess rose also,
+      while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood a moment
+      in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even then, of
+      ugliness; after which she said: &ldquo;My first sister-in-law had no children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. &ldquo;Your first
+      sister-in-law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has been
+      married before! I&rsquo;ve never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it
+      mightn&rsquo;t be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have
+      done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died
+      childless. It wasn&rsquo;t till after her death that Pansy arrived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale,
+      vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to
+      follow than she could see. &ldquo;Pansy&rsquo;s not my husband&rsquo;s child then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband&rsquo;s&mdash;in perfection! But no one else&rsquo;s husband&rsquo;s. Some one
+      else&rsquo;s wife&rsquo;s. Ah, my good Isabel,&rdquo; cried the Countess, &ldquo;with you one must
+      dot one&rsquo;s i&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Whose wife&rsquo;s?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died&mdash;how long?&mdash;a dozen,
+      more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing
+      what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no
+      reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to
+      fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife&rsquo;s having died in
+      childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little
+      girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from
+      nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in
+      quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone,
+      one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but where she
+      was suddenly taken worse&mdash;fatally ill. The story passed,
+      sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody heeded,
+      as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew&mdash;without
+      researches,&rdquo; the Countess lucidly proceeded; &ldquo;as also, you&rsquo;ll understand,
+      without a word said between us&mdash;I mean between Osmond and me. Don&rsquo;t
+      you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle it?&mdash;that
+      is to settle <i>me</i> if I should say anything. I said nothing, right or
+      left&mdash;never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of me: on
+      my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all this time,
+      as I&rsquo;ve never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me, from the first,
+      that the child was my niece&mdash;from the moment she was my brother&rsquo;s
+      daughter. As for her veritable mother&mdash;!&rdquo; But with this Pansy&rsquo;s
+      wonderful aunt dropped&mdash;as, involuntarily, from the impression of her
+      sister-in-law&rsquo;s face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to look at
+      her than she had ever had to meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an
+      echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head. &ldquo;Why
+      have you told me this?&rdquo; she asked in a voice the Countess hardly
+      recognised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve been so bored with your not knowing. I&rsquo;ve been bored,
+      frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this time
+      I couldn&rsquo;t have managed! <i>Ça me depasse</i>, if you don&rsquo;t mind my saying
+      so, the things, all round you, that you&rsquo;ve appeared to succeed in not
+      knowing. It&rsquo;s a sort of assistance&mdash;aid to innocent ignorance&mdash;that
+      I&rsquo;ve always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that of
+      keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found
+      itself exhausted. It&rsquo;s not a black lie, moreover, you know,&rdquo; the Countess
+      inimitably added. &ldquo;The facts are exactly what I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea,&rdquo; said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner
+      that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I believed&mdash;though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred
+      to you that he was for six or seven years her lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Things <i>have</i> occurred to me, and perhaps that was
+      what they all meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about Pansy!&rdquo;
+       the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no idea, for me,&rdquo; Isabel went on, &ldquo;ever <i>definitely</i> took that
+      form.&rdquo; She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what
+      hadn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;And as it is&mdash;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to
+      have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She had
+      expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a
+      spark. Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have been, as
+      a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister passage of
+      public history. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you recognise how the child could never pass for <i>her</i>
+      husband&rsquo;s?&mdash;that is with M. Merle himself,&rdquo; her companion resumed.
+      &ldquo;They had been separated too long for that, and he had gone to some far
+      country&mdash;I think to South America. If she had ever had children&mdash;which
+      I&rsquo;m not sure of&mdash;she had lost them. The conditions happened to make
+      it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a pinch), that Osmond
+      should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was dead&mdash;very true; but
+      she had not been dead too long to put a certain accommodation of dates out
+      of the question&mdash;from the moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn&rsquo;t
+      started; which was what they had to take care of. What was more natural
+      than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and for a world not troubling
+      about trifles, should have left behind her, <i>poverina</i>, the pledge of
+      her brief happiness that had cost her her life? With the aid of a change
+      of residence&mdash;Osmond had been living with her at Naples at the time
+      of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course left it for ever&mdash;the
+      whole history was successfully set going. My poor sister-in-law, in her
+      grave, couldn&rsquo;t help herself, and the real mother, to save <i>her</i>
+      skin, renounced all visible property in the child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, poor, poor woman!&rdquo; cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It
+      was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction
+      from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the Countess
+      Gemini found only another discomfiture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very kind of you to pity her!&rdquo; she discordantly laughed. &ldquo;Yes
+      indeed, you have a way of your own&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have been false to his wife&mdash;and so very soon!&rdquo; said Isabel
+      with a sudden check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all that&rsquo;s wanting&mdash;that you should take up her cause!&rdquo; the
+      Countess went on. &ldquo;I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too
+      soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to me, to me&mdash;?&rdquo; And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard;
+      as if her question&mdash;though it was sufficiently there in her eyes&mdash;were
+      all for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you call
+      faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another woman&mdash;<i>such</i>
+      a lover as he had been, <i>cara mia</i>, between their risks and their
+      precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had passed
+      away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her own,
+      drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances so intense
+      that even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may therefore imagine
+      what it was&mdash;when he couldn&rsquo;t patch it on conveniently to <i>any</i>
+      of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Isabel mechanically echoed, &ldquo;the whole past is between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say,
+      they had kept it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a little. &ldquo;Why then did she want him to marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah my dear, that&rsquo;s her superiority! Because you had money; and because
+      she believed you would be good to Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor woman&mdash;and Pansy who doesn&rsquo;t like her!&rdquo; cried Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows
+      it; she knows everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will she know that you&rsquo;ve told me this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will depend upon whether you tell her. She&rsquo;s prepared for it, and do
+      you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that I
+      lie. Perhaps you do; don&rsquo;t make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only,
+      as it happens this time, I don&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ve told plenty of little idiotic fibs,
+      but they&rsquo;ve never hurt any one but myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel sat staring at her companion&rsquo;s story as at a bale of fantastic
+      wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her feet.
+      &ldquo;Why did Osmond never marry her?&rdquo; she finally asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because she had no money.&rdquo; The Countess had an answer for everything, and
+      if she lied she lied well. &ldquo;No one knows, no one has ever known, what she
+      lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I don&rsquo;t believe
+      Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn&rsquo;t have married him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can she have loved him then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I suppose,
+      she would have married him; but at that time her husband was living. By
+      the time M. Merle had rejoined&mdash;I won&rsquo;t say his ancestors, because he
+      never had any&mdash;her relations with Osmond had changed, and she had
+      grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,&rdquo; the Countess
+      went on, leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically afterwards&mdash;&ldquo;she
+      <i>had</i> never had, what you might call any illusions of <i>intelligence</i>.
+      She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always been her idea. She
+      has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but she has never
+      succeeded. I don&rsquo;t call Madame Merle a success, you know. I don&rsquo;t know
+      what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very little to show.
+      The only tangible result she has ever achieved&mdash;except, of course,
+      getting to know every one and staying with them free of expense&mdash;has
+      been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she did that, my dear; you
+      needn&rsquo;t look as if you doubted it. I&rsquo;ve watched them for years; I know
+      everything&mdash;everything. I&rsquo;m thought a great scatterbrain, but I&rsquo;ve
+      had enough application of mind to follow up those two. She hates me, and
+      her way of showing it is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When
+      people say I&rsquo;ve had fifteen lovers she looks horrified and declares that
+      quite half of them were never proved. She has been afraid of me for years,
+      and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false things people have said
+      about me. She has been afraid I&rsquo;d expose her, and she threatened me one
+      day when Osmond began to pay his court to you. It was at his house in
+      Florence; do you remember that afternoon when she brought you there and we
+      had tea in the garden? She let me know then that if I should tell tales
+      two could play at that game. She pretends there&rsquo;s a good deal more to tell
+      about me than about her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don&rsquo;t
+      care a fig what she may say, simply because I know <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t care a
+      fig. You can&rsquo;t trouble your head about me less than you do already. So she
+      may take her revenge as she chooses; I don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;ll frighten you
+      very much. Her great idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable&mdash;a
+      kind of full-blown lily&mdash;the incarnation of propriety. She has always
+      worshipped that god. There should be no scandal about Caesar&rsquo;s wife, you
+      know; and, as I say, she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one
+      reason she wouldn&rsquo;t marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with Pansy
+      people would put things together&mdash;would even see a resemblance. She
+      has had a terror lest the mother should betray herself. She has been
+      awfully careful; the mother has never done so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, the mother has done so,&rdquo; said Isabel, who had listened to all
+      this with a face more and more wan. &ldquo;She betrayed herself to me the other
+      day, though I didn&rsquo;t recognise her. There appeared to have been a chance
+      of Pansy&rsquo;s making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not
+      coming off she almost dropped the mask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s where she&rsquo;d dish herself!&rdquo; cried the Countess. &ldquo;She has failed
+      so dreadfully that she&rsquo;s determined her daughter shall make it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started at the words &ldquo;her daughter,&rdquo; which her guest threw off so
+      familiarly. &ldquo;It seems very wonderful,&rdquo; she murmured; and in this
+      bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally
+      touched by the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t go and turn against the poor innocent child!&rdquo; the Countess went
+      on. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself have
+      liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she had
+      become yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at
+      seeing me&mdash;!&rdquo; Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed.
+      Osmond&rsquo;s marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before that
+      she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That you
+      might take such a fancy to the child that you&rsquo;d do something for her.
+      Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really
+      extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,&rdquo; cried
+      the Countess, &ldquo;why did you ever inherit money?&rdquo; She stopped a moment as if
+      she saw something singular in Isabel&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me now that
+      you&rsquo;ll give her a dot. You&rsquo;re capable of that, but I would refuse to
+      believe it. Don&rsquo;t try to be too good. Be a little easy and natural and
+      nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; Isabel
+      said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much obliged to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you seem to be!&rdquo; cried the Countess with a mocking laugh. &ldquo;Perhaps
+      you are&mdash;perhaps you&rsquo;re not. You don&rsquo;t take it as I should have
+      thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should I take it?&rdquo; Isabel asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.&rdquo; Isabel made no
+      answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve
+      always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke off&mdash;or
+      <i>he</i> did. But he has always been more for her than she has been for
+      him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that each
+      should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also do
+      everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know such a
+      thing as that. I know it by the way they&rsquo;ve behaved. Now see how much
+      better women are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but Osmond has
+      never lifted a little finger for <i>her</i>. She has worked for him,
+      plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found money
+      for him; and the end of it is that he&rsquo;s tired of her. She&rsquo;s an old habit;
+      there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn&rsquo;t miss her
+      if she were removed. And, what&rsquo;s more, to-day she knows it. So you needn&rsquo;t
+      be jealous!&rdquo; the Countess added humorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath; her
+      head was humming with new knowledge. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much obliged to you,&rdquo; she
+      repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: &ldquo;How do
+      you know all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel&rsquo;s expression
+      of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold stare, with which,
+      &ldquo;Let us assume that I&rsquo;ve invented it!&rdquo; she cried. She too, however,
+      suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel&rsquo;s arm, said with
+      the penetration of her sharp bright smile: &ldquo;Now will you give up your
+      journey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a
+      moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a
+      minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed
+      eyes and pale lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done wrong to speak&mdash;I&rsquo;ve made you ill!&rdquo; the Countess cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I must see Ralph!&rdquo; Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in the quick
+      passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of far-reaching,
+      infinite sadness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the Countess
+      had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference with her maid, who
+      was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought (except of her
+      journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Pansy; from her she
+      couldn&rsquo;t turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to
+      understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o&rsquo;clock to a
+      high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was
+      admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person.
+      Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come with Pansy to see
+      the sisters. She knew they were good women, and she saw that the large
+      rooms were clean and cheerful and that the well-used garden had sun for
+      winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, which affronted
+      and almost frightened her; not for the world would she have spent a night
+      there. It produced to-day more than before the impression of a
+      well-appointed prison; for it was not possible to pretend Pansy was free
+      to leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a new and
+      violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation was to make her
+      reach out a hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she went
+      to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The
+      parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a large
+      clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax flowers
+      under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the
+      walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than
+      like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment only
+      seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned at the
+      end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got up,
+      expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her extreme
+      surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect was
+      strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision that her
+      appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a
+      painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her
+      audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark things
+      seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the room. Her being
+      there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of handwritings, of
+      profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It made Isabel feel
+      faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot she would have been
+      quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to her; it seemed to her
+      indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to Madame Merle. In one&rsquo;s
+      relations with this lady, however, there were never any absolute
+      necessities; she had a manner which carried off not only her own
+      deficiencies but those of other people. But she was different from usual;
+      she came in slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel instantly perceived
+      that she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. For her too
+      the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken to treat it by the
+      light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar gravity; she pretended not
+      even to smile, and though Isabel saw that she was more than ever playing a
+      part it seemed to her that on the whole the wonderful woman had never been
+      so natural. She looked at her young friend from head to foot, but not
+      harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness rather, and an absence of
+      any air of allusion to their last meeting. It was as if she had wished to
+      mark a distinction. She had been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can leave us alone,&rdquo; she said to the portress; &ldquo;in five minutes this
+      lady will ring for you.&rdquo; And then she turned to Isabel, who, after noting
+      what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let her eyes
+      wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished never to
+      look at Madame Merle again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re surprised to find me here, and I&rsquo;m
+      afraid you&rsquo;re not pleased,&rdquo; this lady went on. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see why I should
+      have come; it&rsquo;s as if I had anticipated you. I confess I&rsquo;ve been rather
+      indiscreet&mdash;I ought to have asked your permission.&rdquo; There was none of
+      the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply and mildly; but
+      Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could not have told
+      herself with what intention it was uttered. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve not been sitting
+      long,&rdquo; Madame Merle continued; &ldquo;that is I&rsquo;ve not been long with Pansy. I
+      came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be
+      rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good for a
+      small girl; I know so little about small girls; I can&rsquo;t tell. At any rate
+      it&rsquo;s a little dismal. Therefore I came&mdash;on the chance. I knew of
+      course that you&rsquo;d come, and her father as well; still, I had not been told
+      other visitors were forbidden. The good woman&mdash;what&rsquo;s her name?
+      Madame Catherine&mdash;made no objection whatever. I stayed twenty minutes
+      with Pansy; she has a charming little room, not in the least conventual,
+      with a piano and flowers. She has arranged it delightfully; she has so
+      much taste. Of course it&rsquo;s all none of my business, but I feel happier
+      since I&rsquo;ve seen her. She may even have a maid if she likes; but of course
+      she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little black frock; she looks so
+      charming. I went afterwards to see Mother Catherine, who has a very good
+      room too; I assure you I don&rsquo;t find the poor sisters at all monastic.
+      Mother Catherine has a most coquettish little toilet-table, with something
+      that looked uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks
+      delightfully of Pansy; says it&rsquo;s a great happiness for them to have her.
+      She&rsquo;s a little saint of heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as
+      I was leaving Madame Catherine the portress came to say to her that there
+      was a lady for the signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked
+      her to let me go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly&mdash;I
+      must tell you that&mdash;and said it was her duty to notify the Mother
+      Superior; it was of such high importance that you should be treated with
+      respect. I requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her
+      how she supposed I would treat you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had
+      long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases and
+      gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel&rsquo;s ear,
+      though her eyes were absent from her companion&rsquo;s face. She had not
+      proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse in
+      her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle
+      modulation marked a momentous discovery&mdash;the perception of an
+      entirely new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had
+      guessed in the space of an instant that everything was at end between
+      them, and in the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why.
+      The person who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but
+      was a very different person&mdash;a person who knew her secret. This
+      discovery was tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most
+      accomplished of women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that
+      moment. Then the conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself
+      again and flowed on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only
+      because she had the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been
+      touched with a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the
+      alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her
+      not betraying herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her
+      voice refused to improve&mdash;she couldn&rsquo;t help it&mdash;while she heard
+      herself say she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and
+      she was able only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large
+      clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have
+      been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and saw
+      before her the phantom of exposure&mdash;this in itself was a revenge,
+      this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a moment
+      during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with her back
+      half-turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side of the
+      window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she saw; she
+      saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. She saw, in
+      the crude light of that revelation which had already become a part of
+      experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in which it had
+      been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry staring fact that
+      she had been an applied handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient
+      as mere shaped wood and iron. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged
+      into her soul again; it was as if she felt on her lips the taste of
+      dishonour. There was a moment during which, if she had turned and spoken,
+      she would have said something that would hiss like a lash. But she closed
+      her eyes, and then the hideous vision dropped. What remained was the
+      cleverest woman in the world standing there within a few feet of her and
+      knowing as little what to think as the meanest. Isabel&rsquo;s only revenge was
+      to be silent still&mdash;to leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented
+      situation. She left her there for a period that must have seemed long to
+      this lady, who at last seated herself with a movement which was in itself
+      a confession of helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking down
+      at her. Madame Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered Isabel&rsquo;s face.
+      She might see what she would, but her danger was over. Isabel would never
+      accuse her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her
+      the opportunity to defend herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m come to bid Pansy good-bye,&rdquo; our young woman said at last. &ldquo;I go to
+      England to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to England to-night!&rdquo; Madame Merle repeated sitting there and looking
+      up at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett&rsquo;s dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ll feel that.&rdquo; Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance
+      to express sympathy. &ldquo;Do you go alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; without my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the general
+      sadness of things. &ldquo;Mr. Touchett never liked me, but I&rsquo;m sorry he&rsquo;s dying.
+      Shall you see his mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she has returned from America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have
+      changed,&rdquo; said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a
+      moment, then added: &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ll see dear old Gardencourt again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not enjoy it much,&rdquo; Isabel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally&mdash;in your grief. But it&rsquo;s on the whole, of all the houses I
+      know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I
+      don&rsquo;t venture to send a message to the people,&rdquo; Madame Merle added; &ldquo;but I
+      should like to give my love to the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel turned away. &ldquo;I had better go to Pansy. I&rsquo;ve not much time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and
+      admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet
+      smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump white
+      hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she had
+      already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss
+      Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly
+      and said: &ldquo;It will be good for her to see you. I&rsquo;ll take you to her
+      myself.&rdquo; Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let me remain a little?&rdquo; this lady asked. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so good to be
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may remain always if you like!&rdquo; And the good sister gave a knowing
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long
+      staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean; so,
+      thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine
+      gently pushed open the door of Pansy&rsquo;s room and ushered in the visitor;
+      then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and
+      embraced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s glad to see you,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;it will do her good.&rdquo; And she
+      placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement to
+      seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. &ldquo;How does this dear child look?&rdquo;
+       she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She looks pale,&rdquo; Isabel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the pleasure of seeing you. She&rsquo;s very happy. <i>Elle éclaire la
+      maison</i>,&rdquo; said the good sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was perhaps
+      this that made her look pale. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re very good to me&mdash;they think of
+      everything!&rdquo; she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to
+      accommodate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We think of you always&mdash;you&rsquo;re a precious charge,&rdquo; Madame Catherine
+      remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and
+      whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with a
+      leaden weight on Isabel&rsquo;s ears; it seemed to represent the surrender of a
+      personality, the authority of the Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid
+      her head in her stepmother&rsquo;s lap. So she remained some moments, while
+      Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and
+      looking about the room. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think I&rsquo;ve arranged it well? I&rsquo;ve
+      everything I have at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very pretty; you&rsquo;re very comfortable.&rdquo; Isabel scarcely knew what she
+      could say to her. On the one hand she couldn&rsquo;t let her think she had come
+      to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend to
+      rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to bid
+      you good-bye. I&rsquo;m going to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy&rsquo;s white little face turned red. &ldquo;To England! Not to come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know when I shall come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had no
+      right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he&rsquo;ll probably die. I wish to see
+      him,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa
+      go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I shall go alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she
+      thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never
+      by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed them
+      deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Isabel was sure;
+      and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands and wives who
+      were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet even in
+      thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle stepmother
+      as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have stood almost as
+      still as it would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great
+      picture in the convent chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at
+      each other. But as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity&rsquo;s
+      sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put away all
+      knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her own. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be very far
+      away,&rdquo; she presently went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,&rdquo; Isabel explained;
+      &ldquo;since so long as you&rsquo;re here I can&rsquo;t be called near you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you can come and see me; though you&rsquo;ve not come very often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing with
+      me. I can&rsquo;t amuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not to be amused. That&rsquo;s not what papa wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it hardly matters whether I&rsquo;m in Rome or in England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not happy, Mrs. Osmond,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very. But it doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to
+      come out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish indeed you might.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t leave me here,&rdquo; Pansy went on gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. &ldquo;Will you come away
+      with me now?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy looked at her pleadingly. &ldquo;Did papa tell you to bring me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s my own proposal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think he knew I was coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks I&rsquo;ve not had enough,&rdquo; said Pansy. &ldquo;But I have. The ladies are
+      very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some very
+      little ones&mdash;such charming children. Then my room&mdash;you can see
+      for yourself. All that&rsquo;s very delightful. But I&rsquo;ve had enough. Papa wished
+      me to think a little&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve thought a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that I must never displease papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew that before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but I know it better. I&rsquo;ll do anything&mdash;I&rsquo;ll do anything,&rdquo; said
+      Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into her
+      face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been
+      vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier had kept his enamels!
+      Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated
+      easily. She laid her hand on Pansy&rsquo;s as if to let her know that her look
+      conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl&rsquo;s momentary
+      resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only her tribute
+      to the truth of things. She didn&rsquo;t presume to judge others, but she had
+      judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no vocation for
+      struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of sequestration there was
+      something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her pretty head to authority and
+      only asked of authority to be merciful. Yes; it was very well that Edward
+      Rosier had reserved a few articles!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. &ldquo;Good-bye then. I leave
+      Rome to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child&rsquo;s
+      face. &ldquo;You look strange, you frighten me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m very harmless,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you won&rsquo;t come back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not. I can&rsquo;t tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won&rsquo;t leave me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. &ldquo;My dear child, what can I do
+      for you?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;but I&rsquo;m happier when I think of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can always think of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not when you&rsquo;re so far. I&rsquo;m a little afraid,&rdquo; said Pansy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you afraid of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of papa&mdash;a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not say that,&rdquo; Isabel observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll do everything they want. Only if you&rsquo;re here I shall do it more
+      easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel considered. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t desert you,&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;Good-bye, my
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two sisters;
+      and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor to the top
+      of the staircase. &ldquo;Madame Merle has been here,&rdquo; she remarked as they went;
+      and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like Madame
+      Merle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel hesitated, then stopped. &ldquo;You must never say that&mdash;that you
+      don&rsquo;t like Madame Merle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a
+      reason for non-compliance. &ldquo;I never will again,&rdquo; she said with exquisite
+      gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it
+      appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which
+      Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she
+      reached the bottom the girl was standing above. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come back?&rdquo; she
+      called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I&rsquo;ll come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the door of
+      the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t go
+      in,&rdquo; said the good sister. &ldquo;Madame Merle&rsquo;s waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking if
+      there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment&rsquo;s reflexion
+      assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her
+      desire to avoid Pansy&rsquo;s other friend. Her companion grasped her arm very
+      gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said in French
+      and almost familiarly: &ldquo;<i>Eh bien, chère Madame, qu&rsquo;en pensez-vous?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We think it&rsquo;s enough,&rdquo; Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she
+      pushed open the door of the parlour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so
+      absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame
+      Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been
+      thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full
+      possession of her resources. &ldquo;I found I wished to wait for you,&rdquo; she said
+      urbanely. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not to talk about Pansy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame
+      Merle&rsquo;s declaration she answered after a moment: &ldquo;Madame Catherine says
+      it&rsquo;s enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about
+      poor Mr. Touchett,&rdquo; Madame Merle added. &ldquo;Have you reason to believe that
+      he&rsquo;s really at his last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a
+      probability.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to ask you a strange question,&rdquo; said Madame Merle. &ldquo;Are you
+      very fond of your cousin?&rdquo; And she gave a smile as strange as her
+      utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m very fond of him. But I don&rsquo;t understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She just hung fire. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather hard to explain. Something has occurred
+      to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit of my
+      idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never guessed
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has done me many services.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> made me&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more
+      triumphantly: &ldquo;He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required to
+      make you a brilliant match. At bottom it&rsquo;s him you&rsquo;ve to thank.&rdquo; She
+      stopped; there was something in Isabel&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you. It was my uncle&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it was your uncle&rsquo;s money, but it was your cousin&rsquo;s idea. He brought
+      his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by
+      lurid flashes. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you say such things. I don&rsquo;t know what
+      you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing but what I&rsquo;ve guessed. But I&rsquo;ve guessed that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with
+      her hand on the latch. Then she said&mdash;it was her only revenge: &ldquo;I
+      believed it was you I had to thank!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very unhappy, I know. But I&rsquo;m more so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Merle raised her eyes. &ldquo;I shall go to America,&rdquo; she quietly
+      remarked while Isabel passed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+      circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel
+      descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the arms,
+      as it were&mdash;or at any rate into the hands&mdash;of Henrietta
+      Stackpole. She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she
+      had not definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had
+      felt her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey
+      from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to
+      question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and
+      took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though
+      they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their
+      course through other countries&mdash;strange-looking, dimly-lighted,
+      pathless lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it
+      seemed, a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about;
+      but it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+      Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of memory,
+      of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their will, but
+      she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a logic of
+      their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now that she
+      was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much concerned her
+      and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play whist
+      with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual
+      relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before
+      her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand
+      trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver. She had
+      thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that they had been weighted
+      with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after all, for of what use was
+      it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of use to her to-day. All
+      purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the single
+      desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her
+      starting-point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary
+      solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come
+      back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it
+      would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were
+      thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to
+      give it all up and not know anything more&mdash;this idea was as sweet as
+      the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a
+      hot land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as good
+      as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply
+      with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that
+      she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the
+      receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret now&mdash;that was
+      all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance
+      was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so&mdash;well,
+      so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal
+      inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever it was
+      it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do
+      so in America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Isabel
+      no more; she only had an impression that she should never again see Madame
+      Merle. This impression carried her into the future, of which from time to
+      time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant years,
+      still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live, and these
+      intimations contradicted the spirit of the present hour. It might be
+      desirable to get quite away, really away, further away than little
+      grey-green England, but this privilege was evidently to be denied her.
+      Deep in her soul&mdash;deeper than any appetite for renunciation&mdash;was
+      the sense that life would be her business for a long time to come. And at
+      moments there was something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the
+      conviction. It was a proof of strength&mdash;it was a proof she should
+      some day be happy again. It couldn&rsquo;t be she was to live only to suffer;
+      she was still young, after all, and a great many things might happen to
+      her yet. To live only to suffer&mdash;only to feel the injury of life
+      repeated and enlarged&mdash;it seemed to her she was too valuable, too
+      capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think
+      so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable?
+      Wasn&rsquo;t all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn&rsquo;t it
+      much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It involved
+      then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but Isabel
+      recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long
+      future. She should never escape; she should last to the end. Then the
+      middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her
+      indifference closed her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid
+      she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd,
+      looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished
+      to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She
+      rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an arrival in
+      London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, the strange,
+      livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous
+      fear and made her put her arm into her friend&rsquo;s. She remembered she had
+      once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle in which
+      there was something that touched her. She remembered how she walked away
+      from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, five years
+      before. She could not have done that to-day, and the incident came before
+      her as the deed of another person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too beautiful that you should have come,&rdquo; said Henrietta, looking at
+      her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the
+      proposition. &ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;if you hadn&rsquo;t; well, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo;
+       remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another
+      figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment she
+      recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little
+      apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about him
+      to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken&mdash;that of
+      abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their
+      embraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s Mr. Bantling,&rdquo; said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring
+      much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!&rdquo; Henrietta
+      exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile&mdash;a
+      smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it lovely
+      she has come?&rdquo; Henrietta asked. &ldquo;He knows all about it,&rdquo; she added; &ldquo;we
+      had quite a discussion. He said you wouldn&rsquo;t, I said you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you always agreed,&rdquo; Isabel smiled in return. She felt she could
+      smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling&rsquo;s brave eyes, that
+      he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to remember he
+      was an old friend of her cousin&mdash;that he understood, that it was all
+      right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a
+      beautiful blameless knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I always agree,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling. &ldquo;But she doesn&rsquo;t, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?&rdquo; Henrietta enquired. &ldquo;Your
+      young lady has probably remained at Calais.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never
+      found so interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with her while I go and see,&rdquo; Henrietta commanded, leaving the two
+      for a moment together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel
+      how it had been on the Channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,&rdquo; she said, to her companion&rsquo;s
+      obvious surprise. After which she added: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been to Gardencourt, I
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now how do you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you&mdash;except that you look like a person who has been to
+      Gardencourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I look awfully sad? It&rsquo;s awfully sad there, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,&rdquo; said
+      Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she should
+      never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed a
+      good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue, and
+      that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. &ldquo;You can ask Miss Stackpole,
+      you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see my cousin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been
+      there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he was
+      in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can&rsquo;t speak,&rdquo; Mr.
+      Bantling pursued. &ldquo;He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He was
+      just as clever as ever. It&rsquo;s awfully wretched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. &ldquo;Was
+      that late in the day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you&rsquo;d like to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don&rsquo;t think <i>she&rsquo;ll</i> let you go,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling. &ldquo;She
+      wants you to stop with her. I made Touchett&rsquo;s man promise to telegraph me
+      to-day, and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. &lsquo;Quiet and easy,&rsquo; 
+      that&rsquo;s what it says, and it&rsquo;s dated two o&rsquo;clock. So you see you can wait
+      till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m awfully tired. And I thank you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling, &ldquo;We were certain you would like the last news.&rdquo;
+       On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to
+      agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel&rsquo;s maid, whom she had caught in
+      the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of losing
+      herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress&rsquo;s luggage, so
+      that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station. &ldquo;You know you&rsquo;re
+      not to think of going to the country to-night,&rdquo; Henrietta remarked to her.
+      &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter whether there&rsquo;s a train or not. You&rsquo;re to come straight
+      to me in Wimpole Street. There isn&rsquo;t a corner to be had in London, but
+      I&rsquo;ve got you one all the same. It isn&rsquo;t a Roman palace, but it will do for
+      a night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do whatever you wish,&rdquo; Isabel said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come and answer a few questions; that&rsquo;s what I wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?&rdquo; Mr.
+      Bantling enquired jocosely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. &ldquo;I see you&rsquo;re in a
+      great hurry to get your own. You&rsquo;ll be at the Paddington Station to-morrow
+      morning at ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll come for mine,&rdquo; Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into a
+      cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street&mdash;to do her
+      justice there had been dinner enough&mdash;she asked those questions to
+      which she had alluded at the station. &ldquo;Did your husband make you a scene
+      about your coming?&rdquo; That was Miss Stackpole&rsquo;s first enquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I can&rsquo;t say he made a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t object then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you&rsquo;d call a scene.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a very quiet conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. &ldquo;It must have been hellish,&rdquo;
+       she then remarked. And Isabel didn&rsquo;t deny that it had been hellish. But
+      she confined herself to answering Henrietta&rsquo;s questions, which was easy,
+      as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no new
+      information. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Miss Stackpole at last, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only one criticism
+      to make. I don&rsquo;t see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure I myself see now,&rdquo; Isabel replied. &ldquo;But I did then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve forgotten your reason perhaps you won&rsquo;t return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel waited a moment. &ldquo;Perhaps I shall find another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll certainly never find a good one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In default of a better my having promised will do,&rdquo; Isabel suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that&rsquo;s why I hate it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of it now. I&rsquo;ve a little time. Coming away was a
+      complication, but what will going back be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remember, after all, that he won&rsquo;t make you a scene!&rdquo; said
+      Henrietta with much intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will, though,&rdquo; Isabel answered gravely. &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t be the scene of a
+      moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and then
+      Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested, announced
+      abruptly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been to stay with Lady Pensil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the invitation came at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was more natural than I think you know,&rdquo; said Henrietta, who fixed her
+      eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly: &ldquo;Isabel
+      Archer, I beg your pardon. You don&rsquo;t know why? Because I criticised you,
+      and yet I&rsquo;ve gone further than you. Mr. Osmond, at least, was born on the
+      other side!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so
+      modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel&rsquo;s mind was not
+      possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with a
+      quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately
+      recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity,
+      &ldquo;Henrietta Stackpole,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;are you going to give up your country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won&rsquo;t pretend to deny it; I look the fact in
+      the face. I&rsquo;m going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate right here in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems very strange,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well yes, I suppose it does. I&rsquo;ve come to it little by little. I think I
+      know what I&rsquo;m doing; but I don&rsquo;t know as I can explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One can&rsquo;t explain one&rsquo;s marriage,&rdquo; Isabel answered. &ldquo;And yours doesn&rsquo;t
+      need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn&rsquo;t a riddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he isn&rsquo;t a bad pun&mdash;or even a high flight of American humour. He
+      has a beautiful nature,&rdquo; Henrietta went on. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve studied him for many
+      years and I see right through him. He&rsquo;s as clear as the style of a good
+      prospectus. He&rsquo;s not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the
+      other hand he doesn&rsquo;t exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in
+      the United States.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re changed indeed! It&rsquo;s the first time I&rsquo;ve ever
+      heard you say anything against your native land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only say that we&rsquo;re too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after
+      all, isn&rsquo;t a vulgar fault. But I <i>am</i> changed; a woman has to change
+      a good deal to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll be very happy. You will at last&mdash;over here&mdash;see
+      something of the inner life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the key to the mystery,
+      I believe. I couldn&rsquo;t endure to be kept off. Now I&rsquo;ve as good a right as
+      any one!&rdquo; she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly diverted, but
+      there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta, after all, had
+      confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she had hitherto
+      regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a
+      disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was
+      subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had
+      not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+      marrying him&mdash;there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment,
+      to Isabel&rsquo;s sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A
+      little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Bantling himself at least was
+      original. But she didn&rsquo;t see how Henrietta could give up her country. She
+      herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her country as
+      it had been Henrietta&rsquo;s. She presently asked her if she had enjoyed her
+      visit to Lady Pensil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;she didn&rsquo;t know what to make of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was that very enjoyable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much so, because she&rsquo;s supposed to be a master mind. She thinks she
+      knows everything; but she doesn&rsquo;t understand a woman of my modern type. It
+      would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better or a little
+      worse. She&rsquo;s so puzzled; I believe she thinks it&rsquo;s my duty to go and do
+      something immoral. She thinks it&rsquo;s immoral that I should marry her
+      brother; but, after all, that isn&rsquo;t immoral enough. And she&rsquo;ll never
+      understand my mixture&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not so intelligent as her brother then,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;He appears
+      to have understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, he hasn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Miss Stackpole with decision. &ldquo;I really believe
+      that&rsquo;s what he wants to marry me for&mdash;just to find out the mystery
+      and the proportions of it. That&rsquo;s a fixed idea&mdash;a kind of
+      fascination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good in you to humour it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh well,&rdquo; said Henrietta, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve something to find out too!&rdquo; And Isabel
+      saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She
+      was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington Station,
+      where she found herself, at ten o&rsquo;clock, in the company both of Miss
+      Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore his perplexities
+      lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found out at least the
+      great point&mdash;that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting in initiative.
+      It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had been on his guard
+      against this deficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Henrietta has told me, and I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel said as she gave him
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you think it awfully odd,&rdquo; Mr. Bantling replied, resting on
+      his neat umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think it awfully odd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t think it so awfully odd as I do. But I&rsquo;ve always rather liked
+      striking out a line,&rdquo; said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Isabel&rsquo;s arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even quieter
+      than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a small household,
+      and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a stranger; so that instead of
+      being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown into the
+      drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to her aunt.
+      She waited a long time; Mrs. Touchett appeared in no hurry to come to her.
+      She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared&mdash;as scared as
+      if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious things, watching
+      her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark and cold; the dusk
+      was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The house was perfectly
+      still&mdash;with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it had filled all the
+      place for days before the death of her uncle. She left the drawing-room
+      and wandered about&mdash;strolled into the library and along the gallery
+      of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep made an echo.
+      Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had seen years before;
+      it might have been only yesterday she had stood there. She envied the
+      security of valuable &ldquo;pieces&rdquo; which change by no hair&rsquo;s breadth, only grow
+      in value, while their owners lose inch by inch youth, happiness, beauty;
+      and she became aware that she was walking about as her aunt had done on
+      the day she had come to see her in Albany. She was changed enough since
+      then&mdash;that had been the beginning. It suddenly struck her that if her
+      Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just that way and found her alone,
+      everything might have been different. She might have had another life and
+      she might have been a woman more blest. She stopped in the gallery in
+      front of a small picture&mdash;a charming and precious Bonington&mdash;upon
+      which her eyes rested a long time. But she was not looking at the picture;
+      she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in Albany she
+      would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the big
+      uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as
+      bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a repository of
+      latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most undecorated
+      fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first time, if her
+      remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a
+      gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Isabel&rsquo;s hot cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve kept you waiting because I&rsquo;ve been sitting with Ralph,&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Touchett said. &ldquo;The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her place.
+      He has a man who&rsquo;s supposed to look after him, but the man&rsquo;s good for
+      nothing; he&rsquo;s always looking out of the window&mdash;as if there were
+      anything to see! I didn&rsquo;t wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be
+      sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the
+      nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I find I know it better even than I thought; I&rsquo;ve been walking
+      everywhere,&rdquo; Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn&rsquo;t move. But I&rsquo;m not sure that it&rsquo;s
+      always sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he see me? Can he speak to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. &ldquo;You can try him,&rdquo; was the
+      limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Isabel to her
+      room. &ldquo;I thought they had taken you there; but it&rsquo;s not my house, it&rsquo;s
+      Ralph&rsquo;s; and I don&rsquo;t know what they do. They must at least have taken your
+      luggage; I don&rsquo;t suppose you&rsquo;ve brought much. Not that I care, however. I
+      believe they&rsquo;ve given you the same room you had before; when Ralph heard
+      you were coming he said you must have that one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he say anything else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, he doesn&rsquo;t chatter as he used!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett as she
+      preceded her niece up the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been slept in
+      since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous; Mrs.
+      Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. &ldquo;Is there really no
+      hope?&rdquo; our young woman asked as she stood before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;it has only been a beautiful one.&rdquo; Isabel found herself already
+      contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by that; there&rsquo;s no beauty without health.
+      That is a very odd dress to travel in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel glanced at her garment. &ldquo;I left Rome at an hour&rsquo;s notice; I took
+      the first that came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to be
+      their principal interest. I wasn&rsquo;t able to tell them&mdash;but they seemed
+      to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black
+      brocade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think I&rsquo;m more brilliant than I am; I&rsquo;m afraid to tell them the
+      truth,&rdquo; said Isabel. &ldquo;Lily wrote me you had dined with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she
+      should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been
+      expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to
+      America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn&rsquo;t go for my pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her niece, whom
+      she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this repast the
+      two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the melancholy
+      dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw her aunt not to be so dry as
+      she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman&rsquo;s inexpressiveness, her
+      want of regret, of disappointment, came back to her. Unmistakeably she
+      would have found it a blessing to-day to be able to feel a defeat, a
+      mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she were not even missing
+      those enrichments of consciousness and privately trying&mdash;reaching out
+      for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet; the testimony of pain
+      or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other hand perhaps she was
+      afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all it might take her too
+      far. Isabel could perceive, however, how it had come over her dimly that
+      she had failed of something, that she saw herself in the future as an old
+      woman without memories. Her little sharp face looked tragical. She told
+      her niece that Ralph had as yet not moved, but that he probably would be
+      able to see her before dinner. And then in a moment she added that he had
+      seen Lord Warburton the day before; an announcement which startled Isabel
+      a little, as it seemed an intimation that this personage was in the
+      neighbourhood and that an accident might bring them together. Such an
+      accident would not be happy; she had not come to England to struggle again
+      with Lord Warburton. She none the less presently said to her aunt that he
+      had been very kind to Ralph; she had seen something of that in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has something else to think of now,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett returned. And she
+      paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant. But
+      her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished to
+      gain a moment. &ldquo;Ah yes&mdash;the House of Lords and all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not thinking of the Lords; he&rsquo;s thinking of the ladies. At least
+      he&rsquo;s thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he&rsquo;s engaged to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, to be married!&rdquo; Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know.
+      Poor Ralph can&rsquo;t go to the wedding, though I believe it&rsquo;s to take place
+      very soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who&rsquo;s the young lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia&mdash;something of
+      that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel said. &ldquo;It must be a sudden decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just
+      been made public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very glad,&rdquo; Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her aunt
+      was watching her&mdash;looking for the signs of some imputed soreness, and
+      the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this kind
+      enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone almost of
+      relief. Mrs. Touchett of course followed the tradition that ladies, even
+      married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as an offence to
+      themselves. Isabel&rsquo;s first care therefore was to show that however that
+      might be in general she was not offended now. But meanwhile, as I say, her
+      heart beat faster; and if she sat for some moments thoughtful&mdash;she
+      presently forgot Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s observation&mdash;it was not because she
+      had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed half Europe; it halted,
+      panting, and even trembling a little, in the city of Rome. She figured
+      herself announcing to her husband that Lord Warburton was to lead a bride
+      to the altar, and she was of course not aware how extremely wan she must
+      have looked while she made this intellectual effort. But at last she
+      collected herself and said to her aunt: &ldquo;He was sure to do it some time or
+      other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the head.
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear, you&rsquo;re beyond me!&rdquo; she cried suddenly. They went on with
+      their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord
+      Warburton&rsquo;s death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was
+      all over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A
+      servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him to
+      leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her hands folded
+      on the edge of the table. &ldquo;I should like to ask you three questions,&rdquo; she
+      observed when the servant had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three are a great many.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do with less; I&rsquo;ve been thinking. They&rsquo;re all very good ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of. The best questions are the worst,&rdquo; Isabel
+      answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left
+      the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows, she
+      felt herself followed by her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever been sorry you didn&rsquo;t marry Lord Warburton?&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett
+      enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. &ldquo;No, dear aunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your believing me&rsquo;s an immense temptation,&rdquo; she declared, smiling still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A temptation to lie? I don&rsquo;t recommend you to do that, for when I&rsquo;m
+      misinformed I&rsquo;m as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don&rsquo;t mean to crow over
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my husband who doesn&rsquo;t get on with me,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could have told him he wouldn&rsquo;t. I don&rsquo;t call that crowing over <i>you</i>,&rdquo;
+       Mrs. Touchett added. &ldquo;Do you still like Serena Merle?&rdquo; she went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not as I once did. But it doesn&rsquo;t matter, for she&rsquo;s going to America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To America? She must have done something very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;very bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She made a convenience of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Touchett, &ldquo;so she did of me! She does of every one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll make a convenience of America,&rdquo; said Isabel, smiling again and
+      glad that her aunt&rsquo;s questions were over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
+      dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
+      there, but after a while went away&mdash;the local doctor, who had
+      attended his father and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a
+      day; he was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew
+      Hope, but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked
+      his mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further
+      need of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew
+      that her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel&rsquo;s arrival Ralph gave no
+      sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised
+      himself and said he knew that she had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no one
+      had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by his bed in the dim
+      light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room. She told
+      the nurse she might go&mdash;she herself would sit with him for the rest
+      of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had moved
+      his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take it. But he
+      was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained perfectly
+      still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a long time&mdash;till
+      the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He might have passed
+      away while she looked at him; he was already the figure and pattern of
+      death. She had thought him far gone in Rome, and this was worse; there was
+      but one change possible now. There was a strange tranquillity in his face;
+      it was as still as the lid of a box. With this he was a mere lattice of
+      bones; when he opened his eyes to greet her it was as if she were looking
+      into immeasurable space. It was not till midnight that the nurse came
+      back; but the hours, to Isabel, had not seemed long; it was exactly what
+      she had come for. If she had come simply to wait she found ample occasion,
+      for he lay three days in a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and
+      at moments seemed to wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed
+      his eyes again, as if he too were waiting for something&mdash;for
+      something that certainly would come. He was so absolutely quiet that it
+      seemed to her what was coming had already arrived; and yet she never lost
+      the sense that they were still together. But they were not always
+      together; there were other hours that she passed in wandering through the
+      empty house and listening for a voice that was not poor Ralph&rsquo;s. She had a
+      constant fear; she thought it possible her husband would write to her. But
+      he remained silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the
+      Countess Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last&mdash;on the evening of the
+      third day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel better to-night,&rdquo; he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless dimness
+      of her vigil; &ldquo;I think I can say something.&rdquo; She sank upon her knees
+      beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him not to make
+      an effort&mdash;not to tire himself. His face was of necessity serious&mdash;it
+      was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner apparently
+      had not lost a perception of incongruities. &ldquo;What does it matter if I&rsquo;m
+      tired when I&rsquo;ve all eternity to rest? There&rsquo;s no harm in making an effort
+      when it&rsquo;s the very last of all. Don&rsquo;t people always feel better just
+      before the end? I&rsquo;ve often heard of that; it&rsquo;s what I was waiting for.
+      Ever since you&rsquo;ve been here I thought it would come. I tried two or three
+      times; I was afraid you&rsquo;d get tired of sitting there.&rdquo; He spoke slowly,
+      with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice seemed to come from a
+      distance. When he ceased he lay with his face turned to Isabel and his
+      large unwinking eyes open into her own. &ldquo;It was very good of you to come,&rdquo;
+       he went on. &ldquo;I thought you would; but I wasn&rsquo;t sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not sure either till I came,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the
+      angel of death. It&rsquo;s the most beautiful of all. You&rsquo;ve been like that; as
+      if you were waiting for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for&mdash;for this. This
+      is not death, dear Ralph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for you&mdash;no. There&rsquo;s nothing makes us feel so much alive as to
+      see others die. That&rsquo;s the sensation of life&mdash;the sense that we
+      remain. I&rsquo;ve had it&mdash;even I. But now I&rsquo;m of no use but to give it to
+      others. With me it&rsquo;s all over.&rdquo; And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head
+      further, till it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own.
+      She couldn&rsquo;t see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear.
+      &ldquo;Isabel,&rdquo; he went on suddenly, &ldquo;I wish it were over for you.&rdquo; She answered
+      nothing; she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face.
+      He lay silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. &ldquo;Ah,
+      what is it you have done for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you did for me?&rdquo; she cried, her now extreme agitation half
+      smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
+      things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them
+      supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. &ldquo;You did
+      something once&mdash;you know it. O Ralph, you&rsquo;ve been everything! What
+      have I done for you&mdash;what can I do to-day? I would die if you could
+      live. But I don&rsquo;t wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you.&rdquo;
+       Her voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t lose me&mdash;you&rsquo;ll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be
+      nearer to you than I&rsquo;ve ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in
+      life there&rsquo;s love. Death is good&mdash;but there&rsquo;s no love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never thanked you&mdash;I never spoke&mdash;I never was what I should
+      be!&rdquo; Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse
+      herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment,
+      became single and melted together into this present pain. &ldquo;What must you
+      have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I only know
+      to-day because there are people less stupid than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind people,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m glad to leave people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to pray
+      to him. &ldquo;Is it true&mdash;is it true?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True that you&rsquo;ve been stupid? Oh no,&rdquo; said Ralph with a sensible
+      intention of wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you made me rich&mdash;that all I have is yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last:
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t speak of that&mdash;that was not happy.&rdquo; Slowly he moved his
+      face toward her again, and they once more saw each other. &ldquo;But for that&mdash;but
+      for that&mdash;!&rdquo; And he paused. &ldquo;I believe I ruined you,&rdquo; he wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he seemed
+      already so little of this world. But even if she had not had it she would
+      still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only knowledge that
+      was not pure anguish&mdash;the knowledge that they were looking at the
+      truth together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He married me for the money,&rdquo; she said. She wished to say everything; she
+      was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a little,
+      and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he raised
+      them in a moment, and then, &ldquo;He was greatly in love with you,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn&rsquo;t have married me if I had
+      been poor. I don&rsquo;t hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you to
+      understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that&rsquo;s all
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always understood,&rdquo; said Ralph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you did, and I didn&rsquo;t like it. But now I like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t hurt me&mdash;you make me very happy.&rdquo; And as Ralph said this
+      there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again,
+      and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. &ldquo;I always understood,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;though it was so strange&mdash;so pitiful. You wanted to look
+      at life for yourself&mdash;but you were not allowed; you were punished for
+      your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;ve been punished,&rdquo; Isabel sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened to her a little, and then continued: &ldquo;Was he very bad about
+      your coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He made it very hard for me. But I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over then between you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no; I don&rsquo;t think anything&rsquo;s over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going back to him?&rdquo; Ralph gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;I can&rsquo;t tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I
+      don&rsquo;t want to think&mdash;I needn&rsquo;t think. I don&rsquo;t care for anything but
+      you, and that&rsquo;s enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on
+      my knees, with you dying in my arms, I&rsquo;m happier than I have been for a
+      long time. And I want you to be happy&mdash;not to think of anything sad;
+      only to feel that I&rsquo;m near you and I love you. Why should there be pain&mdash;?
+      In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That&rsquo;s not the deepest
+      thing; there&rsquo;s something deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+      speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared
+      to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then
+      he murmured simply: &ldquo;You must stay here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to stay&mdash;as long as seems right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As seems right&mdash;as seems right?&rdquo; He repeated her words. &ldquo;Yes, you
+      think a great deal about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course one must. You&rsquo;re very tired,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very tired. You said just now that pain&rsquo;s not the deepest thing. No&mdash;no.
+      But it&rsquo;s very deep. If I could stay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me you&rsquo;ll always be here,&rdquo; she softly interrupted. It was easy to
+      interrupt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he went on, after a moment: &ldquo;It passes, after all; it&rsquo;s passing now.
+      But love remains. I don&rsquo;t know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I
+      shall find out. There are many things in life. You&rsquo;re very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very old,&rdquo; said Isabel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll grow young again. That&rsquo;s how I see you. I don&rsquo;t believe&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t believe&mdash;&rdquo; But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She begged him to be quiet now. &ldquo;We needn&rsquo;t speak to understand each
+      other,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for
+      more than a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh Ralph, I&rsquo;m very happy now,&rdquo; she cried through her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And remember this,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that if you&rsquo;ve been hated you&rsquo;ve also
+      been loved. Ah but, Isabel&mdash;<i>adored</i>!&rdquo; he just audibly and
+      lingeringly breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my brother!&rdquo; she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that if
+      she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost with
+      which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled the
+      necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she
+      knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down without
+      undressing, it being her belief that Ralph would not outlast the night.
+      She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such waiting was
+      wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the night wore on
+      she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock, but at the time
+      the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up from her pillow as
+      abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant
+      that he was standing there&mdash;a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness
+      of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face&mdash;his kind
+      eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only
+      sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty passed through dark
+      corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the vague light
+      of a hall-window. Outside Ralph&rsquo;s door she stopped a moment, listening,
+      but she seemed to hear only the hush that filled it. She opened the door
+      with a hand as gentle as if she were lifting a veil from the face of the
+      dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting motionless and upright beside the
+      couch of her son, with one of his hands in her own. The doctor was on the
+      other side, with poor Ralph&rsquo;s further wrist resting in his professional
+      fingers. The two nurses were at the foot between them. Mrs. Touchett took
+      no notice of Isabel, but the doctor looked at her very hard; then he
+      gently placed Ralph&rsquo;s hand in a proper position, close beside him. The
+      nurse looked at her very hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only
+      looked at what she had come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been
+      in life, and there was a strange resemblance to the face of his father,
+      which, six years before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went
+      to her aunt and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Touchett, who as a
+      general thing neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment
+      to this one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and
+      dry-eyed; her acute white face was terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Aunt Lydia,&rdquo; Isabel murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and thank God you&rsquo;ve no child,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett, disengaging
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the
+      height of the London &ldquo;season,&rdquo; to take a morning train down to a quiet
+      station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which
+      stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this
+      edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself
+      at the edge of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself
+      had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It was
+      a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a
+      certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to
+      fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and
+      windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the
+      blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad,
+      since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he
+      was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were
+      tears in Isabel&rsquo;s eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She looked
+      through them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of nature, the
+      sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed heads of good friends.
+      Lord Warburton was there, and a group of gentlemen all unknown to her,
+      several of whom, as she afterwards learned, were connected with the bank;
+      and there were others whom she knew. Miss Stackpole was among the first,
+      with honest Mr. Bantling beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head
+      higher than the rest&mdash;bowing it rather less. During much of the time
+      Isabel was conscious of Mr. Goodwood&rsquo;s gaze; he looked at her somewhat
+      harder than he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their
+      eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him;
+      she thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found
+      she had taken for granted that after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt he
+      had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that pleased
+      him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and something in his
+      attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex intention. She
+      wouldn&rsquo;t meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy in them; he
+      made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the little group he
+      disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to her&mdash;though
+      several spoke to Mrs. Touchett&mdash;was Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta
+      had been crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt,
+      and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself
+      that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was
+      fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been greatly
+      in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had left her
+      husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting the hours of
+      her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive. He was not one
+      of the best husbands, but that didn&rsquo;t alter the case. Certain obligations
+      were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were quite independent of
+      the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Isabel thought of her husband
+      as little as might be; but now that she was at a distance, beyond its
+      spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. There was a
+      penetrating chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade
+      of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her eyes,
+      trying not to think. She knew she must decide, but she decided nothing;
+      her coming itself had not been a decision. On that occasion she had simply
+      started. Osmond gave no sound and now evidently would give none; he would
+      leave it all to her. From Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very
+      simple: her father had told her not to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel&rsquo;s company, but offered her no assistance;
+      she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but with
+      perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs. Touchett
+      was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she managed to
+      extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion that, after
+      all, such things happened to other people and not to herself. Death was
+      disagreeable, but in this case it was her son&rsquo;s death, not her own; she
+      had never flattered herself that her own would be disagreeable to any one
+      but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off than poor Ralph, who had left all
+      the commodities of life behind him, and indeed all the security; since the
+      worst of dying was, to Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s mind, that it exposed one to be
+      taken advantage of. For herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so
+      good as that. She made known to Isabel very punctually&mdash;it was the
+      evening her son was buried&mdash;several of Ralph&rsquo;s testamentary
+      arrangements. He had told her everything, had consulted her about
+      everything. He left her no money; of course she had no need of money. He
+      left her the furniture of Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books
+      and the use of the place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The
+      money produced by the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital
+      for poor persons suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this
+      portion of the will Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his
+      property, which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in
+      various bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his
+      father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small
+      legacies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them are extremely peculiar,&rdquo; said Mrs. Touchett; &ldquo;he has left
+      considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I
+      asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at
+      various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn&rsquo;t
+      like him, for he hasn&rsquo;t left you a penny. It was his opinion that you had
+      been handsomely treated by his father, which I&rsquo;m bound to say I think you
+      were&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The
+      pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one by one,
+      as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Lord
+      Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his library? It sounds
+      like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Stackpole&mdash;&lsquo;in
+      recognition of her services to literature.&rsquo; Does he mean her following him
+      up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It contains a great many
+      rare and valuable books, and as she can&rsquo;t carry it about the world in her
+      trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course
+      at Christie&rsquo;s, and with the proceeds she&rsquo;ll set up a newspaper. Will that
+      be a service to literature?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+      interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her
+      arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than
+      to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one of
+      the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She was
+      quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her
+      command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony in
+      the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes often
+      wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which looked down
+      the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest vehicle approach
+      the door and perceived Lord Warburton sitting, in rather an uncomfortable
+      attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had a high standard of
+      courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under the circumstances,
+      that he should have taken the trouble to come down from London to call on
+      Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett he had come to see, and not
+      Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the validity of this thesis Isabel
+      presently stepped out of the house and wandered away into the park. Since
+      her arrival at Gardencourt she had been but little out of doors, the
+      weather being unfavourable for visiting the grounds. This evening,
+      however, was fine, and at first it struck her as a happy thought to have
+      come out. The theory I have just mentioned was plausible enough, but it
+      brought her little rest, and if you had seen her pacing about you would
+      have said she had a bad conscience. She was not pacified when at the end
+      of a quarter of an hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw
+      Mrs. Touchett emerge from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt
+      had evidently proposed to Lord Warburton that they should come in search
+      of her. She was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance,
+      would have drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had
+      been seen and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at
+      Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she
+      observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Lord Warburton kept his
+      hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons
+      apparently were silent; but Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s thin little glance, as she
+      directed it toward Isabel, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed
+      to say with cutting sharpness: &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the eminently amenable nobleman you
+      might have married!&rdquo; When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes, however,
+      that was not what they said. They only said &ldquo;This is rather awkward, you
+      know, and I depend upon you to help me.&rdquo; He was very grave, very proper
+      and, for the first time since Isabel had known him, greeted her without a
+      smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile. He
+      looked extremely selfconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Touchett. &ldquo;He tells me he didn&rsquo;t know you were still here. I know he&rsquo;s an
+      old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I brought
+      him out to see for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back in time
+      for dinner,&rdquo; Mrs. Touchett&rsquo;s companion rather irrelevantly explained. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      so glad to find you&rsquo;ve not gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not here for long, you know,&rdquo; Isabel said with a certain eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose not; but I hope it&rsquo;s for some weeks. You came to England sooner
+      than&mdash;a&mdash;than you thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I came very suddenly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the
+      grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Lord Warburton
+      hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking
+      about her husband&mdash;rather confusedly&mdash;and then had checked
+      himself. He continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it
+      becoming in a place over which death had just passed, or for more personal
+      reasons. If he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate
+      that he had the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of
+      that. Isabel thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for
+      that was another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were
+      still here&mdash;if they had thought you would see them,&rdquo; Lord Warburton
+      went on. &ldquo;Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two? You
+      know there&rsquo;s always that old promise.&rdquo; And his lordship coloured a little
+      as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more familiar
+      air. &ldquo;Perhaps I&rsquo;m not right in saying that just now; of course you&rsquo;re not
+      thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters
+      are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days; and if you could come
+      then&mdash;as you say you&rsquo;re not to be very long in England&mdash;I would
+      see that there should be literally no one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be there
+      with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you extremely,&rdquo; she contented herself with saying; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I
+      hardly know about Whitsuntide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have your promise&mdash;haven&rsquo;t I?&mdash;for some other time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked at
+      her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was that&mdash;as
+      had happened before&mdash;she felt sorry for him. &ldquo;Take care you don&rsquo;t
+      miss your train,&rdquo; she said. And then she added: &ldquo;I wish you every
+      happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. &ldquo;Ah yes,
+      6.40; I haven&rsquo;t much time, but I&rsquo;ve a fly at the door. Thank you very
+      much.&rdquo; It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having
+      reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. &ldquo;Good-bye,
+      Mrs. Osmond; good-bye.&rdquo; He shook hands with her, without meeting her eyes,
+      and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to them. With
+      her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him
+      move with long steps across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you very sure he&rsquo;s to be married?&rdquo; Isabel asked of her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and he
+      accepted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Isabel, &ldquo;I give it up!&rdquo;&mdash;while her aunt returned to the
+      house and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it up, but she still thought of it&mdash;thought of it while she
+      strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the acres
+      of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a rustic
+      bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object
+      recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor even that
+      she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something important had
+      happened to her&mdash;that the place had an air of association. Then she
+      remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before, when a
+      servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar Goodwood
+      informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had
+      read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing that he
+      should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an interesting,
+      bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have something to say to
+      her. She wouldn&rsquo;t sit down on it now&mdash;she felt rather afraid of it.
+      She only stood before it, and while she stood the past came back to her in
+      one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are
+      visited at odd hours. The effect of this agitation was a sudden sense of
+      being very tired, under the influence of which she overcame her scruples
+      and sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was restless and
+      unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen her there,
+      you would have admired the justice of the former epithet, you would at
+      least have allowed that at this moment she was the image of a victim of
+      idleness. Her attitude had a singular absence of purpose; her hands,
+      hanging at her sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her
+      eyes gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her to the
+      house; the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early and had tea at an
+      indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position she could not have
+      told you; but the twilight had grown thick when she became aware that she
+      was not alone. She quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then
+      saw what had become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar
+      Goodwood, who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on
+      the unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to
+      her in the midst of this that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised
+      her of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he started
+      forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked
+      like violence, but felt like&mdash;she knew not what, he grasped her by
+      the wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he
+      had not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was
+      something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he had
+      looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present it was
+      worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to her&mdash;beside
+      her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to her
+      that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took
+      but an instant, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning
+      her eyes upon her visitant. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve frightened me,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;but if I did a little, no matter. I came
+      from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn&rsquo;t come here directly.
+      There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took a fly that was
+      there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I don&rsquo;t know who he
+      was, but I didn&rsquo;t want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So
+      I&rsquo;ve been waiting and walking about. I&rsquo;ve walked all over, and I was just
+      coming to the house when I saw you here. There was a keeper, or someone,
+      who met me; but that was all right, because I had made his acquaintance
+      when I came here with your cousin. Is that gentleman gone? Are you really
+      alone? I want to speak to you.&rdquo; Goodwood spoke very fast; he was as
+      excited as when they had parted in Rome. Isabel had hoped that condition
+      would subside; and she shrank into herself as she perceived that, on the
+      contrary, he had only let out sail. She had a new sensation; he had never
+      produced it before; it was a feeling of danger. There was indeed something
+      really formidable in his resolution. She gazed straight before her; he,
+      with a hand on each knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face.
+      The twilight seemed to darken round them. &ldquo;I want to speak to you,&rdquo; he
+      repeated; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve something particular to say. I don&rsquo;t want to trouble you&mdash;as
+      I did the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I
+      couldn&rsquo;t help it; I knew I was wrong. But I&rsquo;m not wrong now; please don&rsquo;t
+      think I am,&rdquo; he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment into
+      entreaty. &ldquo;I came here to-day for a purpose. It&rsquo;s very different. It was
+      vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She couldn&rsquo;t have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or
+      because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she
+      listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep
+      into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and it
+      was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. &ldquo;How can you help
+      me?&rdquo; she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had said
+      seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By inducing you to trust me. Now I know&mdash;to-day I know. Do you
+      remember what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But
+      to-day I know on good authority; everything&rsquo;s clear to me to-day. It was a
+      good thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man,
+      a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He
+      explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of your
+      family and he left you&mdash;so long as you should be in England&mdash;to
+      my care,&rdquo; said Goodwood as if he were making a great point. &ldquo;Do you know
+      what he said to me the last time I saw him&mdash;as he lay there where he
+      died? He said: &lsquo;Do everything you can for her; do everything she&rsquo;ll let
+      you.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel suddenly got up. &ldquo;You had no business to talk about me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not&mdash;why not, when we talked in that way?&rdquo; he demanded,
+      following her fast. &ldquo;And he was dying&mdash;when a man&rsquo;s dying it&rsquo;s
+      different.&rdquo; She checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was
+      listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that
+      last time. That had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had
+      an idea, which she scented in all her being. &ldquo;But it doesn&rsquo;t matter!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem of
+      her garment. &ldquo;If Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have known
+      all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin&rsquo;s funeral to see
+      what&rsquo;s the matter with you. You can&rsquo;t deceive me any more; for God&rsquo;s sake
+      be honest with a man who&rsquo;s so honest with you. You&rsquo;re the most unhappy of
+      women, and your husband&rsquo;s the deadliest of fiends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned on him as if he had struck her. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s
+      necessary to defend him. But I won&rsquo;t say another word against him; I&rsquo;ll
+      speak only of you,&rdquo; Goodwood added quickly. &ldquo;How can you pretend you&rsquo;re
+      not heart-broken? You don&rsquo;t know what to do&mdash;you don&rsquo;t know where to
+      turn. It&rsquo;s too late to play a part; didn&rsquo;t you leave all that behind you
+      in Rome? Touchett knew all about it, and I knew it too&mdash;what it would
+      cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it will&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he flared almost into anger: &ldquo;give me one word of truth! When I know such
+      a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you? What
+      would you think of me if I should stand still and see you go back to your
+      reward? &lsquo;It&rsquo;s awful, what she&rsquo;ll have to pay for it!&rsquo;&mdash;that&rsquo;s what
+      Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn&rsquo;t I? He was such a near
+      relation!&rdquo; cried Goodwood, making his queer grim point again. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d sooner
+      have been shot than let another man say those things to me; but he was
+      different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got home&mdash;when
+      he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I understand all about it:
+      you&rsquo;re afraid to go back. You&rsquo;re perfectly alone; you don&rsquo;t know where to
+      turn. You can&rsquo;t turn anywhere; you know that perfectly. Now it is
+      therefore that I want you to think of <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To think of &lsquo;you&rsquo;?&rdquo; Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The
+      idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed
+      large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had
+      been a comet in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade you
+      to trust me,&rdquo; Goodwood repeated. And then he paused with his shining eyes.
+      &ldquo;Why should you go back&mdash;why should you go through that ghastly
+      form?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To get away from you!&rdquo; she answered. But this expressed only a little of
+      what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had
+      believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert,
+      at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of
+      the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the
+      very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced open
+      her set teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that he
+      would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was
+      perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it
+      all out. &ldquo;I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you&rsquo;ll only for
+      once listen to me. It&rsquo;s too monstrous of you to think of sinking back into
+      that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It&rsquo;s you
+      that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t we be happy&mdash;when it&rsquo;s here before us, when it&rsquo;s so easy?
+      I&rsquo;m yours for ever&mdash;for ever and ever. Here I stand; I&rsquo;m as firm as a
+      rock. What have you to care about? You&rsquo;ve no children; that perhaps would
+      be an obstacle. As it is you&rsquo;ve nothing to consider. You must save what
+      you can of your life; you mustn&rsquo;t lose it all simply because you&rsquo;ve lost a
+      part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of
+      the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the
+      world. We&rsquo;ve nothing to do with all that; we&rsquo;re quite out of it; we look
+      at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next is
+      nothing; it&rsquo;s the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman
+      deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life&mdash;in
+      going down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer,
+      and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under
+      the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that has
+      the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+      question is between ourselves&mdash;and to say that is to settle it! Were
+      we born to rot in our misery&mdash;were we born to be afraid? I never knew
+      <i>you</i> afraid! If you&rsquo;ll only trust me, how little you will be
+      disappointed! The world&rsquo;s all before us&mdash;and the world&rsquo;s very big. I
+      know something about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were
+      pressing something that hurt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world&rsquo;s very small,&rdquo; she said at random; she had an immense desire to
+      appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say something;
+      but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never seemed so
+      large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form of a mighty
+      sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here
+      was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she
+      believed everything he said; but she believed just then that to let him
+      take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying. This
+      belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself
+      sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order
+      to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, be mine as I&rsquo;m yours!&rdquo; she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly
+      given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible,
+      through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the metaphysicians
+      say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest of it, were in her
+      own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of this. &ldquo;Do me the
+      greatest kindness of all,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I beseech you to go away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t say that. Don&rsquo;t kill me!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. &ldquo;As you love
+      me, as you pity me, leave me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt
+      his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like white
+      lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was
+      extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard
+      manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his
+      figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with
+      this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water
+      following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned
+      she was free. She never looked about her; she only darted from the spot.
+      There were lights in the windows of the house; they shone far across the
+      lawn. In an extraordinarily short time&mdash;for the distance was
+      considerable&mdash;she had moved through the darkness (for she saw
+      nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about
+      her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She had
+      not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very straight path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in
+      Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings.
+      He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened
+      and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her hat and
+      jacket; she was on the point of going out. &ldquo;Oh, good-morning,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I
+      was in hopes I should find Mrs. Osmond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good
+      deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. &ldquo;Pray
+      what led you to suppose she was here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she had
+      come to London. He believed she was to come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Miss Stackpole held him&mdash;with an intention of perfect kindness&mdash;in
+      suspense. &ldquo;She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this morning
+      she started for Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the
+      doorstep. &ldquo;Oh, she started&mdash;?&rdquo; he stammered. And without finishing
+      his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn&rsquo;t
+      otherwise move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out
+      her hand and grasped his arm. &ldquo;Look here, Mr. Goodwood,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;just
+      you wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On which he looked up at her&mdash;but only to guess, from her face, with
+      a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him
+      with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his
+      life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now
+      the key to patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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diff --git a/old/2pldy10.txt b/old/2pldy10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f6fcf9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/2pldy10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13459 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Portrait of a Lady, V. 2, by Henry James
+#37 in our series by Henry James
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+
+
+
+
+
+Etext created by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA
+
+
+
+
+
+The Portrait of a Lady
+
+by Henry James
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME II
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see
+his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned
+that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the
+idea of paying them a visit in their box after the easy Italian
+fashion; and when he had obtained his admittance--it was one of
+the secondary theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted
+house. An act had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue
+his quest. After scanning two or three tiers of boxes he
+perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady whom
+he easily recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage and
+partly screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her,
+leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They appeared
+to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their
+companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the
+relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on
+the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up and
+interrupt the harmony. At last he judged that Isabel had seen
+him, and this accident determined him. There should be no marked
+holding off. He took his way to the upper regions and on the
+staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his hat at the
+inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.
+
+"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel
+lonely and want company," was Ralph's greeting.
+
+"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted."
+
+"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want
+me. Then Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to
+eat an ice--Miss Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think
+they wanted me either. The opera's very bad; the women look like
+laundresses and sing like peacocks. I feel very low."
+
+"You had better go home," Lord Warburton said without
+affectation.
+
+"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch
+over her."
+
+"She seems to have plenty of friends."
+
+"Yes, that's why I must watch," said Ralph with the same large
+mock-melancholy.
+
+"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me."
+
+"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk
+about."
+
+Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to
+a friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what
+queer temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings
+with Mr. Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before
+and who, after he came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if
+repudiating competence in the subjects of allusion now probable.
+It struck her second visitor that Miss Archer had, in operatic
+conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was,
+however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving,
+completely animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on
+this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence of
+mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to
+indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties.
+Poor Lord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had
+discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could; what
+business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above
+all with such tones of reparation--preparation? Her voice had
+tricks of sweetness, but why play them on HIM? The others came
+back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was
+large, and there was room for him to remain if he would sit a
+little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an hour, while
+Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows on his
+knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from
+his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young
+lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When
+there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to
+Isabel, and Lord Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a
+short time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to
+the ladies. Isabel said nothing to detain him, but it didn't
+prevent his being puzzled again. Why should she mark so one of
+his values--quite the wrong one--when she would have nothing to
+do with another, which was quite the right? He was angry with
+himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
+Verdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre
+and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the
+tortuous, tragic streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his
+had been carried under the stars.
+
+"What's the character of that gentleman?" Osmond asked of Isabel
+after he had retired.
+
+"Irreproachable--don't you see it?"
+
+"He owns about half England; that's his character," Henrietta
+remarked. "That's what they call a free country!"
+
+"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!" said Gilbert Osmond.
+
+"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human
+beings?" cried Miss Stackpole. "He owns his tenants and has
+thousands of them. It's pleasant to own something, but inanimate
+objects are enough for me. I don't insist on flesh and blood and
+minds and consciences."
+
+"It seems to me you own a human being or two," Mr. Bantling
+suggested jocosely. "I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants
+about as you do me."
+
+"Lord Warburton's a great radical," Isabel said. "He has very
+advanced opinions."
+
+"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a
+gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round," Henrietta
+announced for the information of Mr. Osmond. "I should like him
+to converse with a few of our Boston radicals."
+
+"Don't they approve of iron fences?" asked Mr. Bantling.
+
+"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were
+talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken
+glass."
+
+"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?" Osmond went on,
+questioning Isabel.
+
+"Well enough for all the use I have for him."
+
+"And how much of a use is that?"
+
+"Well, I like to like him."
+
+"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!" said Osmond.
+
+"No"--she considered--"keep that for liking to DISlike."
+
+"Do you wish to provoke me then," Osmond laughed, "to a passion
+for HIM?"
+
+She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question
+with a disproportionate gravity. "No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I
+should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,"
+she more easily added, "is a very nice man."
+
+"Of great ability?" her friend enquired.
+
+"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks."
+
+"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking.
+How detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be
+clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off,
+to enjoy your high favour! That's a man I could envy."
+
+Isabel considered him with interest. "You seem to me to be always
+envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor
+Lord Warburton."
+
+"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want
+to destroy the people--I only want to BE them. You see it would
+destroy only myself."
+
+"You'd like to be the Pope?" said Isabel.
+
+"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But
+why"--Osmond reverted--"do you speak of your friend as poor?"
+
+"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after
+they've hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness,"
+said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and
+with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually
+innocent.
+
+"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked, raising her
+eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.
+
+"It serves him right if you have," said Henrietta while the
+curtain rose for the ballet.
+
+Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next
+twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the
+opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he
+stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying
+Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on
+this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party,
+having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of
+the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said
+in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. "And I'm leaving
+Rome," he added. "I must bid you goodbye." Isabel, inconsequently
+enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she
+had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was
+thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her
+regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy
+journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. "I'm
+afraid you'll think me very 'volatile.' I told you the other day
+I wanted so much to stop."
+
+"Oh no; you could easily change your mind."
+
+"That's what I have done."
+
+"Bon voyage then."
+
+"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me," said his lordship
+quite dismally.
+
+"Not in the least. But I hate partings."
+
+"You don't care what I do," he went on pitifully.
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "Ah," she said, "you're not
+keeping your promise!"
+
+He coloured like a boy of fifteen. "If I'm not, then it's because
+I can't; and that's why I'm going."
+
+"Good-bye then."
+
+"Good-bye." He lingered still, however. "When shall I see you
+again?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration:
+"Some day after you're married."
+
+"That will never be. It will be after you are."
+
+"That will do as well," she smiled.
+
+"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye."
+
+They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room,
+among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of
+the circle of these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting
+her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were,
+to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to
+look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling
+the effect of their noble quietude; which, as with a high door
+closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the large
+white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the
+Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden
+sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so
+vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems
+to throw a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed
+in the windows of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on
+the figures and made them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a
+long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, wondering
+to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and
+how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red
+walls of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble
+floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but
+her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because
+she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,
+her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An
+occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the
+Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking
+over the smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert
+Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance of his companions. He
+strolled toward her slowly, with his hands behind him and his
+usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. "I'm surprised to
+find you alone, I thought you had company.
+
+"So I have--the best." And she glanced at the Antinous and the
+Faun.
+
+"Do you call them better company than an English peer?"
+
+"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago." She got up, speaking
+with intention a little dryly.
+
+Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the
+interest of his question. "I'm afraid that what I heard the other
+evening is true: you're rather cruel to that nobleman."
+
+Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. "It's not
+true. I'm scrupulously kind."
+
+"That's exactly what I mean!" Gilbert Osmond returned, and with
+such happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know
+that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and
+the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he
+thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a
+new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who
+had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice
+objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high
+appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its
+distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its
+solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing
+him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness
+of such conduct as Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he
+might marry should have done something of that sort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather
+markedly qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert
+Osmond's personal merits; but he might really have felt himself
+illiberal in the light of that gentleman's conduct during the
+rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond spent a portion of each day
+with Isabel and her companions, and ended by affecting them as
+the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have seen that he
+could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which perhaps
+was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
+sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman
+was obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate.
+His good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right
+fact, his production of the right word, as convenient as the
+friendly flicker of a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was
+amused--as amused as a man could be who was so little ever
+surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not that
+his spirits were visibly high--he would never, in the concert of
+pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a
+mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random
+ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too precipitate a
+readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she had
+not had it she would really have had none; she would have been
+as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the
+palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and
+during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency
+that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the
+Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the
+mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had never
+before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions,
+old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to
+his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he
+prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he
+showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel,
+explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate
+the occasions of life by a tribute to the muse.
+
+He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he
+would have admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong,
+something ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too
+seldom descended on his spirit. But at present he was happy--
+happier than he had perhaps ever been in his life, and the
+feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the sense of
+success--the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond
+had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
+irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often
+reminded himself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've
+not been spoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed
+before I die I shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt
+to reason as if "earning" this boon consisted above all of
+covertly aching for it and might be confined to that exercise.
+Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not been; he might
+indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he was
+resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them,
+now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had been
+less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--
+that is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether
+exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in
+him to make. The desire to have something or other to show for
+his "parts"--to show somehow or other--had been the dream of his
+youth; but as the years went on the conditions attached to any
+marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as gross
+and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise
+what one could "stand." If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall
+had been conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar
+pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as from
+the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact
+of style. His "style" was what the girl had discovered with a
+little help; and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should
+publish it to the world without his having any of the trouble.
+She should do the thing FOR him, and he would not have waited in
+vain.
+
+Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this
+young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as
+follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if
+you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome."
+The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different
+views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her.
+She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied
+that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in
+Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow
+of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten days
+more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio. It
+might be months in this case before he should see her again. This
+exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied
+by our friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and
+Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence on the
+morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had
+contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the
+fourth floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay
+them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling,
+with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages several
+that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making
+arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a
+wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were
+orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The
+mirrors, the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling
+was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked muses and cherubs.
+For Osmond the place was ugly to distress; the false colours, the
+sham splendour were like vulgar, bragging, lying talk. Isabel had
+taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on their arrival in
+Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in her lap with her
+finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to pursue
+her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink
+tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a
+strange pale rosiness over the scene.
+
+"You say you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.
+
+"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round
+the world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do
+exactly what you choose; you can roam through space."
+
+"Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it
+on the way."
+
+"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a
+parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see
+you on your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I
+should like to see you when you're tired and satiated," Osmond
+added in a moment. "I shall prefer you in that state."
+
+Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. "You
+turn things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I
+think, without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--
+you think them ridiculous."
+
+"Where do you find that?"
+
+She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with
+the paper-knife. "You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I
+wander about as if the world belonged to me, simply because--
+because it has been put into my power to do so. You don't think a
+woman ought to do that. You think it bold and ungraceful."
+
+"I think it beautiful," said Osmond. "You know my opinions--I've
+treated you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you
+that one ought to make one's life a work of art? You looked
+rather shocked at first; but then I told you that it was
+exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do with your own."
+
+She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world
+is bad, is stupid art."
+
+"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good."
+
+"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me," she
+went on.
+
+Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of
+their conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her
+solemnity; he had seen it before. "You have one!"
+
+"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."
+
+"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the
+countries I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my
+taste for old lacquer?"
+
+"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.
+
+"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong
+in your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it
+into your head."
+
+"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I
+should have the means to travel when you've not; for you know
+everything and I know nothing."
+
+"The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond.
+"Besides," he added as if it were a point to be made, "I don't
+know everything."
+
+Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely;
+she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it
+pleased her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she
+might musingly have likened to the figure of some small princess
+of one of the ages of dress overmuffled in a mantle of state and
+dragging a train that it took pages or historians to hold up--
+that this felicity was coming to an end. That most of the
+interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a reflexion
+she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the
+point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there
+were a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it
+would be as well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her
+adventure wore already the changed, the seaward face of some
+romantic island from which, after feasting on purple grapes, she
+was putting off while the breeze rose. She might come back to
+Italy and find him different--this strange man who pleased her
+just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run the
+risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity
+that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that
+touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and
+Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. "Go
+everywhere," he said at last, in a low, kind voice; "do everything;
+get everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant."
+
+"What do you mean by being triumphant?"
+
+"Well, doing what you like."
+
+"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain
+things one likes is often very tiresome."
+
+"Exactly," said Osmond with his quiet quickness. "As I intimated
+just now, you'll be tired some day." He paused a moment and then
+he went on: "I don't know whether I had better not wait till then
+for something I want to say to you."
+
+"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm
+horrid when I'm tired," Isabel added with due inconsequence.
+
+"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can
+believe, though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never
+'cross.'"
+
+"Not even when I lose my temper?"
+
+"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful."
+Osmond spoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great
+moments to see."
+
+"If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.
+
+"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm
+speaking very seriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee;
+for some moments he bent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to
+say to you," he went on at last, looking up, "is that I find I'm
+in love with you."
+
+She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"
+
+"Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes
+to her. "No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But
+after all I must say it now." She had turned away, but in the
+movement she had stopped herself and dropped her gaze upon him.
+The two remained a while in this situation, exchanging a long look
+--the large, conscious look of the critical hours of life. Then he
+got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were afraid
+he had been too familiar. "I'm absolutely in love with you."
+
+He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
+discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who
+spoke for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes:
+this time they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to
+her somehow the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she
+couldn't have said which. The words he had uttered made him, as
+he stood there, beautiful and generous, invested him as with the
+golden air of early autumn; but, morally speaking, she retreated
+before them--facing him still--as she had retreated in the other
+cases before a like encounter. "Oh don't say that, please," she
+answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of having, in
+this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great
+was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have
+banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep
+down, that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It
+was there like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a
+terror in having to begin to spend. If she touched it, it would
+all come out.
+
+"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said
+Osmond. "I've too little to offer you. What I have--it's enough
+for me; but it's not enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor
+fame, nor extrinsic advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I
+only tell you because I think it can't offend you, and some day
+or other it may give you pleasure. It gives me pleasure, I assure
+you," he went on, standing there before her, considerately
+inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken up, slowly
+round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of
+awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his
+firm, refined, slightly ravaged face. "It gives me no pain,
+because it's perfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most
+important woman in the world."
+
+Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently,
+thinking she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said
+was not an expression of any such complacency. "You don't offend
+me; but you ought to remember that, without being offended, one
+may be incommoded, troubled." "Incommoded," she heard herself
+saying that, and it struck her as a ridiculous word. But it was
+what stupidly came to her.
+
+"I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled.
+But if it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will
+perhaps leave something that I may not be ashamed of."
+
+"I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm
+not overwhelmed," said Isabel with rather a pale smile. "I'm not
+too troubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome
+to-morrow."
+
+"Of course I don't agree with you there."
+
+"I don't at all KNOW you," she added abruptly; and then she
+coloured as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a
+year before to Lord Warburton.
+
+"If you were not going away you'd know me better."
+
+"I shall do that some other time."
+
+"I hope so. I'm very easy to know."
+
+"No, no," she emphatically answered--"there you're not sincere.
+You're not easy to know; no one could be less so."
+
+"Well," he laughed, "I said that because I know myself. It may be
+a boast, but I do."
+
+"Very likely; but you're very wise."
+
+"So are you, Miss Archer!" Osmond exclaimed.
+
+"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you
+had better go. Good-night."
+
+"God bless you!" said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she
+failed to surrender. After which he added: "If we meet again
+you'll find me as you leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the
+same."
+
+"Thank you very much. Good-bye."
+
+There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might
+go of his own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. "There's one
+thing more. I haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought
+in the future; you must do me that justice. But there's a little
+service I should like to ask. I shall not return home for several
+days; Rome's delightful, and it's a good place for a man in my
+state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry to leave it; but you're
+right to do what your aunt wishes."
+
+"She doesn't even wish it!" Isabel broke out strangely.
+
+Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would
+match these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply:
+"Ah well, it's proper you should go with her, very proper. Do
+everything that's proper; I go in for that. Excuse my being so
+patronising. You say you don't know me, but when you do you'll
+discover what a worship I have for propriety."
+
+"You're not conventional?" Isabel gravely asked.
+
+"I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional:
+I'm convention itself. You don't understand that?" And he paused
+a moment, smiling. "I should like to explain it." Then with a
+sudden, quick, bright naturalness, "Do come back again,"
+he pleaded. "There are so many things we might talk about."
+
+She stood there with lowered eyes. "What service did you speak of
+just now?"
+
+"Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's
+alone at the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who
+hasn't at all my ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father
+very much," said Gilbert Osmond gently.
+
+"It will be a great pleasure to me to go," Isabel answered. "I'll
+tell her what you say. Once more good-bye."
+
+On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she
+stood a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and
+with an air of deliberation. She sat there till her companions
+came back, with folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her
+agitation--for it had not diminished--was very still, very deep.
+What had happened was something that for a week past her
+imagination had been going forward to meet; but here, when it
+came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke down. The
+working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can only
+give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether
+natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a
+last vague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract
+which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a
+moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to cross it
+yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's
+escort, and Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway
+discipline, thought very well of the successive hours passed in
+the train that hurried his companion away from the city now
+distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's preference--hours that were to
+form the first stage in a larger scheme of travel. Miss Stackpole
+had remained behind; she was planning a little trip to Naples, to
+be carried out with Mr. Bantling's aid. Isabel was to have three
+days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs.
+Touchett's departure, and she determined to devote the last of
+these to her promise to call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however,
+seemed for a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an
+idea of Madame Merle's. This lady was still at Casa Touchett; but
+she too was on the point of leaving Florence, her next station
+being an ancient castle in the mountains of Tuscany, the
+residence of a noble family of that country, whose acquaintance
+(she had known them, as she said, "forever") seemed to Isabel, in
+the light of certain photographs of their immense crenellated
+dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious
+privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Osmond
+had asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention
+that he had also made her a declaration of love.
+
+"Ah, comme cela se trouve!" Madame Merle exclaimed. "I myself
+have been thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a
+little visit before I go off."
+
+"We can go together then," Isabel reasonably said: "reasonably"
+because the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm.
+She had prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she
+should like it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to
+sacrifice this mystic sentiment to her great consideration for
+her friend.
+
+That personage finely meditated. "After all, why should we both
+go; having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?"
+
+"Very good; I can easily go alone."
+
+"I don't know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome
+bachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!"
+
+Isabel stared. "When Mr. Osmond's away what does it matter?"
+
+"They don't know he's away, you see."
+
+"They? Whom do you mean?"
+
+"Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify."
+
+"If you were going why shouldn't I?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman."
+
+"Granting all that, you've not promised."
+
+"How much you think of your promises!" said the elder woman in
+mild mockery.
+
+"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?"
+
+"You're right," Madame Merle audibly reflected. "I really think
+you wish to be kind to the child."
+
+"I wish very much to be kind to her."
+
+"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd
+have come if you hadn't. Or rather," Madame Merle added, "DON'T
+tell her. She won't care."
+
+As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the
+winding way which led to Mr. Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what
+her friend had meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a
+while, at large intervals, this lady, whose voyaging discretion,
+as a general thing, was rather of the open sea than of the risky
+channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous quality, struck a note
+that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for the vulgar
+judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose that
+she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be
+sneakingly done? Of course not: she must have meant something
+else--something which in the press of the hours that preceded her
+departure she had not had time to explain. Isabel would return to
+this some day; there were sorts of things as to which she liked
+to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming at the piano in another
+place as she herself was ushered into Mr. Osmond's drawing-room;
+the little girl was "practising," and Isabel was pleased to think
+she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately came in,
+smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's
+house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Isabel sat there
+half an hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as the small, winged
+fairy in the pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire
+--not chattering, but conversing, and showing the same respectful
+interest in Isabel's affairs that Isabel was so good as to take
+in hers. Isabel wondered at her; she had never had so directly
+presented to her nose the white flower of cultivated sweetness.
+How well the child had been taught, said our admiring young
+woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned; and yet
+how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Isabel
+was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of
+sounding, as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it
+had pleased her, up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether
+this tender slip were not really all-knowing. Was the extremity
+of her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness? Was it
+put on to please her father's visitor, or was it the direct
+expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Isabel spent in
+Mr. Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows had been
+half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through
+an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a
+gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her
+interview with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually
+settled this question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure
+white surface, successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor
+guile, nor temper, nor talent--only two or three small exquisite
+instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake,
+for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender
+was to be touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy
+victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to resist, no
+sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified,
+easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where
+to cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had
+asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy
+gave her judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her
+prospects, her occupations, her father's intentions; she was not
+egotistical, but felt the propriety of supplying the information
+so distinguished a guest would naturally expect.
+
+"Please tell me," she said, "did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame
+Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not
+time. Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about
+my education; it isn't finished yet, you know. I don't know what
+they can do with me more; but it appears it's far from finished.
+Papa told me one day he thought he would finish it himself; for
+the last year or two, at the convent, the masters that teach the
+tall girls are so very dear. Papa's not rich, and I should be
+very sorry if he were to pay much money for me, because I don't
+think I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough, and I have no
+memory. For what I'm told, yes--especially when it's pleasant;
+but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who
+was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when
+she was fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to
+make a dot. You don't say it in English? I hope it isn't wrong;
+I only mean they wished to keep the money to marry her. I don't
+know whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep the money--
+to marry me. It costs so much to marry!" Pansy went on with a
+sigh; "I think papa might make that economy. At any rate I'm too
+young to think about it yet, and I don't care for any gentleman;
+I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like to
+marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of
+some strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you
+might think, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always
+been principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost
+more; but you must not tell him that. You shall not see him
+again? I'm very sorry, and he'll be sorry too. Of everyone who
+comes here I like you the best. That's not a great compliment,
+for there are not many people. It was very kind of you to come
+to-day--so far from your house; for I'm really as yet only a
+child. Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When did
+YOU give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to
+know how old you are, but I don't know whether it's right to ask.
+At the convent they told us that we must never ask the age. I
+don't like to do anything that's not expected; it looks as if one
+had not been properly taught. I myself--I should never like to be
+taken by surprise. Papa left directions for everything. I go to
+bed very early. When the sun goes off that side I go into the
+garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I
+always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful. In Rome,
+from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I
+practise three hours. I don't play very well. You play yourself?
+I wish very much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea
+that I should hear good music. Madame Merle has played for me
+several times; that's what I like best about Madame Merle; she
+has great facility. I shall never have facility. And I've no
+voice--just a small sound like the squeak of a slate-pencil
+making flourishes."
+
+Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and
+sat down to the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched
+her white hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she
+kissed the child good-bye, held her close, looked at her long.
+"Be very good," she said; "give pleasure to your father."
+
+"I think that's what I live for," Pansy answered. "He has not
+much pleasure; he's rather a sad man."
+
+Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt
+it almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride
+that obliged her, and a certain sense of decency; there were
+still other things in her head which she felt a strong impulse,
+instantly checked, to say to Pansy about her father; there were
+things it would have given her pleasure to hear the child,  to
+make the child, say. But she no sooner became conscious of these
+things than her imagination was hushed with horror at the idea of
+taking advantage of the little girl--it was of this she would
+have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where he
+might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed
+state. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an
+hour. She rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however,
+she lingered a moment, still holding her small companion, drawing
+the child's sweet slimness closer and looking down at her almost
+in envy. She was obliged to confess it to herself--she would have
+taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Gilbert Osmond to this
+innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said
+no other word; she only kissed Pansy once again. They went
+together through the vestibule, to the door that opened on the
+court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather
+wistfully beyond. "I may go no further. I've promised papa not to
+pass this door."
+
+"You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything
+unreasonable."
+
+"I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?"
+
+"Not for a long time, I'm afraid."
+
+"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl," said Pansy,
+"but I shall always expect you." And the small figure stood in
+the high, dark doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey
+court and disappear into the brightness beyond the big portone,
+which gave a wider dazzle as it opened.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an
+interval sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however,
+during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; our
+attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late
+spring-time, shortly after her return to Palazzo Crescentini and
+a year from the date of the incidents just narrated. She was
+alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous
+rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses, and there was that
+in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that
+she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though
+its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden
+had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with
+warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time,
+her hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness
+of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle.
+Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her
+visitor before he should pass into the house, since the entrance
+to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and
+privacy always reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival
+by a process of conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her
+face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself,
+and positively more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of
+the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged, she
+would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and
+was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from
+the frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the
+measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years
+before. She flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and
+learned a great deal more of life than this light-minded creature
+had even suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined
+themselves to retrospect, instead of fluttering their wings
+nervously about the present, they would have evoked a multitude
+of interesting pictures. These pictures would have been both
+landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have
+been the more numerous. With several of the images that might
+have been projected on such a field we are already acquainted.
+There would be for instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine's
+sister and Edmund Ludlow's wife, who had come out from New York
+to spend five months with her relative. She had left her husband
+behind her, but had brought her children, to whom Isabel now
+played with equal munificence and tenderness the part of
+maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to snatch
+a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean
+with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in
+Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not
+yet, even from the American point of view, reached the proper
+tourist-age; so that while her sister was with her Isabel had
+confined her movements to a narrow circle. Lily and the babies
+had joined her in Switzerland in the month of July, and they had
+spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the
+flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade of great
+chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as
+might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons.
+They had afterwards reached the French capital, which was
+worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of
+as noisily vacant by Isabel, who in these days made use of her
+memory of Rome as she might have done, in a hot and crowded room,
+of a phial of something pungent hidden in her handkerchief.
+
+Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and
+wonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had
+joined her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself
+into these speculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but
+Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done before, declined to be
+surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated, at anything
+his sister-in-law might have done or have failed to do. Mrs.
+Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various. At one moment
+she thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come
+home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for instance,
+which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the corner
+from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the
+girl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies.
+On the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion
+with the probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in
+Isabel's accession of fortune than if the money had been left to
+herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper setting
+for her sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent
+figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought
+likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being somehow
+mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties.
+Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she
+appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which
+Mrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's
+conception of such achievements was extremely vague; but this was
+exactly what she had expected of Isabel--to give it form and
+body. Isabel could have done as well as she had done in New York;
+and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her husband to know whether there was
+any privilege she enjoyed in Europe which the society of that
+city might not offer her. We know ourselves that Isabel had made
+conquests--whether inferior or not to those she might have
+effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to
+decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency
+that I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable
+victories public. She had not told her sister the history of Lord
+Warburton, nor had she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond's state of
+mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that
+she didn't wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing,
+and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little
+disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she would have been to
+close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing of these
+discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career a
+strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that
+Isabel's silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct
+proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts.
+As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow
+that she had lost her courage. So uncanny a result of so
+exhilarating an incident as inheriting a fortune was of course
+perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it added to her general sense
+that Isabel was not at all like other people.
+
+Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as
+reaching its height after her relations had gone home. She could
+imagine braver things than spending the winter in Paris--Paris
+had sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like
+smart, neat prose--and her close correspondence with Madame
+Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She had never had a
+keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness
+of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the
+Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the
+departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband
+and her children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for
+her to regale; she was very conscious of that; she was very
+observant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort
+was constantly to find something that was good enough. To profit
+by the present advantage till the latest moment she had made the
+journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have
+accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had
+asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and
+she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train
+move away; she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews,
+a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of the
+window of the carriage and made separation an occasion of violent
+hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy London street.
+The world lay before her--she could do whatever she chose. There
+was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was
+tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston
+Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had
+already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air,
+looked weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square
+was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey
+with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost
+on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was
+disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right
+again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she
+enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets--
+the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the
+flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That
+evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should
+start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome
+without touching at Florence--having gone first to Venice and
+then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey
+without other assistance than that of her servant, for her
+natural protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was
+spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the
+September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram
+from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant
+correspondent a fresher field for her genius than the mouldering
+cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a
+promise from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over to see
+her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise for not
+presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied
+characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated,
+were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never
+dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't,
+and what one "would" have done belonged to the sphere of the
+irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of
+things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs.
+Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her
+niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a
+sign that Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than
+formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a
+pretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning
+that he had not been guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side,
+had not been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame
+Merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East.
+Madame Merle remarked that her friend was restless, but she added
+that she herself had always been consumed with the desire to
+visit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly
+embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in Greece, in
+Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these
+countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even
+among the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to
+suggest repose and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in
+her. Isabel travelled rapidly and recklessly; she was like a
+thirsty person draining cup after cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as
+lady-in-waiting to a princess circulating incognita, panted a
+little in her rear. It was on Isabel's invitation she had come,
+and she imparted all due dignity to the girl's uncountenanced
+state. She played her part with the tact that might have been
+expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a
+companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation,
+however, had no hardships, and people who met this reserved
+though striking pair on their travels would not have been able to
+tell you which was patroness and which client. To say that Madame
+Merle improved on acquaintance states meagrely the impression she
+made on her friend, who had found her from the first so ample and
+so easy. At the end of an intimacy of three months Isabel felt
+she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and the
+admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating
+her history from her own point of view--a consummation the more
+desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the point
+of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so far as it
+concerned the late M. Merle, a positive adventurer, she might
+say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage,
+years before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which
+doubtless those who knew her only now would find it difficult to
+believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents
+that her companion wondered a person so eprouvee could have
+kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this
+freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight;
+she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical,
+carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or
+blanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She
+liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain
+that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all
+something of a public performer, condemned to emerge only in
+character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a
+distance, that she belonged to the "old, old" world, and Isabel
+never lost the impression that she was the product of a different
+moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up under
+other stars.
+
+She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of
+course the morality of civilised persons has always much in
+common; but our young woman had a sense in her of values gone
+wrong or, as they said at the shops, marked down. She considered,
+with the presumption of youth, that a morality differing from her
+own must be inferior to it; and this conviction was an aid to
+detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse
+from candour, in the conversation of a person who had raised
+delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the
+narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might,
+in certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some
+kingdom in decadence, and there were several in her list of which
+our heroine had not even heard. She had not heard of everything,
+that was very plain; and there were evidently things in the world
+of which it was not advantageous to hear. She had once or twice
+had a positive scare; since it so affected her to have to
+exclaim, of her friend, "Heaven forgive her, she doesn't
+understand me!" Absurd as it may seem this discovery operated as
+a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was even an
+element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the
+light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable
+intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and
+flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief
+that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to
+decline--there being no point of equilibrium between liking more
+and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was
+impossible--it must move one way or the other. However that might
+be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for her sense of
+the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been. I do
+not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the
+Pyramids in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she
+stood among the broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her
+eyes upon the point designated to her as the Strait of Salamis;
+deep and memorable as these emotions had remained. She came back
+by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made another stay
+in Rome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond descended
+from Florence and remained three weeks, during which the fact of
+her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose house she
+had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he should
+see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs.
+Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation
+given long before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini,
+Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her
+aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was
+expected in Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not
+seen him for upwards of a year, was prepared to give him the most
+affectionate welcome.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she
+stood at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it
+was not of any of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was
+not turned to the past, but to the immediate, impending hour. She
+had reason to expect a scene, and she was not fond of scenes. She
+was not asking herself what she should say to her visitor; this
+question had already been answered. What he would say to her--
+that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing in the least
+soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction doubtless
+showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all
+clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she
+walked in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--
+ever so much, and as if she were "worth more" for it, like some
+curious piece in an antiquary's collection. She was not at any
+rate left indefinitely to her apprehensions, for a servant at
+last stood before her with a card on his tray. "Let the gentleman
+come in," she said, and continued to gaze out of the window after
+the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard the door
+close behind the person who presently entered that she looked
+round.
+
+Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from
+head to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld
+than offered a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept
+pace with Isabel's we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me
+say meanwhile that to her critical glance he showed nothing of
+the injury of time. Straight, strong and hard, there was nothing
+in his appearance that spoke positively either of youth or of
+age; if he had neither innocence nor weakness, so he had no
+practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same voluntary cast as
+in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in it of
+course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled
+hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath.
+This gave Isabel time to make a reflexion: "Poor fellow, what
+great things he's capable of, and what a pity he should waste so
+dreadfully his splendid force! What a pity too that one can't
+satisfy everybody!" It gave her time to do more to say at the end
+of a minute: "I can't tell you how I hoped you wouldn't come!"
+
+"I've no doubt of that." And he looked about him for a seat. Not
+only had he come, but he meant to settle.
+
+"You must be very tired," said Isabel, seating herself, and
+generously, as she thought, to give him his opportunity.
+
+"No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?"
+
+"Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?"
+
+"Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the
+express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American
+funeral."
+
+"That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to
+bury me!" And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view
+of their situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making
+it perfectly clear that she broke no faith and falsified no
+contract; but for all this she was afraid of her visitor. She was
+ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was
+nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff
+insistence, an insistence in which there was such a want of tact;
+especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on her as a
+physical weight.
+
+"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish
+I could!" he candidly declared.
+
+"I thank you immensely."
+
+"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man."
+
+"That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a
+real conviction. "If you're not happy yourself others have yet a
+right to be."
+
+"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your
+saying so. I don't mind anything you can say now--I don't feel
+it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere
+pin-pricks. After what you've done I shall never feel anything--
+I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life."
+
+Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,
+in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour
+over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry
+rather than touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate,
+inasmuch as it gave her a further reason for controlling herself.
+It was under the pressure of this control that she became, after
+a little, irrelevant. "When did you leave New York?"
+
+He threw up his head as if calculating. "Seventeen days ago."
+
+"You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains."
+
+"I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had
+been able."
+
+"It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood," she coldly
+smiled.
+
+"Not to you--no. But to me."
+
+"You gain nothing that I see."
+
+"That's for me to judge!"
+
+"Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself." And
+then, to change the subject, she asked him if he had seen
+Henrietta Stackpole. He looked as if he had not come from Boston
+to Florence to talk of Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered,
+distinctly enough, that this young lady had been with him just
+before he left America. "She came to see you?" Isabel then
+demanded.
+
+"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the
+day I had got your letter."
+
+"Did you tell her?" Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.
+
+"Oh no," said Caspar Goodwood simply; "I didn't want to do that.
+She'll hear it quick enough; she hears everything."
+
+"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me,"
+Isabel declared, trying to smile again.
+
+Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. "I guess she'll come
+right out," he said.
+
+"On purpose to scold me?"
+
+"I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe
+thoroughly."
+
+"I'm glad you tell me that," Isabel said. "I must prepare for
+her."
+
+Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at
+last, raising them, "Does she know Mr. Osmond?" he enquired.
+
+"A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry
+to please Henrietta," she added. It would have been better for
+poor Caspar if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss
+Stackpole; but he didn't say so; he only asked, presently, when
+her marriage would take place. To which she made answer that she
+didn't know yet. "I can only say it will be soon. I've told no
+one but yourself and one other person--an old friend of Mr.
+Osmond's."
+
+"Is it a marriage your friends won't like?" he demanded.
+
+"I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my
+friends."
+
+He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking
+questions, doing it quite without delicacy. "Who and what then is
+Mr. Gilbert Osmond?"
+
+"Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very
+honourable man. He's not in business," said Isabel. "He's not
+rich; he's not known for anything in particular."
+
+She disliked Mr. Goodwood's questions, but she said to herself
+that she owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The
+satisfaction poor Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat
+very upright, gazing at her. "Where does he come from?  Where
+does he belong?"
+
+She had never been so little pleased with the way he said
+"belawng." "He comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life
+in Italy."
+
+"You said in your letter he was American. Hasn't he a native
+place?"
+
+"Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy."
+
+"Has he never gone back?"
+
+"Why should he go back?" Isabel asked, flushing all defensively.
+"He has no profession."
+
+"He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the
+United States?"
+
+"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simple--he
+contents himself with Italy."
+
+"With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy
+plainness and no appearance of trying to make an epigram. "What
+has he ever done?" he added abruptly.
+
+"That I should marry him? Nothing at all," Isabel replied while
+her patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. "If
+he had done great things would you forgive me any better? Give me
+up, Mr. Goodwood; I'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to
+take an interest in him. You can't."
+
+"I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean
+in the least that he's a perfect nonentity. You think he's grand,
+you think he's great, though no one else thinks so."
+
+Isabel's colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her
+companion, and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion
+might render perceptions she had never taken for fine. "Why do
+you always comeback to what others think? I can't discuss Mr.
+Osmond with you."
+
+"Of course not," said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with
+his air of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but
+there were nothing else that they might discuss.
+
+"You see how little you gain," she accordingly broke out--"how
+little comfort or satisfaction I can give you."
+
+"I didn't expect you to give me much."
+
+"I don't understand then why you came."
+
+"I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you
+are."
+
+"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or
+later we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would
+have been pleasanter for each of us than this."
+
+"Waited till after you're married? That's just what I didn't want
+to do. You'll be different then."
+
+"Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You'll see."
+
+"That will make it all the worse," said Mr. Goodwood grimly.
+
+"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in
+order to help you to resign yourself."
+
+"I shouldn't care if you did!"
+
+Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked
+to the window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she
+turned round her visitor was still motionless in his place. She
+came toward him again and stopped, resting her hand on the back
+of the chair she had just quitted. "Do you mean you came simply
+to look at me? That's better for you perhaps than for me."
+
+"I wished to hear the sound of your voice," he said.
+
+"You've heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet."
+
+"It gives me pleasure, all the same." And with this he got up.
+She had felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the
+news he was in Florence and by her leave would come within an
+hour to see her. She had been vexed and distressed, though she
+had sent back word by his messenger that he might come when he
+would. She had not been better pleased when she saw him; his
+being there at all was so full of heavy implications. It implied
+things she could never assent to--rights, reproaches,
+remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change her
+purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been
+expressed; and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to
+resent her visitor's remarkable self-control. There was a dumb
+misery about him that irritated her; there was a manly staying of
+his hand that made her heart beat faster. She felt her agitation
+rising, and she said to herself that she was angry in the way a
+woman is angry when she has been in the wrong. She was not in the
+wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness to swallow; but,
+all the same, she wished he would denounce her a little. She had
+wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no propriety;
+yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden
+horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give
+her an opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in
+writing to him a month before, in a few carefully chosen words,
+to announce her engagement. If she were not in the wrong,
+however, why should she desire to defend herself? It was an
+excess of generosity on Isabel's part to desire that Mr. Goodwood
+should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile held himself hard it
+might have made him so to hear the tone in which she suddenly
+exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused her:
+"I've not deceived you! I was perfectly free!"
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Caspar.
+
+"I gave you full warning that I'd do as I chose."
+
+"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a
+manner that I pretty well believed it."
+
+She considered this an instant. "No one can be more surprised
+than myself at my present intention."
+
+"You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to
+believe it," Caspar went on. "I heard it twenty days ago from
+yourself, but I remembered what you had said. I thought there
+might be some mistake, and that's partly why I came."
+
+"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done.
+There's no mistake whatever."
+
+"I saw that as soon as I came into the room."
+
+"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?" she asked
+with a certain fierceness.
+
+"I should like it better than this."
+
+"You're very selfish, as I said before."
+
+"I know that. I'm selfish as iron."
+
+"Even iron sometimes melts! If you'll be reasonable I'll see you
+again."
+
+"Don't you call me reasonable now?"
+
+"I don't know what to say to you," she answered with sudden
+humility.
+
+"I shan't trouble you for a long time," the young man went on. He
+made a step towards the door, but he stopped. "Another reason why
+I came was that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation
+of your having changed your mind."
+
+Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. "In explanation? Do you
+think I'm bound to explain?"
+
+He gave her one of his long dumb looks. "You were very positive.
+I did believe it."
+
+"So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?"
+
+"No, I suppose not. Well," he added, "I've done what I wished.
+I've seen you."
+
+"How little you make of these terrible journeys," she felt the
+poverty of her presently replying.
+
+"If you're afraid I'm knocked up--in any such way as that--you
+may he at your ease about it." He turned away, this time in
+earnest, and no hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged
+between them.
+
+At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. "I shall leave
+Florence to-morrow," he said without a quaver.
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it!" she answered passionately. Five
+minutes after he had gone out she burst into tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of
+it had vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her
+aunt. I use this expression because she had been sure Mrs.
+Touchett would not be pleased; Isabel had only waited to tell her
+till she had seen Mr. Goodwood. She had an odd impression that it
+would not be honourable to make the fact public before she should
+have heard what Mr. Goodwood would say about it. He had said
+rather less than she expected, and she now had a somewhat angry
+sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more; she waited
+till Mrs. Touchett came into the drawing-room before the mid-day
+breakfast, and then she began. "Aunt Lydia, I've something to
+tell you."
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost
+fiercely. "You needn't tell me; I know what it is."
+
+"I don't know how you know."
+
+"The same way that I know when the window's open--by feeling a
+draught. You're going to marry that man."
+
+"What man do you mean?" Isabel enquired with great dignity.
+
+"Madame Merle's friend--Mr. Osmond."
+
+"I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the
+principal thing he's known by?"
+
+"If he's not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done
+for him!" cried Mrs. Touchett. "I shouldn't have expected it of
+her; I'm disappointed."
+
+"If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my
+engagement you're greatly mistaken," Isabel declared with a sort
+of ardent coldness.
+
+"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the
+gentleman's having had to be lashed up? You're quite right.
+They're immense, your attractions, and he would never have
+presumed to think of you if she hadn't put him up to it. He has a
+very good opinion of himself, but he was not a man to take
+trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him."
+
+"He has taken a great deal for himself!" cried Isabel with a
+voluntary laugh.
+
+Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. "I think he must, after all, to
+have made you like him so much."
+
+"I thought he even pleased YOU."
+
+"He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him."
+
+"Be angry with me, not with him," said the girl.
+
+"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it
+for this that you refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr. Osmond,
+since others have done so?"
+
+"Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him.
+There's nothing OF him," Mrs. Touchett explained.
+
+"Then he can't hurt me," said Isabel.
+
+"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such
+doings, you should know."
+
+"I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?"
+
+"What YOU will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry
+as they go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your
+partnership you'll bring everything."
+
+"Is it that Mr. Osmond isn't rich? Is that what you're talking
+about?" Isabel asked.
+
+"He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value
+such things and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very
+precious. Many other people think the same, and they show it. But
+they give some other reason."
+
+Isabel hesitated a little. "I think I value everything that's
+valuable. I care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr.
+Osmond to have a little."
+
+"Give it to him then; but marry some one else."
+
+"His name's good enough for me," the girl went on. "It's a very
+pretty name. Have I such a fine one myself?"
+
+"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a
+dozen American names. Do you marry him out of charity?"
+
+"It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my
+duty to explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So
+please don't remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a
+disadvantage. I can't talk about it."
+
+"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign
+of intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never
+meddle."
+
+"You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very
+considerate."
+
+"It was not considerate--it was convenient," said Mrs. Touchett.
+"But I shall talk to Madame Merle."
+
+"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very
+good friend to me."
+
+"Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me."
+
+"What has she done to you?"
+
+"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent
+your engagement."
+
+"She couldn't have prevented it."
+
+"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I
+knew she could play any part; but I understood that she played
+them one by one. I didn't understand that she would play two at
+the same time."
+
+"I don't know what part she may have played to you," Isabel said;
+"that's between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind
+and devoted."
+
+"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She
+told me she was watching you only in order to interpose."
+
+"She said that to please you," the girl answered; conscious,
+however, of the inadequacy of the explanation.
+
+"To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased
+to-day?"
+
+"I don't think you're ever much pleased," Isabel was obliged to
+reply. "If Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had
+she to gain by insincerity?"
+
+"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere
+you were marching away, and she was really beating the drum."
+
+"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was
+marching, and even if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have
+tried to stop me."
+
+"No, but some one else would."
+
+"Whom do you mean?" Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt.
+Mrs. Touchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were,
+sustained her gaze rather than returned it. "Would you have
+listened to Ralph?"
+
+"Not if he had abused Mr. Osmond."
+
+"Ralph doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares
+very much for you."
+
+"I know he does," said Isabel; "and I shall feel the value of it
+now, for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason."
+
+"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable
+of it, and he argued the other way."
+
+"He did it for the sake of argument," the girl smiled. "You don't
+accuse him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame
+Merle?"
+
+"He never pretended he'd prevent it."
+
+"I'm glad of that!" cried Isabel gaily. "I wish very much," she
+presently added, "that when he comes you'd tell him first of my
+engagement."
+
+"Of course I'll mention it," said Mrs. Touchett. "I shall say
+nothing more to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk
+to others."
+
+"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the
+announcement should come from you than from me."
+
+"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!" And on this the
+aunt and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Touchett, as good
+as her word, made no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval
+of silence, however, she asked her companion from whom she had
+received a visit an hour before.
+
+"From an old friend--an American gentleman," Isabel said with a
+colour in her cheek.
+
+"An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman
+who calls at ten o'clock in the morning."
+
+"It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this
+evening."
+
+"Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?"
+
+"He only arrived last night."
+
+"He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?" Mrs. Touchett
+cried. "He's an American gentleman truly."
+
+"He is indeed," said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of
+what Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
+
+Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that
+Mrs. Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact,
+he showed at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk
+was naturally of his health; Isabel had many questions to ask
+about Corfu. She had been shocked by his appearance when he came
+into the room; she had forgotten how ill he looked. In spite of
+Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if he were
+really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with
+an invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to conventional
+beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently complete
+loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural oddity
+of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and
+still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with
+paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a
+lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more
+sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed;
+an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket
+had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his
+pockets; he shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that
+denoted great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this
+whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than ever
+as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his
+own disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well
+indeed with Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of
+seriousness marking his view of a world in which the reason for
+his own continued presence was past finding out. Isabel had grown
+fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness had become dear to her. They
+had been sweetened by association; they struck her as the very
+terms on which it had been given him to be charming. He was so
+charming that her sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort
+of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed not a
+limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him
+from all professional and official emotions and left him the
+luxury of being exclusively personal. The personality so
+resulting was delightful; he had remained proof against the
+staleness of disease; he had had to consent to be deplorably ill,
+yet had somehow escaped being formally sick. Such had been the
+girl's impression of her cousin; and when she had pitied him it
+was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal she had
+allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always
+had a dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth
+more to the giver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no
+great sensibility to feel that poor Ralph's tenure of life was
+less elastic than it should be. He was a bright, free, generous
+spirit, he had all the illumination of wisdom and none of its
+pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.
+
+Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,
+and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it
+now promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that
+Ralph was not pleased with her engagement; but she was not
+prepared, in spite of her affection for him, to let this fact
+spoil the situation. She was not even prepared, or so she thought,
+to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his privilege--it
+would be indeed his natural line--to find fault with any step she
+might take toward marriage. One's cousin always pretended to hate
+one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a part of
+one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Ralph was nothing
+if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things
+being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to
+please any one, it would be absurd to regard as important that
+her choice should square with his views. What were his views
+after all? He had pretended to believe she had better have
+married Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had refused
+that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would certainly
+have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could
+criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be
+open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only give her
+mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had other
+employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the
+care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent.
+He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should
+say nothing. After three days had elapsed without his speaking
+our young woman wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he
+might at least go through the form. We, who know more about poor
+Ralph than his cousin, may easily believe that during the hours
+that followed his arrival at Palazzo Crescentini he had privately
+gone through many forms. His mother had literally greeted him
+with the great news, which had been even more sensibly chilling
+than Mrs. Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked and
+humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the
+world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about
+the house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in
+the garden of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs
+extended, his head thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes.
+He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less.
+What could he do, what could he say? If the girl were
+irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim
+her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to
+persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose
+deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only in the
+event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
+damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought
+and to dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor
+protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that
+the affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond
+at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo Crescentini; but
+Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do after
+their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage
+by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means
+of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and she
+drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
+during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young
+lady, joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him
+a while through the grey Italian shade and listened to the
+nightingales.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
+luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
+instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court,
+passed beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter
+spot at this moment could not have been imagined. The stillness
+of noontide hung over it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still,
+made bowers like spacious caves. Ralph was sitting there in the
+clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore--a dancing
+nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of
+Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at
+first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the
+grass had not roused him, and before turning away she stood for a
+moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his eyes;
+upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his
+own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference
+she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to
+brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the
+languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected
+with the property inherited from his father--the fruit of
+eccentric arrangements of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and
+which, as she had told Isabel, now encountered opposition from the
+other partners in the bank. He ought to have gone to England, his
+mother said, instead of coming to Florence; he had not been there for
+months, and took no more interest in the bank than in the state of
+Patagonia.
+
+"I'm sorry I waked you," Isabel said; "you look too tired."
+
+"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you."
+
+"Are you tired of that?"
+
+"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never
+arrive."
+
+"What do you wish to arrive at?" she put to him, closing her
+parasol.
+
+"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of
+your engagement."
+
+"Don't think too much of it," she lightly returned.
+
+"Do you mean that it's none of my business?"
+
+"Beyond a certain point, yes."
+
+"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found
+me wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you."
+
+"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent."
+
+"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now," Ralph
+said. He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat
+looking at her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini,
+his head against his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either
+side of him, his hands laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He
+looked awkward, uncomfortable; he hesitated long. Isabel said
+nothing; when people were embarrassed she was usually sorry for
+them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to utter a word
+that should not be to the honour of her high decision. "I
+think I've hardly got over my surprise," he went on at last. "You
+were the last person I expected to see caught."
+
+"I don't know why you call it caught."
+
+"Because you're going to be put into a cage."
+
+"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you," she answered.
+
+"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of."
+
+"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm
+satisfied that I'm doing well."
+
+"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your
+liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to see life."
+
+"I've seen it," said Isabel. "It doesn't look to me now, I admit,
+such an inviting expanse."
+
+"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial
+view of it and wanted to survey the whole field."
+
+"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose
+a corner and cultivate that."
+
+"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as
+possible. I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful
+letters, that you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and
+your silence put me off my guard."
+
+"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides,
+I knew nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had
+been on your guard, however," Isabel asked, "what would you have
+done?"
+
+"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'"
+
+"Wait for what?"
+
+"Well, for a little more light," said Ralph with rather an absurd
+smile, while his hands found their way into his pockets.
+
+"Where should my light have come from? From you?"
+
+"I might have struck a spark or two."
+
+Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay
+upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for
+her expression was not conciliatory. "You're beating about the
+bush, Ralph. You wish to say you don't like Mr. Osmond, and yet
+you're afraid."
+
+"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to
+wound HIM, yes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of
+him. If you marry him it won't be a fortunate way for me to have
+spoken."
+
+"IF I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?"
+
+"Of course that seems to you too fatuous."
+
+"No," said Isabel after a little; "it seems to me too touching."
+
+"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity
+me."
+
+She stroked out her long gloves again. "I know you've a great
+affection for me. I can't get rid of that."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will
+convince you how intensely I want you to do well."
+
+"And how little you trust me!"
+
+There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen.
+"I trust you, but I don't trust him," said Ralph.
+
+She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. "You've said
+it now, and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by
+it."
+
+"Not if you're just."
+
+"I'm very just," said Isabel. "What better proof of it can there
+be than that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the
+matter with me, but I'm not. I was when you began, but it has
+passed away. Perhaps I ought to be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn't
+think so. He wants me to know everything; that's what I like him
+for. You've nothing to gain, I know that. I've never been so nice
+to you, as a girl, that you should have much reason for wishing me
+to remain one. You give very good advice; you've often done so.
+No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your wisdom," she went
+on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of
+contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it
+touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a
+creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her;
+for a moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted
+what he had said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having
+caught a glimpse, as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring
+to advance in that direction. "I see you've some special idea; I
+should like very much to hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I
+feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about, and of course
+I ought to tell you definitely that if you expect to dissuade me
+you may give it up. You'll not move me an inch; it's too late. As
+you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be pleasant for you to
+remember this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts. I shall
+never reproach you."
+
+"I don't think you ever will," said Ralph. "It's not in the least
+the sort of marriage I thought you'd make."
+
+"What sort of marriage was that, pray?"
+
+"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it,
+but I had a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for
+that type."
+
+"What's the matter with Mr. Osmond's type, if it be one? His being
+so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him," the
+girl declared. "What do you know against him? You know him
+scarcely at all."
+
+"Yes," Ralph said, "I know him very little, and I confess I
+haven't facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I
+can't help feeling that you're running a grave risk."
+
+"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as
+mine."
+
+"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to
+God he would."
+
+Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while
+at her cousin. "I don't think I understand you," she said at last
+coldly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance."
+
+Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame
+leaped into her face. "Of more importance to whom? It seems to me
+enough that one's husband should be of importance to one's self!"
+
+Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically
+speaking he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then
+leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on
+the ground; he had an air of the most respectful deliberation.
+
+"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean," he presently said. He
+felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the
+discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to
+be superlatively gentle.
+
+Isabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. "In
+everything that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is
+pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I've never had the
+pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond's is the finest I know; he's
+good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever enough. I'm
+far more struck with what he has and what he represents than with
+what he may lack."
+
+"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future," Ralph
+observed without answering this; "I had amused myself with
+planning out a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of
+this sort in it. You were not to come down so easily or so soon."
+
+"Come down, you say?"
+
+"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You
+seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in
+the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses
+up a faded rosebud--a missile that should never have reached
+you--and straight you drop to the ground. It hurts me," said Ralph
+audaciously, "hurts me as if I had fallen myself!"
+
+The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's
+face. "I don't understand you in the least," she repeated. "You
+say you amused yourself with a project for my career--I don't
+understand that. Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think
+you're doing it at my expense."
+
+Ralph shook his head. "I'm not afraid of your not believing that
+I've had great ideas for you."
+
+"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?" she pursued.
+
+"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now.
+There's nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she
+likes," said poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.
+
+"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to
+criticise, my dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you
+would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature."
+Ralph hesitated, then added: "I can't get over the sense that
+Osmond is somehow--well, small." He had uttered the last word with
+no great assurance; he was afraid she would flash out again. But
+to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of considering.
+
+"Small?" She made it sound immense.
+
+"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!"
+
+"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that,"
+said Isabel. "It makes one more sure to respect others."
+
+Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.
+
+"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation
+to things--to others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."
+
+"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's
+excellent."
+
+"He's the incarnation of taste," Ralph went on, thinking hard how
+he could best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without
+putting himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely.
+He wished to describe him impersonally, scientifically. "He judges
+and measures, approves and condemns, altogether by that."
+
+"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite."
+
+"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his
+bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite
+one--ruffled?"
+
+"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my
+husband's."
+
+At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. "Ah,
+that's wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be
+measured in that way--you were meant for something better than to
+keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!"
+
+Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a
+moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or
+an insult. But "You go too far," she simply breathed.
+
+"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love
+you!"
+
+Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a
+sudden wish to strike him off. "Ah then, you're not disinterested!"
+
+"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph quickly, forcing
+a smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed
+more than he intended.
+
+Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of
+the garden; but after a little she turned back to him. "I'm afraid
+your talk then is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it
+--but it doesn't matter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible
+I should; I've only tried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to
+you for attempting to explain," she said gently, as if the anger
+with which she had just sprung up had already subsided. "It's very
+good of you to try to warn me, if you're really alarmed; but I
+won't promise to think of what you've said: I shall forget it as
+soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you've done your
+duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain to you what I feel,
+what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could." She paused a moment
+and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in
+the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession.
+"I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it
+justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not
+important--no, he's not important; he's a man to whom importance
+is supremely indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call
+him 'small,' then he's as small as you please. I call that
+large--it's the largest thing I know. I won't pretend to argue
+with you about a person I'm going to marry," Isabel repeated.
+"I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he's not so
+weak as to need my defence. I should think it would seem strange
+even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and coldly,
+as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any
+one but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer
+you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary
+marriage--what they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one
+ambition--to be free to follow out a good feeling. I had others
+once, but they've passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond
+because he's not rich? That's just what I like him for. I've
+fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful for it as
+to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and
+kneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing
+than he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a
+man who has borne his poverty with such dignity, with such
+indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor struggled--he
+has cared for no worldly prize. If that's to be narrow, if that's
+to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm not frightened by such
+words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry that you should
+make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm surprised that
+you should. You might know a gentleman when you see one--you
+might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows
+everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest,
+gentlest, highest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea.
+It's a pity, but I can't help it; it regards you more than me."
+Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye
+illumined by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness
+of her manner--a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain
+excited by his words and the wounded pride of having needed to
+justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness and purity,
+equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said nothing; he saw
+she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly
+solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion.
+"What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?" she
+asked suddenly. "You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if
+one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings
+and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a
+particular individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not
+having come to a better understanding with Lord Warburton, and
+she's horrified at my contenting myself with a person who has
+none of his great advantages--no property, no title, no honours,
+no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant
+belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these
+things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very
+cultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious
+proprietor."
+
+Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said
+merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking
+of the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating
+himself to the weight of his total impression--the impression of
+her ardent good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was
+deluded, but she was dismally consistent. It was wonderfully
+characteristic of her that, having invented a fine theory, about
+Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really possessed,
+but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph
+remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it
+into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He
+had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury.
+Poor Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her
+last words with a low solemnity of conviction which virtually
+terminated the discussion, and she closed it formally by turning
+away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked beside her, and
+they passed into the court together and reached the big
+staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused, turning on him a
+face of elation--absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His
+opposition had made her own conception of her conduct clearer to
+her. "Shall you not come up to breakfast?" she asked.
+
+"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry."
+
+"You ought to eat," said the girl; "you live on air."
+
+"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take
+another mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you
+last year that if you were to get into trouble I should feel
+terribly sold. That's how I feel to-day."
+
+"Do you think I'm in trouble?"
+
+"One's in trouble when one's in error."
+
+"Very well," said Isabel; "I shall never complain of my trouble
+to you!" And she moved up the staircase.
+
+Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her
+with his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court
+struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden
+to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no
+impulse to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo
+Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by
+her aunt and her cousin made on the whole no great impression upon
+her; the moral of it was simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond.
+This dislike was not alarming to Isabel; she scarcely even
+regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the
+fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please
+herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this
+for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction was
+confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond
+was in love, and he had never deserved less than during these
+still, bright days, each of them numbered, which preceded the
+fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by
+Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on Isabel's spirit
+by this criticism was that the passion of love separated its
+victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt
+herself disjoined from every one she had ever known before--from
+her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she
+would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not
+having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation
+of anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out,
+too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who
+would certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who
+perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas
+about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her
+contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for
+her was surely but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment.
+Ralph apparently wished her not to marry at all--that was what it
+really meant--because he was amused with the spectacle of her
+adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made him say
+angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
+flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was
+the more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had
+now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and
+accepted as an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot
+the idea that to prefer Gilbert Osmond as she preferred him was
+perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of the sweets of
+this preference, and they made her conscious, almost with awe, of
+the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed and
+possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and
+imputed virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of
+happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one
+else.
+
+The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond,
+emitted meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze.
+Contentment, on his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the
+most self-conscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control.
+This disposition, however, made him an admirable lover; it gave
+him a constant view of the smitten and dedicated state. He never
+forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot to be graceful
+and tender, to wear the appearance--which presented indeed no
+difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was
+immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a
+present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live
+with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the
+softness be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society,
+which admired the air of superiority? What could be a happier
+gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one
+repetitions and reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant
+surface? Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced literally--
+that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be
+freshened in the reproduction even as "words" by music. His
+egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife;
+this lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen
+one--a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it
+would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a
+sort of served dessert. He found the silver quality in this
+perfection in Isabel; he could tap her imagination with his
+knuckle and make it ring. He knew perfectly, though he had not
+been told, that their union enjoyed little favour with the girl's
+relations; but he had always treated her so completely as an
+independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to express
+regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one morning,
+he made an abrupt allusion to it. "It's the difference in our
+fortune they don't like," he said. "They think I'm in love with
+your money."
+
+"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?" Isabel asked. "How
+do you know what they think?"
+
+"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs.
+Touchett the other day she never answered my note. If they had
+been delighted I should have had some sign of it, and the fact of
+my being poor and you rich is the most obvious explanation of
+their reserve. But of course when a poor man marries a rich girl
+he must be prepared for imputations. I don't mind them; I only
+care for one thing--for your not having the shadow of a doubt. I
+don't care what people of whom I ask nothing think--I'm not even
+capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so concerned
+myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I have
+taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend
+I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything
+that's yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid
+thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me,
+however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for
+it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be
+less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees
+grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their business to
+suspect--that of your family; it's proper on the whole they should.
+They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.
+Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but
+simply to be thankful for life and love." "It has made me better,
+loving you," he said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser
+and easier and--I won't pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and
+even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to be
+angry I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I
+once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I
+was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful
+fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I
+can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been
+trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the lamp
+comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and
+finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read
+it properly I see it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't
+tell you how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long
+summer afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day
+--with a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that
+divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have
+loved all my life and which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I
+don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've got what we like--to say
+nothing of having each other. We've the faculty of admiration and
+several capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're not mean,
+we're not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness. You're
+remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor
+child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her.
+It's all soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring."
+
+They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good
+deal of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they
+should live for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they
+had met, Italy had been a party to their first impressions of
+each other, and Italy should be a party to their happiness.
+Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance and Isabel the
+stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future at a high
+level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for unlimited
+expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense that life
+was vacant without some private duty that might gather one's
+energies to a point. She had told Ralph she had "seen life" in a
+year or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of
+living, but of that of observing. What had become of all her
+ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her
+independence and her incipient conviction that she should never
+marry? These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need--
+a need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet
+gratified infinite desires. It simplified the situation at a
+stroke, it came down from above like the light of the stars, and
+it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the
+fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able
+to be of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of
+humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not
+only taking, she was giving.
+
+He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--
+Pansy who was very little taller than a year before, and not much
+older. That she would always be a child was the conviction
+expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when she was in
+her sixteenth year and told her to go and play while he sat down
+a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore a short dress and a
+long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She found
+pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of
+the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an
+appeal for approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the
+abundance had the personal touch that the child's affectionate
+nature craved. She watched her indications as if for herself also
+much depended on them--Pansy already so represented part of the
+service she could render, part of the responsibility she could
+face. Her father took so the childish view of her that he had not
+yet explained to her the new relation in which he stood to the
+elegant Miss Archer. "She doesn't know," he said to Isabel; "she
+doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I
+should come and walk here together simply as good friends. There
+seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's the way
+I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think; I've
+succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've
+brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way."
+
+He was very fond, in all things, of the "old way"; that had
+struck Isabel as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. "It
+occurs to me that you'll not know whether you've succeeded until
+you've told her," she said. "You must see how she takes your
+news, She may be horrified--she may be jealous."
+
+"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own
+account. I should like to leave her in the dark a little longer
+--to see if it will come into her head that if we're not engaged
+we ought to be."
+
+Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as
+it somehow appeared, of Pansy's innocence--her own appreciation
+of it being more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less
+pleased when he told her a few days later that he had
+communicated the fact to his daughter, who had made such a pretty
+little speech--"Oh, then I shall have a beautiful sister!" She
+was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he
+expected.
+
+"Perhaps she had guessed it," said Isabel.
+
+"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I
+thought it would be just a little shock; but the way she took it
+proves that her good manners are paramount. That's also what I
+wished. You shall see for yourself; to-morrow she shall make you
+her congratulations in person."
+
+The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's,
+whither Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that
+Isabel was to come in the afternoon to return a visit made her by
+the Countess on learning that they were to become sisters-in-law.
+Calling at Casa Touchett the visitor had not found Isabel at
+home; but after our young woman had been ushered into the
+Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her aunt would
+presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady, who
+thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
+company. It was Isabel's view that the little girl might have
+given lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could
+have justified this conviction more than the manner in which
+Pansy acquitted herself while they waited together for the
+Countess. Her father's decision, the year before, had finally
+been to send her back to the convent to receive the last graces,
+and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her theory that
+Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
+
+"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him,"
+said this excellent woman's pupil. "It's very delightful; I think
+you'll suit very well."
+
+"You think I shall suit YOU?"
+
+"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa
+will suit each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're
+not so quiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you're more
+quiet than many others. He should not for instance have a wife
+like my aunt. She's always in motion, in agitation--to-day
+especially; you'll see when she comes in. They told us at the
+convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but I suppose there's
+no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a delightful
+companion for papa."
+
+"For you too, I hope," Isabel said.
+
+"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I
+myself think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so
+much that I think it will be a good fortune to have you always
+before me. You'll be my model; I shall try to imitate you though
+I'm afraid it will be very feeble. I'm very glad for papa--he
+needed something more than me. Without you I don't see how he
+could have got it. You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use
+that word. They're always said to be cruel; but I don't think
+you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me. I'm not afraid at
+all."
+
+"My good little Pansy," said Isabel gently, "I shall be ever so
+kind to you." A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some
+odd way to need it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
+
+"Very well then, I've nothing to fear," the child returned with
+her note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it
+seemed to suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she
+dreaded!
+
+Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess
+Gemini was further than ever from having folded her wings. She
+entered the room with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel
+first on the forehead and then on each cheek as if according to
+some ancient prescribed rite. She drew the visitor to a sofa and,
+looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, began to talk
+very much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she were
+applying a series of considered touches to a composition of
+figures already sketched in. "If you expect me to congratulate
+you I must beg you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care if I do
+or not; I believe you're supposed not to care--through being so
+clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I
+tell fibs; I never tell them unless there's something rather good
+to be gained. I don't see what's to be gained with you--
+especially as you wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions
+any more than I make paper flowers or flouncey lampshades--I
+don't know how. My lampshades would be sure to take fire, my
+roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very glad for my
+own sake that you're to marry Osmond; but I won't pretend I'm
+glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way
+you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking
+and original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the
+family. Our family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told
+you that; and my mother was rather distinguished--she was called
+the American Corinne. But we're dreadfully fallen, I think, and
+perhaps you'll pick us up. I've great confidence in you; there
+are ever so many things I want to talk to you about. I never
+congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it
+somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy
+oughtn't to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me for
+--to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing
+what horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my
+brother had designs on you I thought of writing to you, to
+recommend you, in the strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then
+I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind.
+Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all I'm
+very selfish. By the way, you won't respect me, not one little
+mite, and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you
+won't. Some day, all the same, we shall be better friends than
+you will believe at first. My husband will come and see you,
+though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with
+Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not
+afraid of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In
+the second, you won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at
+any time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not
+his. Some day, if you can stand it, I'll tell you all about him.
+Do you think my niece ought to go out of the room? Pansy, go and
+practise a little in my boudoir."
+
+"Let her stay, please," said Isabel. "I would rather hear nothing
+that Pansy may not!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of
+pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the
+third floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he
+enquired for Madame Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain
+woman, with a French face and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him
+into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his
+name. "Mr. Edward Rosier," said the young man, who sat down to
+wait till his hostess should appear.
+
+The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an
+ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be
+remembered that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had
+spent a portion of several winters at Pau, and as he was a
+gentleman of constituted habits he might have continued for years
+to pay his annual visit to this charming resort. In the summer of
+1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the current
+not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences. He
+passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint
+Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to
+pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly
+the household angel he had long been looking for. He was never
+precipitate, he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for
+the present to declare his passion; but it seemed to him when
+they parted--the young lady to go down into Italy and her admirer
+to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join other
+friends--that he should be romantically wretched if he were not
+to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in the
+autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family.
+Mr. Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and
+reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to
+do, but for the young man there was a strain of the heroic in the
+enterprise. He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of
+the Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait.
+Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adventurer, who
+took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no
+cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent
+good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw
+in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; she
+had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He
+thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have
+thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in
+the bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which
+Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for that manner, could not
+fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of
+comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the
+attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle's drawing-room, which,
+although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially
+rich in articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately
+put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then "By Jove, she
+has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured. The room
+was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression
+of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one
+moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread,
+bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions
+embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found
+him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the
+great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He
+had lifted it delicately, as if he were smelling it.
+
+"It's old Venetian," she said; "it's rather good."
+
+"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it."
+
+"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same
+situation."
+
+"Ah, but I can't wear mine," smiled the visitor.
+
+"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to
+wear."
+
+His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. "You've
+some very good things."
+
+"Yes, but I hate them."
+
+"Do you want to get rid of them?" the young man quickly asked.
+
+"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!"
+
+"I love my things," said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with
+all his recognitions. "But it's not about them, nor about yours,
+that I came to talk to you." He paused a moment and then, with
+greater softness: "I care more for Miss Osmond than for all the
+bibelots in Europe!"
+
+Madame Merle opened wide eyes. "Did you come to tell me that?"
+
+"I came to ask your advice."
+
+She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with
+her large white hand. "A man in love, you know, doesn't ask
+advice."
+
+"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case
+with a man in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But
+never so much as this time--really never so much. I should like
+particularly to know what you think of my prospects. I'm afraid
+that for Mr. Osmond I'm not--well, a real collector's piece."
+
+"Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine
+arms folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
+
+"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged.
+There will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have
+good reason to believe her father will consent."
+
+"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in
+rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize."
+
+"You've been very kind to me," said the young man. "That's why I
+came."
+
+"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very
+rare now, and there's no telling what one may get by it." With
+which the left-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression
+to the joke.
+
+But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and
+consistently strenuous. "Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!"
+
+"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse.
+Pardon me if I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little
+gentleman. I must tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of
+Pansy Osmond."
+
+"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her
+family, and I thought you might have influence."
+
+Madame Merle considered. "Whom do you call her family?"
+
+"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her
+belle-mere."
+
+"Mr. Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be
+termed a member of her family. Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with
+marrying her."
+
+"I'm sorry for that," said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good
+faith. "I think Mrs. Osmond would favour me."
+
+"Very likely--if her husband doesn't."
+
+He raised his eyebrows. "Does she take the opposite line from
+him?"
+
+"In everything. They think quite differently."
+
+"Well," said Rosier, "I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my
+business. She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Yes, she's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she
+loves her as if she were her own mother."
+
+"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the
+poor child," said Madame Merle. "Have you declared your
+sentiments?"
+
+"Never!" cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. "Never till
+I've assured myself of those of the parents."
+
+"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you
+observe the proprieties."
+
+"I think you're laughing at me," the young man murmured, dropping
+back in his chair and feeling his small moustache. "I didn't
+expect that of you, Madame Merle."
+
+She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw
+them. "You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent
+taste and the best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think."
+
+"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too
+much for that," said Ned Rosier.
+
+"I'm glad, after all, that you've told me," Madame Merle went on.
+"Leave it to me a little; I think I can help you."
+
+"I said you were the person to come to!" her visitor cried with
+prompt elation.
+
+"You were very clever," Madame Merle returned more dryly. "When I
+say I can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let
+us think a little if it is."
+
+"I'm awfully decent, you know," said Rosier earnestly. "I won't
+say I've no faults, but I'll say I've no vices."
+
+"All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people
+call vices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What
+have you got besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?"
+
+"I've a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a
+year. With the talent I have for arranging, we can live
+beautifully on such an income."
+
+"Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where
+you live."
+
+"Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris."
+
+Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. "It wouldn't be famous;
+you'd have to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken."
+
+"We don't want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything
+pretty it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can
+afford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear
+anything but muslin--without the sprig," said Rosier reflectively.
+
+"Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to
+you at any rate for that theory."
+
+"It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into
+it. She understands all that; that's why I love her."
+
+"She's a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely
+graceful. But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her
+nothing."
+
+Rosier scarce demurred. "I don't in the least desire that he
+should. But I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich
+man."
+
+"The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do
+something."
+
+"For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!" Madame
+Merle exclaimed with a laugh.
+
+"I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it."
+
+"Mrs. Osmond," Madame Merle went on, "will probably prefer to keep
+her money for her own children."
+
+"Her own children? Surely she has none."
+
+"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years
+ago, six months after his birth. Others therefore may come."
+
+"I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid
+woman."
+
+Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. "Ah, about her there's
+much to be said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out
+that you're a parti. The absence of vices is hardly a source of
+income.
+
+"Pardon me, I think it may be," said Rosier quite lucidly.
+
+"You'll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!"
+
+"I think you underrate me."
+
+"You're not so innocent as that? Seriously," said Madame Merle,
+"of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a
+combination to be considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at,
+but there might be a worse offer. Mr. Osmond, however, will
+probably incline to believe he can do better."
+
+"HE can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do
+better than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,"
+Rosier added eagerly.
+
+"She does--I know it."
+
+"Ah," cried the young man, "I said you were the person to come to."
+
+"But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her,"
+Madame Merle went on.
+
+"In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say,
+we're an innocent couple. How did YOU know it?"
+
+"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll
+find out for you."
+
+Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. "You say that rather
+coldly. Don't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it
+should be."
+
+"I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages."
+
+"Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs.
+Osmond."
+
+"Gardez-vous-en bien!" And Madame Merle was on her feet. "Don't
+set her going, or you'll spoil everything."
+
+Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess HAD
+been after all the right person to come to. "I don't think I
+understand you. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Osmond, and I think she
+would like me to succeed."
+
+"Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she
+has the better, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her
+new. But don't for the present try to make her take up the cudgels
+for you. Her husband may have other views, and, as a person who
+wishes her well, I advise you not to multiply points of difference
+between them."
+
+Poor Rosier's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the
+hand of Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his
+taste for proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good
+sense which he concealed under a surface suggesting that of a
+careful owner's "best set" came to his assistance. "I don't see
+that I'm bound to consider Mr. Osmond so very much!" he exclaimed.
+"No, but you should consider HER. You say you're an old friend.
+Would you make her suffer?"
+
+"Not for the world."
+
+"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a
+few soundings."
+
+"Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I'm in
+love."
+
+"Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to
+heed what I say?"
+
+"You're very kind; I'll be very good," the young man promised.
+"But I'm afraid Mr. Osmond's pretty hard," he added in his mild
+voice as he went to the door.
+
+Madame Merle gave a short laugh. "It has been said before. But his
+wife isn't easy either."
+
+"Ah, she's a splendid woman!" Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.
+He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who
+was already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any
+pledge he had given Madame Merle that made it improper he should
+keep himself in spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond's
+home. He reflected constantly on what his adviser had said to
+him, and turned over in his mind the impression of her rather
+circumspect tone. He had gone to her de confiance, as they
+put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been precipitate. He
+found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had incurred
+this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had
+known Madame Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking
+her a delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a
+reason for assuming that she would be eager to push Pansy Osmond
+into his arms, gracefully arranged as these members might be to
+receive her. She had indeed shown him benevolence, and she was a
+person of consideration among the girl's people, where she had a
+rather striking appearance (Rosier had more than once wondered how
+she managed it) of being intimate without being familiar. But
+possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. There was no
+particular reason why she should take trouble for him; a charming
+woman was charming to every one, and Rosier felt rather a fool
+when he thought of his having appealed to her on the ground that
+she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had appeared to
+say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his bibelots. Had
+it come into her head that he might offer her two or three of the
+gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss
+Osmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly
+say so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he
+should like her to believe it.
+
+It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond's,
+Mrs. Osmond having an "evening"--she had taken the Thursday of
+each week--when his presence could be accounted for on general
+principles of civility. The object of Mr. Rosier's well-regulated
+affection dwelt in a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark
+and massive structure overlooking a sunny piazzetta in the
+neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace, too, little
+Pansy lived--a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to poor
+Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the
+young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he
+doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind
+of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name,
+which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence,
+which was mentioned in "Murray" and visited by tourists who
+looked, on a vague survey, disappointed and depressed, and which
+had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row of
+mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched
+loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out
+of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he could
+have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered
+into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on
+settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this
+habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour
+enough, and though he knew less about architecture than about
+Limoges enamels he could see that the proportions of the windows
+and even the details of the cornice had quite the grand air. But
+Rosier was haunted by the conviction that at picturesque periods
+young girls had been shut up there to keep them from their true
+loves, and hen, under the threat of being thrown into convents,
+had been forced into unholy marriages. There was one point,
+however, to which he always did justice when once he found
+himself in Mrs. Osmond's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms,
+which were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people
+were very strong in "good things." It was a taste of Osmond's
+own--not at all of hers; this she had told him the first time he
+came to the house, when, after asking himself for a quarter of an
+hour whether they had even better "French" than he in Paris, he
+was obliged on the spot to admit that they had, very much, and
+vanquished his envy, as a gentleman should, to the point of
+expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of her treasures.
+He learned from Mrs. Osmond that her husband had made a large
+collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed
+a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had
+achieved his greatest finds at a time when he had not the
+advantage of her advice. Rosier interpreted this information
+according to principles of his own. For "advice" read "cash," he
+said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert Osmond had landed his
+highest prizes during his impecunious season confirmed his most
+cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may freely be
+poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented
+himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the
+walls of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes
+really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt
+the extreme seriousness of his position; and now, when he came
+in, he looked about for the daughter of the house with such
+eagerness as might be permitted a gentleman whose smile, as he
+crossed a threshold, always took everything comfortable for
+granted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a
+concave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here
+Mrs. Osmond usually sat--though she was not in her most customary
+place to-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates
+gathered about the fire. The room was flushed with subdued,
+diffused brightness; it contained the larger things and--almost
+always--an odour of flowers. Pansy on this occasion was
+presumably in the next of the series, the resort of younger
+visitors, where tea was served. Osmond stood before the chimney,
+leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up and
+was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him,
+were talking together; but he was not in the conversation; his
+eyes had an expression, frequent with them, that seemed to
+represent them as engaged with objects more worth their while
+than the appearances actually thrust upon them. Rosier, coming in
+unannounced, failed to attract his attention; but the young man,
+who was very punctilious, though he was even exceptionally
+conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he had come to
+see, went up to shake hands with him. Osmond put out his left
+hand, without changing his attitude.
+
+"How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about."
+
+"Never fear; I shall find her," said Rosier cheerfully.
+
+Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt
+himself so efficiently looked at. "Madame Merle has told him, and
+he doesn't like it," he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame
+Merle would be there, but she was not in sight; perhaps she was in
+one of the other rooms or would come later. He had never
+especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond, having a fancy he gave
+himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly resentful, and where
+politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of being quite in
+the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without help, and
+then in a moment, "I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte
+to-day," he said.
+
+Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed
+his boot-sole, "I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!" he
+returned.
+
+"I hope you're not losing your interest?"
+
+"In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest."
+
+Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. "You're
+not thinking of parting with a--a piece or two?"
+
+"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr.
+Rosier," said Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his
+visitor.
+
+"Ah, you want to keep, but not to add," Rosier remarked brightly.
+
+"Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match."
+
+Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his
+want of assurance. "Ah, well, I have!" was all he could murmur;
+and he knew his murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took
+his course to the adjoining room and met Mrs. Osmond coming out of
+the deep doorway. She was dressed in black velvet; she looked high
+and splendid, as he had said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We
+know what Mr. Rosier thought of her and the terms in which, to
+Madame Merle, he had expressed his admiration. Like his
+appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly
+on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for
+authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for
+that secret of a "lustre" beyond any recorded losing or
+rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had still not
+disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well
+have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to
+enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung
+more quietly on its stem. She had lost something of that quick
+eagerness to which her husband had privately taken exception--she
+had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all events, framed
+in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the picture of
+a gracious lady. "You see I'm very regular," he said. "But who
+should be if I'm not?"
+
+"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't
+indulge in tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a
+young lady."
+
+"Ah, please, what young lady?" Rosier was immensely obliging;
+but this was not what he had come for.
+
+"She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to."
+Rosier hesitated a moment. "Can't Mr. Osmond speak to her? He's
+within six feet of her."
+
+Mrs. Osmond also hesitated. "She's not very lively, and he
+doesn't like dull people."
+
+"But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!"
+
+"I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so
+obliging."
+
+"No, he's not--to me." And Mrs. Osmond vaguely smiled.
+
+"That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.
+
+"So I tell him," she said, still smiling.
+
+"You see I want some tea," Rosier went on, looking wistfully
+beyond.
+
+"That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady."
+
+"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The
+simple truth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss
+Osmond."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, turning away, "I can't help you there!"
+
+Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in
+pink, whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered
+whether, in making to Mrs. Osmond the profession I have just
+quoted, he had broken the spirit of his promise to Madame Merle.
+Such a question was capable of occupying this young man's mind
+for a considerable time. At last, however, he became--
+comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little what promises
+he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to abandon
+the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy
+Osmond, who had given him the tea for his companion--Pansy was as
+fond as ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her.
+Into this mild colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he sat by
+moodily, watching his small sweetheart. If we look at her now
+through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of
+the obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before,
+was sent to walk short distances in the Cascine while her father
+and Miss Archer talked together of matters sacred to elder
+people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at nineteen
+Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the
+part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable
+degree the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of
+females as style; and that if she is dressed with great freshness
+she wears her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of
+saving it--very much as if it were lent her for the occasion.
+Edward Rosier, it would seem, would have been just the man to
+note these defects; and in point of fact there was not a quality
+of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted. Only he
+called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed
+were happy enough. "No, she's unique--she's absolutely unique,"
+he used to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an
+instant would he have admitted to you that she was wanting in
+style. Style? Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you
+couldn't see it you had no eye. It was not modern, it was not
+conscious, it would produce no impression in Broadway; the small,
+serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only looked like an
+Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier, who
+thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her
+charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a
+childish prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what
+point she liked him--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in
+his chair. It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his
+forehead with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable.
+She was such a perfect jeune fille, and one couldn't make of a
+jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a
+point. A jeune fille was what Rosier had always dreamed of--a
+jeune fille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that
+this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Pansy
+had never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels,
+if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An
+American jeune fille--what could be better than that? She would
+be frank and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor have
+received letters from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to
+see the comedy of manners. Rosier could not deny that, as the
+matter stood, it would be a breach of hospitality to appeal
+directly to this unsophisticated creature; but he was now in
+imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were the most
+sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he
+entertained for Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of
+greater importance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of
+the house. There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been
+placed on his guard by Madame Merle he would not have extended
+the warning to Pansy; it would not have been part of his policy
+to let her know that a prepossessing young man was in love with
+her. But he WAS in love with her, the prepossessing young man;
+and all these restrictions of circumstance had ended by
+irritating him. What had Gilbert Osmond meant by giving him two
+fingers of his left hand? If Osmond was rude, surely he himself
+might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl in so
+vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her
+mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier,
+that she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and
+daughter departed together, and now it depended only upon him
+that he should be virtually alone with Pansy. He had never been
+alone with her before; he had never been alone with a jeune
+fille. It was a great moment; poor Rosier began to pat his
+forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in which
+they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and lighted,
+but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty all
+the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow;
+there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the
+very temple of authorised love. Rosier gazed a moment through
+this aperture; he was afraid that Pansy would run away, and felt
+almost capable of stretching out a hand to detain her. But she
+lingered where the other maiden had left them, making no motion to
+join a knot of visitors on the far side of the room. For a little
+it occurred to him that she was frightened--too frightened
+perhaps to move; but a second glance assured him she was not, and
+he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed for that.
+After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and look
+at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal.
+He had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture,
+which was of the First French Empire, and especially to admire
+the clock (which he didn't really admire), an immense classic
+structure of that period. He therefore felt that he had now begun
+to manoeuvre.
+
+"Certainly, you may go," said Pansy; "and if you like I'll show
+you." She was not in the least frightened.
+
+"That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind," Rosier
+murmured.
+
+They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly,
+and it seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy.
+"It's not for winter evenings; it's more for summer," she said.
+"It's papa's taste; he has so much."
+
+He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad.
+He looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a
+situation. "Doesn't Mrs. Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has
+she no taste?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature," said Pansy
+--"and for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I
+think he knows everything."
+
+Rosier was silent a little. "There's one thing I'm sure he
+knows!" he broke out presently. "He knows that when I come here
+it's, with all respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Osmond,
+who's so charming--it's really," said the young man, "to see
+you!"
+
+"To see me?" And Pansy raised her vaguely troubled eyes.
+
+"To see you; that's what I come for," Rosier repeated, feeling
+the intoxication of a rupture with authority.
+
+Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was
+not needed to make her face more modest. "I thought it was for
+that."
+
+"And it was not disagreeable to you?"
+
+"I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me," said Pansy.
+
+"I was afraid of offending you."
+
+"You don't offend me," the young girl murmured, smiling as if an
+angel had kissed her.
+
+"You like me then, Pansy?" Rosier asked very gently, feeling very
+happy.
+
+"Yes--I like you."
+
+They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire
+clock was perched; they were well within the room and beyond
+observation from without. The tone in which she had said these
+four words seemed to him the very breath of nature, and his only
+answer could be to take her hand and hold it a moment. Then he
+raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with her pure,
+trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive.
+She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now anything
+might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting
+for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for
+ever; but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the
+shaken tree. Rosier felt that if he should draw her toward him
+and hold her to his heart she would submit without a murmur,
+would rest there without a question. It was true that this would
+be a rash experiment in a yellow Empire salottino. She had
+known it was for her he came, and yet like what a perfect little
+lady she had carried it off!
+
+"You're very dear to me," he murmured, trying to believe that
+there was after all such a thing as hospitality.
+
+She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. "Did you
+say papa knows?"
+
+"You told me just now he knows everything."
+
+"I think you must make sure," said Pansy.
+
+"Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of YOU!" Rosier murmured in her
+ear; whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little
+air of consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should
+be immediate.
+
+The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of
+Madame Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when
+she entered. How she did it the most attentive spectator could
+not have told you, for she neither spoke loud, nor laughed
+profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor dressed with splendour, nor
+appealed in any appreciable manner to the audience. Large, fair,
+smiling, serene, there was something in her very tranquillity
+that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was
+because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the
+quietest thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Osmond, which
+was more striking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune
+with the master of the house. There was a brief exchange of
+commonplaces between these two--they always paid, in public, a
+certain formal tribute to the commonplace--and then Madame Merle,
+whose eyes had been wandering, asked if little Mr. Rosier had
+come this evening.
+
+"He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared," Osmond
+said.
+
+"And where's Pansy?"
+
+"In the other room. There are several people there."
+
+"He's probably among them," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Do you wish to see him?" Osmond asked in a provokingly
+pointless tone.
+
+Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones
+to the eighth of a note. "Yes, I should like to say to him that
+I've told you what he wants, and that it interests you but
+feebly."
+
+"Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more--which is
+exactly what I don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal."
+
+"But you don't hate it."
+
+"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself,
+this evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's
+a great bore. There's no hurry."
+
+"I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over."
+
+"No, don't do that. He'll hang on."
+
+"If I discourage him he'll do the same."
+
+"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain--which
+would be exceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold
+his tongue and go in for some deeper game. That will leave me
+quiet. I hate talking with a donkey."
+
+"Is that what you call poor Mr. Rosier?"
+
+"Oh, he's a nuisance--with his eternal majolica."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. "He's a
+gentleman, he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of
+forty thousand francs!"
+
+"It's misery--'genteel' misery," Osmond broke in. "It's not what
+I've dreamed of for Pansy."
+
+"Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her."
+
+"Do you believe him?" Osmond asked absentmindedly.
+
+"Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't
+suppose you consider that that matters."
+
+"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she
+has thought of him."
+
+"That opinion's more convenient," said Madame Merle quietly.
+
+"Has she told you she's in love with him?"
+
+"For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?" Madame
+Merle added in a moment.
+
+Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the
+other knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his
+long, fine forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and
+gazed a while before him. "This kind of thing doesn't find me
+unprepared. It's what I educated her for. It was all for this--
+that when such a case should come up she should do what I
+prefer."
+
+"I'm not afraid that she'll not do it."
+
+"Well then, where's the hitch?"
+
+"I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get
+rid of Mr. Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful."
+
+"I can't keep him. Keep him yourself."
+
+"Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a
+day." Madame Merle had, for the most part, while they talked,
+been glancing about her; it was her habit in this situation, just
+as it was her habit to interpose a good many blank-looking
+pauses. A long drop followed the last words I have quoted; and
+before it had ended she saw Pansy come out of the adjoining room,
+followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a few steps and then
+stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her father.
+
+"He has spoken to her," Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
+
+Her companion never turned his head. "So much for your belief in
+his promises. He ought to be horsewhipped."
+
+"He intends to confess, poor little man!"
+
+Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. "It
+doesn't matter," he murmured, turning away.
+
+Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little
+manner of unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was
+not more intimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave
+her a friendly smile.
+
+"You're very late," the young creature gently said.
+
+"My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be."
+
+Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved
+toward Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as
+if to get it off his mind, "I've spoken to her!" he whispered.
+
+"I know it, Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Did she tell you?"
+
+"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening,
+and come and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five." She was
+severe, and in the manner in which she turned her back to him
+there was a degree of contempt which caused him to mutter a
+decent imprecation.
+
+He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the
+time nor the place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel,
+who sat talking with an old lady. He sat down on the other side
+of her; the old lady was Italian, and Rosier took for granted she
+understood no English. "You said just now you wouldn't help me,"
+he began to Mrs. Osmond. "Perhaps you'll feel differently when
+you know--when you know--!"
+
+Isabel met his hesitation. "When I know what?"
+
+"That she's all right."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Well, that we've come to an understanding."
+
+"She's all wrong," said Isabel. "It won't do."
+
+Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden
+flush testified to his sense of injury. "I've never been treated
+so," he said. "What is there against me, after all? That's not
+the way I'm usually considered. I could have married twenty
+times."
+
+"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once,
+comfortably," Isabel added, smiling kindly. "You're not rich
+enough for Pansy."
+
+"She doesn't care a straw for one's money."
+
+"No, but her father does."
+
+"Ah yes, he has proved that!" cried the young man.
+
+Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady
+without ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten
+minutes in pretending to look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of
+miniatures, which were neatly arranged on a series of small
+velvet screens. But he looked without seeing; his cheek burned;
+he was too full of his sense of injury. It was certain that he
+had never been treated that way before; he was not used to being
+thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such a
+fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it.
+He searched again for Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his
+main desire was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he
+spoke once more to Isabel; it was not agreeable to him to reflect
+that he had just said a rude thing to her--the only point that
+would now justify a low view of him.
+
+"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago,"
+he began. "But you must remember my situation."
+
+"I don't remember what you said," she answered coldly.
+
+"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me."
+
+She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: "It's
+not that I won't; I simply can't!" Her manner was almost
+passionate.
+
+"If you COULD, just a little, I'd never again speak of your
+husband save as an angel."
+
+"The inducement's great," said Isabel gravely--inscrutably, as he
+afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in
+the eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember
+somehow that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener
+than he liked, and he took himself off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise
+she let him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he
+would stop there till something should have been decided. Mr.
+Osmond had had higher expectations; it was very true that as he
+had no intention of giving his daughter a portion such
+expectations were open to criticism or even, if one would, to
+ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that tone;
+if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his
+felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it
+wouldn't be a miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy
+would never defy her father, he might depend on that; so nothing
+was to be gained by precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom
+his mind to an offer of a sort that he had not hitherto
+entertained, and this result must come of itself--it was useless
+to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own situation would
+be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world, and
+Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she
+justly declared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had
+learned that lesson for herself. There would be no use in his
+writing to Gilbert Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as
+much. He wished the matter dropped for a few weeks and would
+himself write when he should have anything to communicate that it
+might please Mr. Rosier to hear.
+
+"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn't like
+it at all," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!"
+
+"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to
+the house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave
+the rest to me."
+
+"As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?"
+
+"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the
+world, but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about
+Pansy. I'll see that she understands everything. She's a calm
+little nature; she'll take it quietly."
+
+Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he
+was advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning
+to Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that
+though he went early the company was already tolerably numerous.
+Osmond, as usual, was in the first room, near the fire, staring
+straight at the door, so that, not to be distinctly uncivil,
+Rosier had to go and speak to him.
+
+"I'm glad that you can take a hint," Pansy's father said, slightly
+closing his keen, conscious eyes.
+
+"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be."
+
+"You took it? Where did you take it?"
+
+It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a
+moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to.
+"Madame Merle gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--
+to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I
+desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes to you." And he
+flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.
+
+"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you
+apply to Madame Merle?"
+
+"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because
+she had seemed to me to know you very well."
+
+"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond.
+
+"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground
+for hope."
+
+Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my
+daughter."
+
+"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing
+to marry her?"
+
+"I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry
+impertinence which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have
+admired.
+
+"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She
+couldn't marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to
+add, she loves more."
+
+"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
+loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
+
+"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken."
+
+"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and
+dropping his eyes to his boot-toes.
+
+"I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of
+exasperation.
+
+As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note
+attracted some attention from the company. Osmond waited till
+this little movement had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed:
+"I think she has no recollection of having given it."
+
+They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he
+had uttered these last words the master of the house turned round
+again to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived
+that a gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced,
+according to the Roman custom, and was about to present himself
+to his host. The latter smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the
+visitor had a handsome face and a large, fair beard, and was
+evidently an Englishman.
+
+"You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that
+expressed more than Osmond's.
+
+"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you."
+
+Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought
+her, as usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered
+Mrs. Osmond in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was
+too righteously indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your
+husband's awfully cold-blooded."
+
+She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. "You
+can't expect every one to be as hot as yourself."
+
+"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing
+to his daughter?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Don't you take any interest?" Rosier demanded with his sense
+that she too was irritating.
+
+For a moment she answered nothing; then, "No!" she said abruptly
+and with a quickened light in her eyes which directly
+contradicted the word.
+
+"Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?"
+
+"In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there."
+
+Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by
+intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was
+entirely given to her occupation. "What on earth has he done to
+her?" he asked again imploringly. "He declares to me she has
+given me up."
+
+"She has not given you up," Isabel said in a low tone and without
+looking at him.
+
+"Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you
+think proper!"
+
+He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became
+aware that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the
+gentleman who had just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of
+the advantage of good looks and evident social experience, a
+little embarrassed. "Isabel," said her husband, "I bring you an
+old friend."
+
+Mrs. Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old
+friend's, not perfectly confident. "I'm very happy to see Lord
+Warburton," she said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk
+with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from the little
+pledge he had just taken. He had a quick impression that Mrs.
+Osmond wouldn't notice what he did.
+
+Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to
+observe him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a
+pleasure or a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face
+to face with her, was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the
+matter; though his grey eyes had still their fine original
+property of keeping recognition and attestation strictly sincere.
+He was "heavier" than of yore and looked older; he stood there
+very solidly and sensibly.
+
+"I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said; "I've but just
+arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've
+lost no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at
+home on Thursdays."
+
+"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,"
+Osmond remarked to his wife.
+
+"It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly
+flattered," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible
+inns," Osmond went on.
+
+"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw
+you four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first
+met; it's a long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you
+good-bye?" his lordship asked of his hostess. "It was in the
+Capitol, in the first room."
+
+"I remember that myself," said Osmond. "I was there at the time."
+
+"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so
+sorry that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory,
+and I've never cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you
+were living here," her old friend went on to Isabel, "and I
+assure you I've often thought of you. It must be a charming place
+to live in," he added with a look, round him, at her established
+home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his old
+ruefulness.
+
+"We should have been glad to see you at any time," Osmond
+observed with propriety.
+
+"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then.
+Till a month ago I really supposed my travels over."
+
+"I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had
+already, with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the
+measure of what meeting him again meant for her.
+
+"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably
+complete blank."
+
+"Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared
+to think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed
+them so conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate,
+more nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend.
+It was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but
+natural--a deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on
+the whole a good deal of nature, may be supposed to have
+perceived. "I'll leave you and Mrs. Osmond together," he added.
+"You have reminiscences into which I don't enter."
+
+"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!" Lord Warburton called after
+him, as he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch
+an appreciation of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on
+Isabel the deeper, the deepest, consciousness of his look,
+which gradually became more serious. "I'm really very glad to see
+you."
+
+"It's very pleasant. You're very kind."
+
+"Do you know that you're changed--a little?"
+
+She just hesitated. "Yes--a good deal."
+
+"I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for
+the better?"
+
+"I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to YOU," she
+bravely returned.
+
+"Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there
+shouldn't be something to show for it." They sat down and she
+asked him about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat
+perfunctory kind. He answered her questions as if they interested
+him, and in a few moments she saw--or believed she saw--that he
+would press with less of his whole weight than of yore. Time had
+breathed upon his heart and, without chilling it, given it a
+relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel felt her usual
+esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was
+certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like
+people, or like her at least, to know him for such. "There's
+something I must tell you without more delay," he resumed. "I've
+brought Ralph Touchett with me."
+
+"Brought him with you?" Isabel's surprise was great.
+
+"He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to
+bed."
+
+"I'll go to see him," she immediately said.
+
+"That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't
+seen much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations
+were a--a little more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an
+awkward Briton."
+
+"I'm as fond of Ralph as ever," Isabel answered. "But why has he
+come to Rome?" The declaration was very gentle, the question a
+little sharp.
+
+"Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had
+determined to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to
+remain in England, indoors, in what he called an artificial
+climate."
+
+"Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to
+see him three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly
+ill. He has been getting worse every year, and now he has no
+strength left. He smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an
+artificial climate indeed; the house was as hot as Calcutta.
+Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to start for
+Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did the doctors, nor any
+of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America,
+so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it
+would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania. He
+said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself
+comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I
+wanted him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he
+hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I
+thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come with him. I'm
+acting as--what do you call it in America?--as a kind of
+moderator. Poor Ralph's very moderate now. We left England a
+fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He can't keep
+warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the cold.
+He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human
+help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean
+some sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't
+mind my saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for
+Mrs. Touchett to decide on going to America."
+
+Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and
+wonder. "My aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn
+her aside. When the date comes round she starts; I think she'd
+have started if Ralph had been dying."
+
+"I sometimes think he IS dying," Lord Warburton said.
+
+Isabel sprang up. "I'll go to him then now."
+
+He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect
+of his words. "I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the
+contrary, to-day, in the train, he seemed particularly well; the
+idea of our reaching Rome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--
+gave him strength. An hour ago, when I bade him goodnight, he
+told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to him in the
+morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was coming here;
+I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered
+he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very
+Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here,
+and let you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call.
+I think he said he hadn't written to you." There was no need of
+Isabel's declaring that she would act upon Lord Warburton's
+information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged creature
+held back. "Let alone that I wanted to see you for myself," her
+visitor gallantly added.
+
+"I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild," she
+said. "I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at
+Gardencourt."
+
+"He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only
+company."
+
+"You went to see him; you've been extremely kind."
+
+"Oh dear, I had nothing to do," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every
+one speaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually
+seeing your name in the Times, which, by the way, doesn't
+appear to hold it in reverence. You're apparently as wild a
+radical as ever."
+
+"I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round
+to me. Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate
+all the way from London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories,
+and he calls me the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the
+details of my personal appearance, every sign of the brute. So
+you see there's life in him yet."
+
+Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained
+from asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow.
+She perceived that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of
+that subject--he had a conception of other possible topics. She
+was more and more able to say to herself that he had recovered,
+and, what is more to the point, she was able to say it without
+bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an image of
+urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned
+with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new
+trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished
+to live with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had
+forgiven her and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed
+allusions. This was not a form of revenge, of course; she had no
+suspicion of his wishing to punish her by an exhibition of
+disillusionment; she did him the justice to believe it had simply
+occurred to him that she would now take a good-natured interest
+in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy,
+manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never fester.
+British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She
+gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always
+free to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton
+of course spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without
+implications; he even went so far as to allude to their former
+meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he told her he had been
+immensely interested in hearing of her marriage and that it was a
+great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond's acquaintance--since
+he could hardly be said to have made it on the other occasion. He
+had not written to her at the time of that passage in her
+history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing
+he implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It
+was very much as an intimate friend that he said to her,
+suddenly, after a short pause which he had occupied in smiling,
+as he looked about him, like a person amused, at a provincial
+entertainment, by some innocent game of guesses--
+
+"Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of
+thing?"
+
+Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck
+her almost as the accent of comedy. "Do you suppose if I were not
+I'd tell you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't see why not."
+
+"I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy."
+
+"You've got an awfully good house."
+
+"Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my
+husband's."
+
+"You mean he has arranged it?"
+
+"Yes, it was nothing when we came."
+
+"He must be very clever."
+
+"He has a genius for upholstery," said Isabel.
+
+"There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must
+have a taste of your own."
+
+"I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never
+propose anything."
+
+"Do you mean you accept what others propose?"
+
+"Very willingly, for the most part."
+
+"That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something."
+
+"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few
+small ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to
+introduce you to some of these people."
+
+"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that
+young lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face."
+
+"The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's
+daughter."
+
+"Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!"
+
+"You must make her acquaintance."
+
+"In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here." He
+ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly
+reverted to Mrs. Osmond. "Do you know I was wrong just now in
+saying you had changed?" he presently went on. "You seem to me,
+after all, very much the same."
+
+"And yet I find it a great change to be married," said Isabel
+with mild gaiety.
+
+"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I
+haven't gone in for that."
+
+"It rather surprises me."
+
+"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to
+marry," he added more simply.
+
+"It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising--after which she
+reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly
+the person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton
+divined the pang that he generously forbore to call her attention
+to her not having contributed then to the facility.
+
+Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside
+Pansy's tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about
+trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing
+with her stepmother.
+
+"He's an English lord," said Rosier. "I don't know more."
+
+"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of
+tea."
+
+"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you."
+
+"Don't speak so loud every one will hear," said Pansy.
+
+"They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your
+only thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil."
+
+"It has just been filled; the servants never know!"--and she
+sighed with the weight of her responsibility.
+
+"Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you
+didn't mean what you said a week ago."
+
+"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But
+I mean what I say to you."
+
+"He told me you had forgotten me."
+
+"Ah no, I don't forget," said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in
+a fixed smile.
+
+"Then everything's just the very same?"
+
+"Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe."
+
+"What has he done to you?"
+
+"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything.
+Then he forbade me to marry you."
+
+"You needn't mind that."
+
+"Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa."
+
+"Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to
+love?"
+
+She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a
+moment; then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. "I
+love you just as much."
+
+"What good will that do me?"
+
+"Ah," said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, "I don't know
+that."
+
+"You disappoint me," groaned poor Rosier.
+
+She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant.
+"Please don't talk any more."
+
+"Is this to be all my satisfaction?"
+
+"Papa said I was not to talk with you."
+
+"Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!"
+
+"I wish you'd wait a little," said the girl in a voice just
+distinct enough to betray a quaver.
+
+"Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life
+away."
+
+"I'll not give you up--oh no!" Pansy went on.
+
+"He'll try and make you marry some one else."
+
+"I'll never do that."
+
+"What then are we to wait for?"
+
+She hesitated again. "I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help
+us." It was in this manner that she for the most part designated
+her stepmother.
+
+"She won't help us much. She's afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of your father, I suppose."
+
+Pansy shook her little head. "She's not afraid of any one. We
+must have patience."
+
+"Ah, that's an awful word," Rosier groaned; he was deeply
+disconcerted. Oblivious of the customs of good society, he
+dropped his head into his hands and, supporting it with a
+melancholy grace, sat staring at the carpet. Presently he became
+aware of a good deal of movement about him and, as he looked up,
+saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her little curtsey of
+the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had introduced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph
+Touchett should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage
+than he had done before that event--an event of which he took
+such a view as could hardly prove a confirmation of intimacy. He
+had uttered his thought, as we know, and after this had held his
+peace, Isabel not having invited him to resume a discussion which
+marked an era in their relations. That discussion had made a
+difference--the difference he feared rather than the one he
+hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out her
+engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a
+friendship. No reference was ever again made between them to
+Ralph's opinion of Gilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic
+with a sacred silence they managed to preserve a semblance of
+reciprocal frankness. But there was a difference, as Ralph often
+said to himself--there was a difference. She had not forgiven
+him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had gained. She
+thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care; and
+as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions
+represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should
+justify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the
+wrong was of the sort that women remember best. As Osmond's wife
+she could never again be his friend. If in this character she
+should enjoy the felicity she expected, she would have nothing
+but contempt for the man who had attempted, in advance, to
+undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the other hand his
+warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he should
+never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make
+her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed
+his cousin's marriage, Ralph's prevision of the future; and if
+his meditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the
+bloom of health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as
+he deemed) beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which
+Isabel was united to Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in
+Florence in the month of June. He learned from his mother that
+Isabel at first had thought of celebrating her nuptials in her
+native land, but that as simplicity was what she chiefly desired
+to secure she had finally decided, in spite of Osmond's professed
+willingness to make a journey of any length, that this
+characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by
+the nearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done
+therefore at the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in
+the presence only of Mrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond
+and the Countess Gemini. That severity in the proceedings of
+which I just spoke was in part the result of the absence of two
+persons who might have been looked for on the occasion and who
+would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merle had been
+invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, had
+written a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not
+been invited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel
+by Mr. Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her
+profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame
+Merle's, intimating that, had she been able to cross the
+Atlantic, she would have been present not only as a witness but
+as a critic. Her return to Europe had taken place somewhat later,
+and she had effected a meeting with Isabel in the autumn, in
+Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too freely--her
+critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subject of it,
+had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare to
+Isabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between
+them. "It isn't in the least that you've married--it is that you
+have married HIM," she had deemed it her duty to remark;
+agreeing, it will be seen, much more with Ralph Touchett than she
+suspected, though she had few of his hesitations and
+compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe, however, was
+not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the moment
+when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object to
+that newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to
+her he took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had
+appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run
+down to Spain. Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most
+acceptable she had yet published, and there had been one in
+especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and
+Moonlight,' which generally passed for her masterpiece. Isabel
+had been secretly disappointed at her husband's not seeing his
+way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if
+his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense of
+humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she
+herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness
+had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond
+had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't
+imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow
+tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had also
+pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause
+of the verdict Isabel had appealed with an ardour that had made
+him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his wife's tastes.
+Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked to know
+people who were as different as possible from herself. "Why then
+don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?" Osmond had
+enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid her
+washerwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.
+
+Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two
+years that had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the
+beginning of her residence in Rome he had spent again at San
+Remo, where he had been joined in the spring by his mother, who
+afterwards had gone with him to England, to see what they were
+doing at the bank--an operation she couldn't induce him to
+perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a
+small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but late
+in the month of April of this second year he had come down to
+Rome. It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood
+face to face with Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of
+the keenest. She had written to him from time to time, but her
+letters told him nothing he wanted to know. He had asked his
+mother what she was making of her life, and his mother had simply
+answered that she supposed she was making the best of it. Mrs.
+Touchett had not the imagination that communes with the unseen,
+and she now pretended to no intimacy with her niece, whom she
+rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to be living in a
+sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett still remained of
+the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It had
+given her no pleasure to think of Isabel's establishment, which
+she was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in
+Florence, she rubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best
+always to minimise the contact; and the Countess reminded her of
+Osmond, who made her think of Isabel. The Countess was less
+talked of in these days; but Mrs. Touchett augured no good of
+that: it only proved how she had been talked of before. There was
+a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person of Madame Merle;
+but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett had undergone a
+perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, without
+circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and
+Madame Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to
+think no one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of
+living, more or less, for several years with Mrs. Touchett and
+showing no symptom of irritation--Madame Merle now took a very
+high tone and declared that this was an accusation from which she
+couldn't stoop to defend herself. She added, however (without
+stooping), that her behaviour had been only too simple, that she
+had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabel was not eager
+to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeated visits had
+been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top and
+he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments to
+herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually
+thrown dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the
+event--she was unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that
+she had played any part in it, double or single, was an
+imputation against which she proudly protested. It was doubtless
+in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude, and of the injury it
+offered to habits consecrated by many charming seasons, that
+Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many months in
+England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett had
+done her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven.
+But Madame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something
+exquisite in her dignity.
+
+Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged
+in this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to
+put the girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now
+he had lost the game. He should see nothing, he should learn
+nothing; for him she would always wear a mask. His true line
+would have been to profess delight in her union, so that later,
+when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom should fall out of it, she
+might have the pleasure of saying to him that he had been a
+goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in
+order to know Isabel's real situation. At present, however, she
+neither taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own
+confidence was justified; if she wore a mask it completely
+covered her face. There was something fixed and mechanical in the
+serenity painted on it; this was not an expression, Ralph said--
+it was a representation, it was even an advertisement. She had
+lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she
+scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could
+say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred
+six months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of
+mourning. She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph
+heard her spoken of as having a "charming position." He observed
+that she produced the impression of being peculiarly enviable,
+that it was supposed, among many people, to be a privilege even
+to know her. Her house was not open to every one, and she had an
+evening in the week to which people were not invited as a matter
+of course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed
+to be a member of her circle to perceive it; for there was
+nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even to admire,
+in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, in all
+this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel
+had no faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him
+as having a great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of
+long rides, of fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be
+interested, even to be bored, to make acquaintances, to see
+people who were talked about, to explore the neighbourhood of
+Rome, to enter into relation with certain of the mustiest relics
+of its old society. In all this there was much less discrimination
+than in that desire for comprehensiveness of development on which
+he had been used to exercise his wit. There was a kind of
+violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her
+experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that
+she even spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before
+her marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she
+who used to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas of old
+she had a great delight in good-humoured argument, in
+intellectual play (she never looked so charming as when in the
+genial heat of discussion she received a crushing blow full in
+the face and brushed it away as a feather), she appeared now to
+think there was nothing worth people's either differing about or
+agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was
+indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity
+was greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before,
+she had gained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an
+amplitude and a brilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave
+a touch of insolence to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel,
+what perversity had bitten her? Her light step drew a mass of
+drapery behind it; her intelligent head sustained a majesty of
+ornament. The free, keen girl had become quite another person;
+what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to represent
+something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself; and he
+could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond.
+"Good heavens, what a function!" he then woefully exclaimed. He
+was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.
+
+He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn.
+He saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted,
+regulated, animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his
+element; at last he had material to work with. He always had an
+eye to effect, and his effects were deeply calculated. They were
+produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as vulgar as the
+art was great. To surround his interior with a sort of invidious
+sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of exclusion, to make
+people believe his house was different from every other, to
+impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold
+originality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to
+whom Isabel had attributed a superior morality. "He works with
+superior material," Ralph said to himself; "it's rich abundance
+compared with his former resources." Ralph was a clever man; but
+Ralph had never--to his own sense--been so clever as when he
+observed, in petto, that under the guise of caring only for
+intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from
+being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble
+servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of
+success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and
+the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything
+he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not
+on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a
+man who lived so much in the land of consideration. His tastes,
+his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a
+purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been the
+conscious attitude of years. His solitude, his ennui, his love
+for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many
+features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model
+of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please
+the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's
+curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel
+great, ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in
+his life most directly to please himself was his marrying Miss
+Archer; though in this case indeed the gullible world was in a
+manner embodied in poor Isabel, who had been mystified to the top
+of her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in being consistent;
+he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could
+not in honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its
+articles for what they may at the time have been worth. It was
+certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his
+theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at
+this period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard
+him not in the least as an enemy.
+
+For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not
+that he had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had
+none at all. He was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly
+ill--it was on this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made
+the proper enquiries, asked about his health, about Mrs.
+Touchett, about his opinion of winter climates, whether he were
+comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on the few occasions
+of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary; but his
+manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in the
+presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had,
+toward the end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond's making it of
+small ease to his wife that she should continue to receive
+Mr. Touchett. He was not jealous--he had not that excuse; no one
+could be jealous of Ralph. But he made Isabel pay for her
+old-time kindness, of which so much was still left; and as Ralph
+had no idea of her paying too much, so when his suspicion had
+become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he had
+deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had been
+constantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive.
+She had decided that it was his love of conversation; his
+conversation had been better than ever. He had given up walking;
+be was no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair
+--almost any chair would serve, and was so dependent on what you
+would do for him that, had not his talk been highly
+contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The reader
+already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, and
+the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What
+kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen
+enough of the person in the world in whom he was most interested:
+he was not yet satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't
+make up his mind to lose that. He wanted to see what she would
+make of her husband--or what her husband would make of her. This
+was only the first act of the drama, and he was determined to sit
+out the performance. His determination had held good; it had kept
+him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return
+to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such an air
+of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though more
+accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this
+strange, unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she
+had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to
+embark for a distant land. If Ralph had been kept alive by
+suspense it was with a good deal of the same emotion--the
+excitement of wondering in what state she should find him--that
+Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord Warburton had
+notified her of his arrival in Rome.
+
+She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits.
+Gilbert Osmond called on him punctually, and on their sending
+their carriage for him Ralph came more than once to Palazzo
+Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed, at the end of which Ralph
+announced to Lord Warburton that he thought after all he wouldn't
+go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together after a day
+spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had left
+the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a
+cigar, which he instantly removed from his lips.
+
+"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?"
+
+"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa,
+all shamelessly.
+
+"Do you mean you'll return to England?"
+
+"Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome."
+
+"Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough."
+
+"It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been."
+
+Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if
+trying to see it. "You've been better than you were on the
+journey, certainly. I wonder how you lived through that. But I
+don't understand your condition. I recommend you to try Sicily."
+
+"I can't try," said poor Ralph. "I've done trying. I can't move
+further. I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and
+Charybdis! I don't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be
+snatched away, like Proserpine in the same locality, to the
+Plutonian shades."
+
+"What the deuce then did you come for?" his lordship enquired.
+
+"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't
+matter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've
+swallowed all climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single
+cousin in Sicily--much less a married one."
+
+"Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor
+say?"
+
+"I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs.
+Osmond will bury me. But I shall not die here."
+
+"I hope not." Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively.
+"Well, I must say," he resumed, "for myself I'm very glad you
+don't insist on Sicily. I had a horror of that journey."
+
+"Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of
+dragging you in my train."
+
+"I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone."
+
+"My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than
+this," Ralph cried.
+
+"I should have gone with you and seen you settled," said Lord
+Warburton.
+
+"You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man."
+
+"Then I should have come back here."
+
+"And then you'd have gone to England."
+
+"No, no; I should have stayed."
+
+"Well," said Ralph, "if that's what we are both up to, I don't
+see where Sicily comes in!"
+
+His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last,
+looking up, "I say, tell me this," he broke out; "did you really
+mean to go to Sicily when we started?"
+
+"Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did
+you come with me quite--platonically?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad."
+
+"I suspect we've each been playing our little game."
+
+"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to
+be here a while."
+
+"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs."
+
+"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing."
+
+"I think you've forgotten what you came for," said Ralph.
+
+"Perhaps I have," his companion answered rather gravely.
+
+These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by
+the absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from
+London to Rome without an allusion to matters that were uppermost
+in the mind of each. There was an old subject they had once
+discussed, but it had lost its recognised place in their attention,
+and even after their arrival in Rome, where many things led back
+to it, they had kept the same half-diffident, half-confident
+silence.
+
+"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," Lord
+Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.
+
+"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can
+help it."
+
+"What then does Mrs. Osmond think?" Ralph's friend demanded.
+I've not told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and
+even offer to go with me to Catania. She's capable of that."
+
+"In your place I should like it."
+
+"Her husband won't like it."
+
+"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not
+bound to mind his likings. They're his affair."
+
+"I don't want to make any more trouble between them," said Ralph.
+
+"Is there so much already?"
+
+"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would
+make the explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."
+
+"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you
+stop here?"
+
+"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in
+Rome, and then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think
+it's my duty to stop and defend her."
+
+"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!" Lord Warburton began
+with a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that
+checked him. "Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a
+nice question," he observed instead.
+
+Ralph for a short time answered nothing. "It's true that my
+defensive powers are small," he returned at last; "but as my
+aggressive ones are still smaller Osmond may after all not think
+me worth his gunpowder. At any rate," he added, "there are things
+I'm curious to see."
+
+"You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?"
+
+"I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested
+in Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"So am I. But not as I once was," Lord Warburton added quickly.
+This was one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion
+to make.
+
+"Does she strike you as very happy?" Ralph enquired, emboldened
+by this confidence.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other
+night she was happy."
+
+"Ah, she told YOU, of course," Ralph exclaimed, smiling.
+
+"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of
+person she might have complained to."
+
+"Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she HAS
+done--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all.
+She's very careful."
+
+"She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of YOUR
+duty."
+
+"Ah no," said Lord Warburton gravely; "none!"
+
+"Permit me to ask," Ralph went on, "whether it's to bring out the
+fact that you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very
+civil to the little girl?"
+
+Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before
+the fire, looking at it hard. "Does that strike you as very
+ridiculous?"
+
+"Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her."
+
+"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl
+of that age has pleased me more."
+
+"She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine."
+
+"Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty
+years."
+
+"My dear Warburton," said Ralph, "are you serious?"
+
+"Perfectly serious--as far as I've got."
+
+"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how
+cheered-up old Osmond will be!"
+
+His companion frowned. "I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't
+propose for his daughter to please HIM."
+
+"He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same."
+
+"He's not so fond of me as that," said his lordship.
+
+"As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is
+that people needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected
+with you. Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy
+confidence that they loved me."
+
+Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to
+general axioms--he was thinking of a special case. "Do you judge
+she'll be pleased?"
+
+"The girl herself? Delighted, surely."
+
+"No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Ralph looked at him a moment. "My dear fellow, what has she to do
+with it?"
+
+"Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Pansy."
+
+"Very true--very true." And Ralph slowly got up. "It's an
+interesting question--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry
+her." He stood there a moment with his hands in his pockets and
+rather a clouded brow. "I hope, you know, that you're very--very
+sure. The deuce!" he broke off. "I don't know how to say it."
+
+"Yes, you do; you know how to say everything."
+
+"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's
+merits her being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?"
+
+"Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton angrily, "for what
+do you take me?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this
+lady having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time
+she had spent six months in England; at another she had passed a
+portion of a winter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to
+distant friends and gave countenance to the idea that for the
+future she should be a less inveterate Roman than in the past. As
+she had been inveterate in the past only in the sense of
+constantly having an apartment in one of the sunniest niches of
+the Pincian--an apartment which often stood empty--this suggested
+a prospect of almost constant absence; a danger which Isabel at
+one period had been much inclined to deplore. Familiarity had
+modified in some degree her first impression of Madame Merle, but
+it had not essentially altered it; there was still much wonder of
+admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it was
+a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the
+social battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons
+were polished steel, and she used them with a skill which struck
+Isabel as more and more that of a veteran. She was never weary,
+never overcome with disgust; she never appeared to need rest or
+consolation. She had her own ideas; she had of old exposed a
+great many of them to Isabel, who knew also that under an
+appearance of extreme self-control her highly-cultivated friend
+concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was mistress of her
+life; there was something gallant in the way she kept going. It
+was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of life
+were some clever trick she had guessed. Isabel, as she herself
+grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts;
+there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself
+with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live
+for. Her old habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in
+love with suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea of some
+new adventure. As a younger person she had been used to proceed
+from one little exaltation to the other: there were scarcely any
+dull places between. But Madame Merle had suppressed enthusiasm;
+she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she lived entirely by
+reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel would have
+given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant friend
+had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had
+become aware more than before of the advantage of being like that
+--of having made one's self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of
+silver.
+
+But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately
+renewed acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in
+question made again a continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw
+more of her than she had done since her marriage; but by this
+time Isabel's needs and inclinations had considerably changed. It
+was not at present to Madame Merle that she would have applied
+for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this lady's
+clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself,
+and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess
+herself beaten. Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to
+herself and an ornament to any circle; but was she--would she be
+--of use to others in periods of refined embarrassment? The best
+way to profit by her friend--this indeed Isabel had always
+thought--was to imitate her, to be as firm and bright as she. She
+recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel, considering this fact,
+determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside her own. It
+seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which had
+virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was
+almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather
+artificial fear of being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we know, had
+been of the opinion that she was prone to exaggeration, to
+forcing the note--was apt, in the vulgar phrase, to overdo it.
+Isabel had never admitted this charge--had never indeed quite
+understood it; Madame Merle's conduct, to her perception, always
+bore the stamp of good taste, was always "quiet." But in this
+matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the
+Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that she
+overdid a little. That of course was not the best taste; that was
+rather violent. She remembered too much that Isabel was married;
+that she had now other interests; that though she, Madame Merle,
+had known Gilbert Osmond and his little Pansy very well, better
+almost than any one, she was not after all of the inner circle.
+She was on her guard; she never spoke of their affairs till she
+was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was wanted; she had
+a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid as we
+know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
+
+"I MUST be on my guard," she said; "I might so easily, without
+suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended,
+even if my intention should have been of the purest. I must not
+forget that I knew your husband long before you did; I must not
+let that betray me. If you were a silly woman you might be
+jealous. You're not a silly woman; I know that perfectly. But
+neither am I; therefore I'm determined not to get into trouble. A
+little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made before one knows
+it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had
+ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't likely
+I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractive than I
+was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that
+doesn't belong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection;
+you'd simply say I was forgetting certain differences. I'm
+determined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend isn't
+always thinking of that; one doesn't suspect one's friends of
+injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I
+suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself uncomfortable;
+I'm not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently prove it
+in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however,
+that if you were to be jealous--that's the form it would take--I
+should be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly
+wouldn't be your husband's."
+
+Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory
+that Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how
+she had at first received it. Madame Merle might have made
+Gilbert Osmond's marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel
+Archer's. That was the work of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of
+nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery of things. It
+was true her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame
+Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the
+strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would
+not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make a crime
+of Madame Merle's having been the producing cause of the most
+important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to
+her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with
+her aunt and at a time when she was still capable of that large
+inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian,
+to her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change
+of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought.
+With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she
+had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After
+their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less
+convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in
+talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary.
+"Don't you like Madame Merle?" Isabel had once said to him. "She
+thinks a great deal of you."
+
+"I'll tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. "I liked her
+once better than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather
+ashamed of it. She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's
+not in Italy; it makes for relaxation--for a sort of moral
+detente. Don't talk of her too much; it seems to bring her
+back. She'll come back in plenty of time."
+
+Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too
+late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost.
+But meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different,
+Isabel's feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness
+of the situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less
+satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may miss, is
+rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in
+June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a hand in Gilbert
+Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to
+consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there
+was not so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less
+and less, and Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without
+her these things would not have been. That reflection indeed was
+instantly stifled; she knew an immediate horror at having made
+it. "Whatever happens to me let me not be unjust," she said; "let
+me bear my burdens myself and not shift them upon others!" This
+disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for
+her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make and of
+which I have given a sketch; for there was something irritating--
+there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat discriminations
+and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there was nothing
+clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears.
+She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had
+just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so
+little what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so
+unable to explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert?
+The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost wished
+jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a manner for
+refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner one of the symptoms of
+happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she
+might have been pretending to know Isabel better than Isabel knew
+herself. This young woman had always been fertile in resolutions
+--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had they
+flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day.
+It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have
+been summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy
+it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit
+had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not as
+yet been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold
+fast to justice--not to pay itself by petty revenges. To
+associate Madame Merle with its disappointment would be a petty
+revenge--especially as the pleasure to be derived from that would
+be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of bitterness,
+but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend
+that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever a girl was a
+free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free
+agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within
+herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and
+considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake,
+there was only one way to repair it--just immensely (oh, with the
+highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially
+when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it
+off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which
+kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all that,
+in taking her precautions.
+
+One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome
+Isabel came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part
+of her general determination to be just that she was at present
+very thankful for Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for
+things that were pure and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there
+was nothing else in her life that had the rightness of the young
+creature's attachment or the sweetness of her own clearness about
+it. It was like a soft presence--like a small hand in her own; on
+Pansy's part it was more than an affection--it was a kind of
+ardent coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl's
+dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite
+reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to
+herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we
+must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was a
+direct admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity,
+not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for
+what Isabel could hardly have said; in general, to be more for
+the child than the child was able to be for herself. Isabel could
+have smiled, in these days, to remember that her little companion
+had once been ambiguous, for she now perceived that Pansy's
+ambiguities were simply her own grossness of vision. She had been
+unable to believe any one could care so much--so extraordinarily
+much--to please. But since then she had seen this delicate
+faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It
+was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no
+pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly
+extending her conquests she took no credit for them. The two were
+constantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her
+stepdaughter. Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of
+one's carrying a nosegay composed all of the same flower. And
+then not to neglect Pansy, not under any provocation to neglect
+her--this she had made an article of religion. The young girl had
+every appearance of being happier in Isabel's society than in
+that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an
+intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an
+exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been
+luxuriously mild. Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her and
+how she studied the means of pleasing her. She had decided that
+the best way of pleasing her was negative, and consisted in not
+giving her trouble--a conviction which certainly could have had
+no reference to trouble already existing. She was therefore
+ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was
+careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to
+Isabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could
+have thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social
+questions, and though she delighted in approbation, to the point
+of turning pale when it came to her, never held out her hand for
+it. She only looked toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as
+she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world. When
+during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go to
+parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs.
+Osmond should be tired, was the first to propose departure.
+Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew
+her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this exercise,
+taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society,
+moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome
+parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush
+at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day,
+in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed,
+appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if
+she had been taken to drive for the first time.
+
+On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the
+gates of the city and at the end of half an hour had left the
+carriage to await them by the roadside while they walked away
+over the short grass of the Campagna, which even in the winter
+months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This was almost a
+daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a swift
+length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming
+to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best,
+but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved
+with a shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who
+afterwards, on their return to Rome, paid a tribute to her
+preferences by making the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa
+Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a sunny
+hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo
+Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into water.
+Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually
+occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which
+was entered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond's
+rich devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand
+nudity. Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped
+short, the reason for her doing so being that she had received an
+impression. The impression had, in strictness, nothing
+unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the
+soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene
+before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet,
+and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were
+unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before,
+certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least had not
+noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment converted
+itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she instantly
+perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was
+standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond was in a
+deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect,
+as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first
+was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was an
+anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they
+had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and
+were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old friends who
+sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was nothing
+to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing
+made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of
+light. Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze,
+struck her as something detected. But it was all over by the time
+she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and had
+welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had
+instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about
+wanting a walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse
+him, left the room.
+
+"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you
+hadn't I waited for you," Madame Merle said.
+
+"Didn't he ask you to sit down?" Isabel asked with a smile.
+
+Madame Merle looked about her. "Ah, it's very true; I was going
+away."
+
+"You must stay now."
+
+"Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind."
+
+"I've told you that before," Isabel said--"that it takes
+something extraordinary to bring you to this house."
+
+"And you know what I've told YOU; that whether I come or whether
+I stay away, I've always the same motive--the affection I bear
+you."
+
+"Yes, you've told me that."
+
+"You look just now as if you didn't believe it," said Madame
+Merle.
+
+"Ah," Isabel answered, "the profundity of your motives, that's
+the last thing I doubt!"
+
+"You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "I know you've always been kind to
+me."
+
+"As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one
+has to let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however,
+that I've come to-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to
+get rid of a trouble of my own--to make it over to you. I've been
+talking to your husband about it."
+
+"I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles."
+
+"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you,
+I suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me.
+It's about poor Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel reflectively, "it's his trouble then, not yours."
+
+"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten
+times a week, to talk about Pansy."
+
+"Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated. "I gathered from your husband that
+perhaps you didn't."
+
+"How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the
+matter."
+
+"It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it."
+
+"It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at
+fault."
+
+"Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to
+think. To-day he doesn't."
+
+"Haven't you been telling him?" Isabel asked.
+
+Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. "Do you know you're
+a little dry?"
+
+"Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me."
+
+"In that there's some reason. You're so near the child."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "for all the comfort I've given him! If you
+think me dry, I wonder what HE thinks."
+
+"I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done."
+
+"I can do nothing."
+
+"You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious
+connection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he
+came to me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand.
+Now he keeps coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there
+is, to pour out his feelings."
+
+"He's very much in love," said Isabel.
+
+"Very much--for him."
+
+"Very much for Pansy, you might say as well."
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. "Don't you think she's
+attractive?"
+
+"The dearest little person possible--but very limited."
+
+"She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr.
+Rosier's not unlimited."
+
+"No," said Isabel, "he has about the extent of one's
+pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders." Her
+humour had lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment
+she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent an object as
+Pansy's suitor. "He's very kind, very honest," she presently
+added; "and he's not such a fool as he seems."
+
+"He assures me that she delights in him," said Madame Merle.
+
+"I don't know; I've not asked her."
+
+"You've never sounded her a little?"
+
+"It's not my place; it's her father's."
+
+"Ah, you're too literal!" said Madame Merle.
+
+"I must judge for myself."
+
+Madame Merle gave her smile again. "It isn't easy to help you."
+
+"To help me?" said Isabel very seriously. "What do you mean?"
+
+"It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be
+careful? I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I
+wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward
+Rosier. Je n'y peux rien, moi! I can't talk to Pansy about him.
+Especially," added Madame Merle, "as I don't think him a paragon
+of husbands."
+
+Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, "You don't
+wash your hands then!" she said. After which again she added in
+another tone: "You can't--you're too much interested."
+
+Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as
+the intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments
+before. Only this time the latter saw nothing. "Ask him the next
+time, and you'll see."
+
+"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has
+let him know that he's not welcome."
+
+"Ah yes," said Madame Merle, "I forgot that--though it's the
+burden of his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All
+the same," she went on, "Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as he
+thinks." She had got up as if to close the conversation, but she
+lingered, looking about her, and had evidently more to say.
+Isabel perceived this and even saw the point she had in view; but
+Isabel also had her own reasons for not opening the way.
+
+"That must have pleased him, if you've told him," she answered,
+smiling.
+
+"Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged
+him. I've preached patience, have said that his case isn't
+desperate if he'll only hold his tongue and be quiet.
+Unfortunately he has taken it into his head to be jealous."
+
+"Jealous?"
+
+"Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here."
+
+Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also
+rose. "Ah!" she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace.
+Madame Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood a
+moment before the mantel-glass and pushed into its place a
+wandering tress of hair.
+
+"Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord
+Warburton's falling in love with Pansy," Madame Merle went on.
+Isabel was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. "It's
+true--there's nothing impossible," she returned at last, gravely
+and more gently.
+
+"So I've had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband
+thinks."
+
+"That I don't know."
+
+"Ask him and you'll see."
+
+"I shall not ask him," said Isabel.
+
+"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course," Madame
+Merle added, "you've had infinitely more observation of Lord
+Warburton's behaviour than I."
+
+"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my
+stepdaughter very much."
+
+Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. "Likes her, you
+mean--as Mr. Rosier means?"
+
+"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me
+know that he's charmed with Pansy."
+
+"And you've never told Osmond?" This observation was immediate,
+precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle's lips.
+
+Isabel's eyes rested on her. "I suppose he'll know in time; Lord
+Warburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself."
+
+Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more
+quickly than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her
+cheek. She gave the treacherous impulse time to subside and then
+said as if she had been thinking it over a little: "That would be
+better than marrying poor Mr. Rosier."
+
+"Much better, I think."
+
+"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's
+really very kind of him."
+
+"Very kind of him?"
+
+"To drop his eyes on a simple little girl."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--"
+
+"After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever
+known!" Isabel exclaimed.
+
+Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. "Ah, a
+moment ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her."
+
+"I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton."
+
+"So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy
+deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr.
+Rosier I won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too
+perverse."
+
+"Mr. Rosier's a nuisance!" Isabel cried abruptly.
+
+"I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not
+expected to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me,
+my door shall be closed to him." And gathering her mantle
+together Madame Merle prepared to depart. She was checked,
+however, on her progress to the door, by an inconsequent request
+from Isabel.
+
+"All the same, you know, be kind to him."
+
+She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her
+friend. "I don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I
+shan't be kind to him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to
+see her married to Lord Warburton."
+
+"You had better wait till he asks her."
+
+"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially," said Madame
+Merle in a moment, "if you make him."
+
+"If I make him?"
+
+"It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him."
+
+Isabel frowned a little. "Where did you learn that?"
+
+"Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you--never!" said Madame Merle,
+smiling.
+
+"I certainly never told you anything of the sort."
+
+"You MIGHT have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were
+by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told
+me very little; I've often thought so since."
+
+Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain
+satisfaction. But she didn't admit it now--perhaps because she
+wished not to appear to exult in it. "You seem to have had an
+excellent informant in my aunt," she simply returned.
+
+"She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord
+Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the
+subject. Of course I think you've done better in doing as you
+did. But if you wouldn't marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him
+the reparation of helping him to marry some one else."
+
+Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not
+reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a
+moment she said, reasonably and gently enough: "I should be very
+glad indeed if, as regards Pansy, it could be arranged." Upon
+which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a speech of
+good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might have been
+expected and triumphantly withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time;
+coming very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting
+alone. They had spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to
+bed; he himself had been sitting since dinner in a small
+apartment in which he had arranged his books and which he called
+his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton had come in, as he
+always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at home;
+he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Isabel,
+after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on
+purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She
+pretended to read; she even went after a little to the piano; she
+asked herself if she mightn't leave the room. She had come little
+by little to think well of the idea of Pansy's becoming the wife
+of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at first it had not
+presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm. Madame
+Merle, that afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation
+of inflammable material. When Isabel was unhappy she always
+looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by theory--for
+some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself of
+the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering
+as opposed to doing. To "do"--it hardly mattered what--would
+therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides,
+she wished to convince herself that she had done everything
+possible to content her husband; she was determined not to be
+haunted by visions of his wife's limpness under appeal. It would
+please him greatly to see Pansy married to an English nobleman,
+and justly please him, since this nobleman was so sound a
+character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her duty
+to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good
+wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe
+sincerely, and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then
+such an undertaking had other recommendations. It would occupy
+her, and she desired occupation. It would even amuse her, and if
+she could really amuse herself she perhaps might be saved.
+Lastly, it would be a service to Lord Warburton, who evidently
+pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little
+"weird" he should--being what he was; but there was no accounting
+for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one--any one at
+least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too
+small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There
+was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what
+he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were
+looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what
+pleased them only when they saw it. No theory was valid in such
+matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or more natural than
+anything else. If he had cared for HER it might seem odd he
+should care for Pansy, who was so different; but he had not cared
+for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had
+completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair
+had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might
+succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel,
+but it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was
+astonishing what happiness she could still find in the idea of
+procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however,
+that Edward Rosier had crossed their path!
+
+At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that
+path lost something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately
+as sure that Pansy thought Mr. Rosier the nicest of all the young
+men--as sure as if she had held an interview with her on the
+subject. It was very tiresome she should be so sure, when she had
+carefully abstained from informing herself; almost as tiresome as
+that poor Mr. Rosier should have taken it into his own head. He
+was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It was not the
+difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men; the
+young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of
+the type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman.
+It was true that there was no particular reason why Pansy should
+marry a statesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was
+his affair, and she would make a perfect little pearl of a
+peeress.
+
+It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Osmond had grown of a sudden
+strangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this
+difficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was
+embodied in poor Rosier could not anyhow present itself as a
+dangerous one; there were always means of levelling secondary
+obstacles. Isabel was perfectly aware that she had not taken the
+measure of Pansy's tenacity, which might prove to be
+inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her as rather
+letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under deprecation
+--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in a
+very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling,
+yes, she would cling; but it really mattered to her very little
+what she clung to. Lord Warburton would do as well as Mr. Rosier
+--especially as she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed
+this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; she had
+said she thought his conversation most interesting--he had told
+her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the rightest
+and easiest--Isabel noticed that for herself, as she also
+observed that he talked to her not in the least in a patronising
+way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but quite as
+if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which
+she followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far
+enough for attention to the music and the barytone. He was
+careful only to be kind--he was as kind as he had been to another
+fluttered young chit at Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched
+by that; she remembered how she herself had been touched, and
+said to herself that if she had been as simple as Pansy the
+impression would have been deeper still. She had not been simple
+when she refused him; that operation had been as complicated as,
+later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy, however, in
+spite of HER simplicity, really did understand, and was glad that
+Lord Warburton should talk to her, not about her partners and
+bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the
+peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions
+of Roman society. She looked at him, as she drew her needle
+through her tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she
+lowered them she gave little quiet oblique glances at his person,
+his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if she were considering him.
+Even his person, Isabel might have reminded her, was better than
+Mr. Rosier's. But Isabel contented herself at such moments with
+wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all to
+Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had
+taken of her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.
+
+It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall
+presently touch upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord
+Warburton sat there, she had been on the point of taking the
+great step of going out of the room and leaving her companions
+alone. I say the great step, because it was in this light that
+Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying as
+much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded after
+a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all
+she couldn't rise to it; something held her and made this
+impossible. It was not exactly that it would be base or
+insidious; for women as a general thing practise such manoeuvres
+with a perfectly good conscience, and Isabel was instinctively
+much more true than false to the common genius of her sex. There
+was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that she was not quite
+sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Lord
+Warburton went off to his party, of which he promised to give
+Pansy a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she
+wondered if she had prevented something which would have happened
+if she had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then
+she pronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished
+visitor should wish her to go away he would easily find means to
+let her know it. Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he
+had gone, and Isabel studiously said nothing, as she had taken a
+vow of reserve until after he should have declared himself. He
+was a little longer in coming to this than might seem to accord
+with the description he had given Isabel of his feelings. Pansy
+went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that she could not now guess
+what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her transparent little
+companion was for the moment not to be seen through.
+
+She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of
+half an hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in
+silence and then sat down; he looked at the fire like herself.
+But she now had transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in
+the chimney to Osmond's face, and she watched him while he kept
+his silence. Covert observation had become a habit with her; an
+instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say that it was
+allied to that of self-defence, had made it habitual. She wished
+as much as possible to know his thoughts, to know what he would
+say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her answer. Preparing
+answers had not been her strong point of old; she had rarely in
+this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever
+things she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned
+it in a measure from her husband's very countenance. It was the
+same face she had looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps,
+but less penetrating, on the terrace of a Florentine villa;
+except that Osmond had grown slightly stouter since his marriage.
+He still, however, might strike one as very distinguished.
+
+"Has Lord Warburton been here?" he presently asked.
+
+"Yes, he stayed half an hour."
+
+"Did he see Pansy?"
+
+"Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her."
+
+"Did he talk with her much?"
+
+"He talked almost only to her."
+
+"It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?"
+
+"I don't call it anything," said Isabel; "I've waited for you to
+give it a name."
+
+"That's a consideration you don't always show," Osmond answered
+after a moment.
+
+"I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've
+so often failed of that."
+
+Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. "Are you trying to
+quarrel with me?"
+
+"No, I'm trying to live at peace."
+
+"Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself."
+
+"What do you call it when you try to make me angry?" Isabel
+asked.
+
+"I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing
+in the world. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now."
+
+Isabel smiled. "It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be
+angry again."
+
+"That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good."
+
+"No--it's not good." She pushed away the book she had been
+reading and took up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the
+table.
+
+"That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of
+my daughter's," Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that
+was most frequent with him. "I was afraid I should encounter
+opposition--that you too would have views on the subject. I've
+sent little Rosier about his business."
+
+"You were afraid I'd plead for Mr. Rosier? Haven't you noticed
+that I've never spoken to you of him?"
+
+"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in
+these days. I know he was an old friend of yours."
+
+"Yes; he's an old friend of mine." Isabel cared little more for
+him than for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was
+true that he was an old friend and that with her husband she felt
+a desire not to extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing
+contempt for them which fortified her loyalty to them, even when,
+as in the present case, they were in themselves insignificant.
+She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for memories
+which had no other merit than that they belonged to her unmarried
+life. "But as regards Pansy," she added in a moment, "I've given
+him no encouragement."
+
+"That's fortunate," Osmond observed.
+
+"Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little."
+
+"There's no use talking of him," Osmond said. "As I tell you,
+I've turned him out."
+
+"Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even
+more of one. Mr. Rosier still has hope."
+
+"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit
+perfectly quiet to become Lady Warburton."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked with a simplicity which was
+not so affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume
+nothing, for Osmond had a way of unexpectedly turning her
+assumptions against her. The intensity with which he would like
+his daughter to become Lady Warburton had been the very basis of
+her own recent reflections. But that was for herself; she would
+recognise nothing until Osmond should have put it into words; she
+would not take for granted with him that he thought Lord
+Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was unusual
+among the Osmonds. It was Gilbert's constant intimation that for
+him nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to
+equal with the most distinguished people in the world, and that
+his daughter had only to look about her to pick out a prince. It
+cost him therefore a lapse from consistency to say explicitly
+that he yearned for Lord Warburton and that if this nobleman
+should escape his equivalent might not be found; with which
+moreover it was another of his customary implications that he was
+never inconsistent. He would have liked his wife to glide over
+the point. But strangely enough, now that she was face to face
+with him and although an hour before she had almost invented a
+scheme for pleasing him, Isabel was not accommodating, would not
+glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of her
+question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was
+terribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was
+also capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing
+sometimes an almost unaccountable indifference to small ones.
+Isabel perhaps took a small opportunity because she would not
+have availed herself of a great one.
+
+Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. "I should
+like it extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord
+Warburton has another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It
+would be pleasant for him to come into the family. It's very odd
+Pansy's admirers should all be your old friends."
+
+"It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see
+me they see Pansy. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in
+love with her."
+
+"So I think. But you're not bound to do so."
+
+"If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,"
+Isabel went on frankly. "He's an excellent man. You say, however,
+that she has only to sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit
+perfectly still. If she loses Mr. Rosier she may jump up!"
+
+Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the
+fire. "Pansy would like to be a great lady," he remarked in a
+moment with a certain tenderness of tone. "She wishes above all
+to please," he added.
+
+"To please Mr. Rosier, perhaps."
+
+"No, to please me."
+
+"Me too a little, I think," said Isabel.
+
+"Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like."
+
+"If you're sure of that, it's very well," she went on.
+
+"Meantime," said Osmond, "I should like our distinguished visitor
+to speak."
+
+"He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great
+pleasure to him to believe she could care for him."
+
+Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing.
+Then, "Why didn't you tell me that?" he asked sharply.
+
+"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the
+first chance that has offered."
+
+"Did you speak to him of Rosier?"
+
+"Oh yes, a little."
+
+"That was hardly necessary."
+
+"I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--" And Isabel
+paused.
+
+"So that what?"
+
+"So that he might act accordingly."
+
+"So that he might back out, do you mean?"
+
+"No, so that he might advance while there's yet time."
+
+"That's not the effect it seems to have had."
+
+"You should have patience," said Isabel. "You know Englishmen are
+shy."
+
+"This one's not. He was not when he made love to YOU."
+
+She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was
+disagreeable to her. "I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,"
+she returned.
+
+He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered
+the pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy's
+tapestry. "You must have a great deal of influence with him,"
+Osmond went on at last. "The moment you really wish it you can
+bring him to the point."
+
+This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness
+of his saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she
+had said to herself. "Why should I have influence?" she asked.
+"What have I ever done to put him under an obligation to me?"
+
+"You refused to marry him," said Osmond with his eyes on his
+book.
+
+"I must not presume too much on that," she replied.
+
+He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the
+fire with his hands behind him. "Well, I hold that it lies in
+your hands. I shall leave it there. With a little good-will you
+may manage it. Think that over and remember how much I count on
+you." He waited a little, to give her time to answer; but she
+answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation
+before her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was
+something in them that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she
+had been afraid to trust herself to speak. After he had gone she
+leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes; and for a long
+time, far into the night and still further, she sat in the still
+drawing-room, given up to her meditation. A servant came in to
+attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh candles and then
+go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had said; and
+she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion from
+another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this
+had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition.
+Was it true that there was something still between them that might
+be a handle to make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility,
+on his part, to approval, a desire to do what would please her?
+Isabel had hitherto not asked herself the question, because she
+had not been forced; but now that it was directly presented to
+her she saw the answer, and the answer frightened her. Yes, there
+was something--something on Lord Warburton's part. When he had
+first come to Rome she believed the link that united them to be
+completely snapped; but little by little she had been reminded
+that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,
+but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For
+herself nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she
+always thought; it was needless this feeling should change; it
+seemed to her in fact a better feeling than ever. But he? had
+he still the idea that she might be more to him than other women?
+Had he the wish to profit by the memory of the few moments of
+intimacy through which they had once passed? Isabel knew she had
+read some of the signs of such a disposition. But what were his
+hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they mingled
+with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was
+he in love with Gilbert Osmond's wife, and if so what comfort did
+he expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was
+not in love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her
+stepmother he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the
+advantage she possessed in order to make him commit himself to
+Pansy, knowing he would do so for her sake and not for the small
+creature's own--was this the service her husband had asked of her?
+This at any rate was the duty with which she found herself
+confronted--from the moment she admitted to herself that her old
+friend had still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It
+was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She
+asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were pretending
+to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another
+satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this
+refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she
+preferred to believe him in perfect good faith. But if his
+admiration for Pansy were a delusion this was scarcely better
+than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered among these ugly
+possibilities until she had completely lost her way; some of them,
+as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then she
+broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that
+her imagination surely did her little honour and that her
+husband's did him even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested
+as he need be, and she was no more to him than she need wish. She
+would rest upon this till the contrary should be proved; proved
+more effectually than by a cynical intimation of Osmond's.
+
+Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little
+peace, for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the
+foreground of thought as quickly as a place was made for them.
+What had suddenly set them into livelier motion she hardly knew,
+unless it were the strange impression she had received in the
+afternoon of her husband's being in more direct communication with
+Madame Merle than she suspected. That impression came back to her
+from time to time, and now she wondered it had never come before.
+Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an hour ago was
+a striking example of his faculty for making everything wither
+that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It
+was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the
+real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a
+presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as
+if his presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the
+fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived
+for him? This mistrust was now the clearest result of their short
+married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they
+looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a
+declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange
+opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an
+opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of
+contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no
+deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all
+the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had
+suddenly found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a
+dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading
+to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem
+to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of
+exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led
+rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and
+depression where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was
+heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the feeling of
+failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was what
+darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not
+so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much
+time and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its
+actual perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active
+condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a
+passion of thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure.
+She flattered herself that she had kept her failing faith to
+herself, however,--that no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he
+knew it, and there were times when she thought he enjoyed it. It
+had come gradually--it was not till the first year of their life
+together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed that she had
+taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it was as
+if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights
+out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she
+could still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if
+now and again it had occasionally lifted there were certain
+corners of her prospect that were impenetrably black. These
+shadows were not an emanation from her own mind: she was very
+sure of that; she had done her best to be just and temperate, to
+see only the truth. They were a part, they were a kind of
+creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They
+were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing
+--that is but of one thing, which was NOT a crime. She knew of no
+wrong he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she
+simply believed he hated her. That was all she accused him of,
+and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was not a
+crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had
+discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had
+believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first he could
+change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.
+But she was, after all, herself--she couldn't help that; and now
+there was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he
+knew her and had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she
+had no apprehension he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore
+her was not of that sort. He would if possible never give her a
+pretext, never put himself in the wrong. Isabel, scanning the
+future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he would have the better of
+her there. She would give him many pretexts, she would often put
+herself in the wrong. There were times when she almost pitied
+him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she understood
+how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced
+herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small,
+pretending there was less of her than there really was. It was
+because she had been under the extraordinary charm that he, on
+his side, had taken pains to put forth. He was not changed; he
+had not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any
+more than she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one
+saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow
+of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the whole man.
+She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free
+field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the
+whole.
+
+Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed
+away; it was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was
+that made Osmond delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to
+be when he made love to her, and as she had wished to be charmed
+it was not wonderful he had succeeded. He had succeeded because he
+had been sincere; it never occurred to her now to deny him that.
+He admired her--he had told her why: because she was the most
+imaginative woman he had known. It might very well have been true;
+for during those months she had imagined a world of things that
+had no substance. She had had a more wondrous vision of him, fed
+through charmed senses and oh such a stirred fancy!--she had not
+read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her,
+and in them she had seen the most striking of figures. That he was
+poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was what
+had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There
+had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in
+his mind, in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was
+helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a
+tenderness which was the very flower of respect. He was like a
+sceptical voyager strolling on the beach while he waited for the
+tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all this
+she had found her occasion. She would launch his boat for him; she
+would be his providence; it would be a good thing to love him. And
+she had loved him, she had so anxiously and yet so ardently given
+herself--a good deal for what she found in him, but a good deal
+also for what she brought him and what might enrich the gift. As
+she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she perceived
+in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who felt
+that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But
+for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it.
+And then her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping
+under English turf, the beneficent author of infinite woe! For
+this was the fantastic fact. At bottom her money had been a
+burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to
+transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to some more
+prepared receptacle. What would lighten her own conscience more
+effectually than to make it over to the man with the best taste in
+the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital there
+would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was
+no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested
+as in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would
+make her think better of it and rub off a certain grossness
+attaching to the good luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had
+been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand pounds;
+the delicacy had been all in Mr. Touchett's leaving them to her.
+But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring him such a portion--in
+that there would be delicacy for her as well. There would be less
+for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and if he loved
+her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the
+courage to say he was glad she was rich?
+
+Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really
+married on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely
+appreciable with her money. But she was able to answer quickly
+enough that this was only half the story. It was because a certain
+ardour took possession of her--a sense of the earnestness of his
+affection and a delight in his personal qualities. He was better
+than any one else. This supreme conviction had filled her life for
+months, and enough of it still remained to prove to her that she
+could not have done otherwise. The finest--in the sense of being
+the subtlest--manly organism she had ever known had become her
+property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her
+hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion.
+She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she knew
+that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived IN
+it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had
+been captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that
+reflection perhaps had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more
+pliant, more cultivated, more trained to admirable exercises, she
+had not encountered; and it was this exquisite instrument she had
+now to reckon with. She lost herself in infinite dismay when she
+thought of the magnitude of HIS deception. It was a wonder,
+perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more. She
+remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had
+been like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real
+drama of their life. He said to her one day that she had too many
+ideas and that she must get rid of them. He had told her that
+already, before their marriage; but then she had not noticed it:
+it had come back to her only afterwards. This time she might well
+have noticed it, because he had really meant it. The words had
+been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening
+experience she had looked into them they had then appeared
+portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to
+have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known
+she had too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed,
+many more than she had expressed to him when he had asked her to
+marry him. Yes, she HAD been hypocritical; she had liked him so
+much. She had too many ideas for herself; but that was just what
+one married for, to share them with some one else. One couldn't
+pluck them up by the roots, though of course one might suppress
+them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been this, however,
+his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She had no
+opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in
+the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had
+meant had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt,
+the way she judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this
+was what he had not known until he had found himself--with the
+door closed behind, as it were--set down face to face with it.
+She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a
+personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least it was a very
+humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that she should
+not have suspected from the first that his own had been so
+different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so
+perfectly that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured
+her that he had no superstitions, no dull limitations, no
+prejudices that had lost their freshness? Hadn't he all the
+appearance of a man living in the open air of the world,
+indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth
+and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought
+to look for them together and, whether they found them or not,
+find at least some happiness in the search? He had told her he
+loved the conventional; but there was a sense in which this seemed
+a noble declaration. In that sense, that of the love of harmony
+and order and decency and of all the stately offices of life, she
+went with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing
+ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him
+further and he had led her into the mansion of his own habitation,
+then, THEN she had seen where she really was.
+
+She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which
+she had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four
+walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the
+rest of her life. It was the house of darkness, the house of
+dumbness, the house of suffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave
+it neither light nor air; Osmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed
+to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. Of course
+it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there
+might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her
+liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so
+seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture, his
+cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his
+knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a
+bank of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not
+taken him so seriously as that. How could she--especially when
+she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought
+of himself--as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she
+had thought of him at first, and that indeed was the reason she
+had married him. But when she began to see what it implied she
+drew back; there was more in the bond than she had meant to put
+her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every one but
+some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for
+everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That
+was very well; she would have gone with him even there a long
+distance; for he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and
+shabbiness of life, opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the
+depravity, the ignorance of mankind, that she had been properly
+impressed with the infinite vulgarity of things and of the virtue
+of keeping one's self unspotted by it. But this base, if noble
+world, it appeared, was after all what one was to live for; one
+was to keep it forever in one's eye, in order not to enlighten or
+convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some recognition of
+one's own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable, but
+on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel
+about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he
+dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed
+to her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an
+exquisite independence. But indifference was really the last of his
+qualities; she had never seen any one who thought so much of
+others. For herself, avowedly, the world had always interested her
+and the study of her fellow creatures been her constant passion.
+She would have been willing, however, to renounce all her
+curiosities and sympathies for the sake of a personal life, if
+the person concerned had only been able to make her believe it
+was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and the
+thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society
+as Osmond cared for it.
+
+He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never
+really done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he
+appeared to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as
+she had tried to have hers; only it was strange that people should
+seek for justice in such different quarters. His ideal was a
+conception of high prosperity and propriety, of the aristocratic
+life, which she now saw that he deemed himself always, in essence
+at least, to have led. He had never lapsed from it for an hour; he
+would never have recovered from the shame of doing so. That again
+was very well; here too she would have agreed; but they attached
+such different ideas, such different associations and desires, to
+the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply
+the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge
+would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of
+enjoyment. But for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a
+conscious, calculated attitude. He was fond of the old, the
+consecrated, the transmitted; so was she, but she pretended to do
+what she chose with it. He had an immense esteem for tradition; he
+had told her once that the best thing in the world was to have it,
+but that if one was so unfortunate as not to have it one must
+immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he meant by this
+that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; though from what
+source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He had a
+very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,
+and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act
+in accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for
+her. Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another
+person than their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly
+superior kind; but she nevertheless assented to this intimation
+that she too must march to the stately music that floated down
+from unknown periods in her husband's past; she who of old had
+been so free of step, so desultory, so devious, so much the
+reverse of processional. There were certain things they must
+do, a certain posture they must take, certain people they must
+know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about her,
+draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of
+darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of
+her; she seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had
+resisted of course; at first very humorously, ironically,
+tenderly; then, as the situation grew more serious, eagerly,
+passionately, pleadingly. She had pleaded the cause of freedom, of
+doing as they chose, of not caring for the aspect and denomination
+of their life--the cause of other instincts and longings, of
+quite another ideal.
+
+Then it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never
+had been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said
+were answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was
+ineffably ashamed of her. What did he think of her--that she was
+base, vulgar, ignoble?  He at least knew now that she had no
+traditions! It had not been in hsis prevision of things that she
+should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were worthy of a
+radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real offence, as
+she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at
+all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small
+garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and
+water the flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an
+occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a
+proprietor already far-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid.
+On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had
+pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate
+altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be
+a blank he had flattered himself that it would be richly
+receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for him,
+to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and
+Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on
+the part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at
+least so tender. But there were certain things she could never
+take in. To begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not
+a daughter of the Puritans, but for all that she believed in such
+a thing as chastity and even as decency. It would appear that
+Osmond was far from doing anything of the sort; some of his
+traditions made her push back her skirts. Did all women have
+lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their price?
+Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands?
+When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them
+than for the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its
+freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint of her
+sister-in-law: did her husband judge only by the Countess Gemini?
+This lady very often lied, and she had practised deceptions that
+were not simply verbal. It was enough to find these facts assumed
+among Osmond's traditions--it was enough without giving them such
+a general extension. It was her scorn of his assumptions, it was
+this that made him draw himself up. He had plenty of contempt,
+and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that
+she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own
+conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.
+He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came
+to it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched
+on his discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife
+who gave one that sensation there was nothing left but to hate
+her.
+
+She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at
+first had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the
+occupation and comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because
+it was sincere; he had had the revelation that she could after all
+dispense with him. If to herself the idea was startling, if it
+presented itself at first as a kind of infidelity, a capacity for
+pollution, what infinite effect might it not be expected to have
+had upon HIM? It was very simple; he despised her; she had no
+traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor
+Isabel, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This
+was the certitude she had been living with now for a time that she
+had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before them? That
+was her constant question. What would he do--what ought SHE to do?
+When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate
+him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a
+passionate wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often,
+however, she felt afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have
+intimated, that she had deceived him at the very first. They were
+strangely married, at all events, and it was a horrible life.
+Until that morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his
+manner was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a
+special reason; he was displeased at Ralph Touchett's staying on
+in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her cousin--he had told
+her a week before it was indecent she should go to him at his
+hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid state
+had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had
+to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all
+this as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as
+perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin
+stirred her husband's rage as if Osmond had locked her into her
+room--which she was sure was what he wanted to do. It was her
+honest belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she
+certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to Ralph. She
+believed he was dying at last and that she should never see him
+again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never
+known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could
+anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown
+away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart--
+there was a livid light on everything. But Ralph's little visit
+was a lamp in the darkness; for the hour that she sat with him
+her ache for herself became somehow her ache for HIM. She felt
+to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never had a
+brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were
+dying, he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert
+was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make
+Gilbert look better to sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was
+not that they talked of him--it was not that she complained. His
+name was never uttered between them. It was simply that Ralph was
+generous and that her husband was not. There was something in
+Ralph's talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his being in
+Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more
+spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her
+feel what might have been. He was after all as intelligent as
+Osmond--quite apart from his being better. And thus it seemed to
+her an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. She
+concealed it elaborately; she was perpetually, in their talk,
+hanging out curtains and before her again--it lived before her
+again,--it had never had time to die--that morning in the garden
+at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond. She had only
+to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to feel
+the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,
+what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much
+more intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert
+had never been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from
+her at least he should never know if he was right; and this was
+what she was taking care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there
+was passion, exaltation, religion in it. Women find their religion
+sometimes in strange exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing
+a part before her cousin, had an idea that she was doing him a
+kindness. It would have been a kindness perhaps if he had been for
+a single instant a dupe. As it was, the kindness consisted mainly
+in trying to make him believe that he had once wounded her greatly
+and that the event had put him to shame, but that, as she was very
+generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge and even
+considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face. Ralph
+smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary
+form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him.
+She didn't wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy:
+that was the great thing, and it didn't matter that such knowledge
+would rather have righted him.
+
+For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the
+fire had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold;
+she was in a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the
+great ones, but her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed
+by visions, was in a state of extraordinary activity, and her
+visions might as well come to her there, where she sat up to meet
+them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of rest. As I have
+said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could be a
+better proof of it than that she should linger there half the
+night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why
+Pansy shouldn't be married as you would put a letter in the
+post-office? When the clock struck four she got up; she was
+going to bed at last, for the lamp had long since gone out and
+the candles burned down to their sockets. But even then she
+stopped again in the middle of the room and stood there gazing at
+a remembered vision--that of her husband and Madame Merle
+unconsciously and familiarly associated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Three nights after this she took Pansy to a great party, to which
+Osmond, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy
+was as ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising
+turn and had not extended to other pleasures the interdict she
+had seen placed on those of love. If she was biding her time or
+hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a prevision of
+success. Isabel thought this unlikely; it was much more likely
+that Pansy had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never
+had such a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She
+carried herself no less attentively than usual and kept no less
+anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet
+very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time.
+She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in
+a flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly admired, was never
+in want of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave
+Isabel, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had
+rendered her this service for some minutes when she became aware
+of the near presence of Edward Rosier. He stood before her; he
+had lost his affable smile and wore a look of almost military
+resolution. The change in his appearance would have made Isabel
+smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom a hard one: he
+had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of gunpowder. He
+looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify her he
+was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After he
+had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: "It's
+all pansies; it must be hers!"
+
+Isabel smiled kindly. "Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to
+hold."
+
+"May I hold it a little, Mrs. Osmond?" the poor young man asked.
+
+"No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back."
+
+"I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it
+instantly. But may I not at least have a single flower?"
+
+Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the
+bouquet. "Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for
+you."
+
+"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!" Rosier exclaimed
+with his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
+
+"Don't put it into your button-hole," she said. "Don't for the
+world!"
+
+"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me,
+but I wish to show her that I believe in her still."
+
+"It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show
+it to others. Her father has told her not to dance with you."
+
+"And is that all YOU can do for me? I expected more from you,
+Mrs. Osmond," said the young man in a tone of fine general
+reference. "You know our acquaintance goes back very far--quite
+into the days of our innocent childhood."
+
+"Don't make me out too old," Isabel patiently answered. "You come
+back to that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must
+tell you that, old friends as we are, if you had done me the
+honour to ask me to marry you I should have refused you on the
+spot."
+
+"Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a
+mere Parisian trifler!"
+
+"I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I
+mean by that, of course, is that I'm not in love with you for
+Pansy."
+
+"Very good; I see. You pity me--that's all." And Edward Rosier
+looked all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a
+revelation to him that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he
+was at least too proud to show that the deficiency struck him as
+general.
+
+Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had
+not the dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among
+other things, was against that. But she suddenly felt touched;
+her own unhappiness, after all, had something in common with his,
+and it came over her, more than before, that here, in
+recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the most affecting
+thing in the world--young love struggling with adversity. "Would
+you really be very kind to her?" she finally asked in a low tone.
+
+He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he
+held in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. "You pity
+me; but don't you pity HER a little?"
+
+"I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life."
+
+"It will depend on what you call life!" Mr. Rosier effectively
+said. "She won't enjoy being tortured."
+
+"There'll be nothing of that."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see."
+
+"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's
+coming back to me," Isabel added, "and I must beg you to go
+away."
+
+Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of
+her cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face.
+Then he walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which
+he achieved this sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was
+very much in love.
+
+Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly
+fresh and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took
+back her bouquet. Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the
+flowers; whereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were
+deeper forces at play than she had recognised. Pansy had seen
+Rosier turn away, but she said nothing to Isabel about him; she
+talked only of her partner, after he had made his bow and
+retired; of the music, the floor, the rare misfortune of having
+already torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however, she had
+discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this
+knowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with
+which she responded to the appeal of her next partner. That
+perfect amenity under acute constraint was part of a larger
+system. She was again led forth by a flushed young man, this time
+carrying her bouquet; and she had not been absent many minutes
+when Isabel saw Lord Warburton advancing through the crowd. He
+presently drew near and bade her good-evening; she had not seen
+him since the day before. He looked about him, and then "Where's
+the little maid?" he asked. It was in this manner that he had
+formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.
+
+"She's dancing," said Isabel. "You'll see her somewhere."
+
+He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. "She
+sees me, but she won't notice me," he then remarked. "Are you not
+dancing?"
+
+"As you see, I'm a wall-flower."
+
+"Won't you dance with me?"
+
+"Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid."
+
+"One needn't prevent the other--especially as she's engaged."
+
+"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself.
+She dances very hard, and you'll be the fresher."
+
+"She dances beautifully," said Lord Warburton, following her with
+his eyes. "Ah, at last," he added, "she has given me a smile." He
+stood there with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and
+as Isabel observed him it came over her, as it had done before,
+that it was strange a man of his mettle should take an interest
+in a little maid. It struck her as a great incongruity; neither
+Pansy's small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his good-nature,
+not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and constant,
+were sufficient to account for it. "I should like to dance with
+you," he went on in a moment, turning back to Isabel; "but I
+think I like even better to talk with you."
+
+"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great
+statesmen oughtn't to waltz."
+
+"Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss
+Osmond?"
+
+"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look
+simply like a piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her
+amusement. If you dance with me you'll look as if you were doing
+it for your own."
+
+"And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?"
+
+"No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands."
+
+"The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it."
+
+"Amuse yourself with talking to me," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've
+always to be defending myself. And you strike me as more than
+usually dangerous to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?"
+
+"I can't leave my place. Pansy must find me here."
+
+He was silent a little. "You're wonderfully good to her," he said
+suddenly.
+
+Isabel stared a little and smiled. "Can you imagine one's not
+being?"
+
+"No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have
+done a great deal for her."
+
+"I've taken her out with me," said Isabel, smiling still. "And
+I've seen that she has proper clothes."
+
+"Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've
+talked to her, advised her, helped her to develop."
+
+"Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it."
+
+She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a
+certain visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with
+complete hilarity. "We all try to live as near it as we can," he
+said after a moment's hesitation.
+
+Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and
+she welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord
+Warburton; she thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his
+merits warranted; there was something in his friendship that
+appeared a kind of resource in case of indefinite need; it was
+like having a large balance at the bank. She felt happier when he
+was in the room; there was something reassuring in his approach;
+the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of nature.
+Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near
+her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted.
+She was afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished
+he wouldn't. She felt that if he should come too near, as it
+were, it might be in her to flash out and bid him keep his
+distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with another rent in her
+skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the first and
+which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were too
+many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which
+were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became
+apparent that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel
+devoted herself to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a
+pin and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her
+account of her adventures. Her attention, her sympathy were
+immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to a
+sentiment with which they were in no way connected--a lively
+conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make
+love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others
+as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was what
+she thought about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were
+so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not
+taken account of his intention. But this made it none the more
+auspicious, made the situation none less impossible. The sooner
+he should get back into right relations with things the better.
+He immediately began to talk to Pansy--on whom it was certainly
+mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion.
+Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious
+aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation,
+and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his robust person as
+if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always seemed a
+little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful
+character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as
+if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together
+a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with
+whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for
+which she knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her
+presently, with a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who
+scrupulously took Osmond's view of his daughter's complete
+dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan, to
+her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own
+imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's
+extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look
+foolish. But Osmond had given her a sort of tableau of her
+position as his daughter's duenna, which consisted of gracious
+alternations of concession and contraction; and there were
+directions of his which she liked to think she obeyed to the
+letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her
+doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.
+
+After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing
+near her again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished
+she could sound his thoughts. But he had no appearance of
+confusion. "She has promised to dance with me later," he said.
+
+"I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion."
+
+At this he looked a little awkward. "No, I didn't ask her for
+that. It's a quadrille."
+
+"Ah, you're not clever!" said Isabel almost angrily. "I told her
+to keep the cotillion in case you should ask for it."
+
+"Poor little maid, fancy that!" And Lord Warburton laughed
+frankly. "Of course I will if you like."
+
+"If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!"
+
+"I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows
+on her book."
+
+Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood
+there looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt
+much inclined to ask him to remove them. She didn't do so,
+however; she only said to him, after a minute, with her own
+raised: "Please let me understand."
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my
+stepdaughter. You've not forgotten it!"
+
+"Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "he didn't mention to me that he had heard
+from you."
+
+Lord Warburton stammered a little. "I--I didn't send my letter."
+
+"Perhaps you forgot THAT."
+
+"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter
+to write, you know. But I shall send it to-night."
+
+"At three o'clock in the morning?"
+
+"I mean later, in the course of the day."
+
+"Very good. You still wish then to marry her?"
+
+"Very much indeed."
+
+"Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?" And as her companion
+stared at this enquiry Isabel added: "If she can't dance with you
+for half an hour how will she be able to dance with you for
+life?"
+
+"Ah," said Lord Warburton readily, "I'll let her dance with other
+people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--
+that you--"
+
+"That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing."
+
+"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet
+corner where we may sit down and talk."
+
+"Oh," said Isabel gravely, "you're much too considerate of me."
+
+When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself,
+thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no
+intentions. Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, but
+he assured her that he would dance with no one but herself. As,
+however, she had, in spite of the remonstrances of her hostess,
+declined other invitations on the ground that she was not dancing
+at all, it was not possible for her to make an exception in Lord
+Warburton's favour.
+
+"After all I don't care to dance," he said; "it's a barbarous
+amusement: I'd much rather talk." And he intimated that he had
+discovered exactly the corner he had been looking for--a quiet
+nook in one of the smaller rooms, where the music would come to
+them faintly and not interfere with conversation. Isabel had
+decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished to be
+satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though
+she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his
+daughter. It was with his daughter's pretendant, however; that
+would make it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room
+she came upon Edward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with
+folded arms, looking at the dance in the attitude of a young man
+without illusions. She stopped a moment and asked him if he were
+not dancing.
+
+"Certainly not, if I can't dance with HER!" he answered.
+
+"You had better go away then," said Isabel with the manner of
+good counsel.
+
+"I shall not go till she does!" And he let Lord Warburton pass
+without giving him a look.
+
+This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he
+asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had
+seen him somewhere before.
+
+"It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with
+Pansy."
+
+"Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad."
+
+"He has reason. My husband won't listen to him."
+
+"What's the matter with him?" Lord Warburton enquired. "He seems
+very harmless."
+
+"He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever."
+
+Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this
+account of Edward Rosier. "Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young
+fellow."
+
+"So he is, but my husband's very particular."
+
+"Oh, I see." And Lord Warburton paused a moment. "How much money
+has he got?" he then ventured to ask.
+
+"Some forty thousand francs a year."
+
+"Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know."
+
+"So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas."
+
+"Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he
+really an idiot, the young man?"
+
+"An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve
+years old I myself was in love with him."
+
+"He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day," Lord Warburton
+rejoined vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, "Don't
+you think we might sit here?" he asked.
+
+"Wherever you please." The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded
+by a subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out
+of it as our friends came in. "It's very kind of you to take such
+an interest in Mr. Rosier," Isabel said.
+
+"He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I
+wondered what ailed him."
+
+"You're a just man," said Isabel. "You've a kind thought even for
+a rival."
+
+Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. "A rival! Do you
+call him my rival?"
+
+"Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person."
+
+"Yes--but since he has no chance!"
+
+"I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his
+place. It shows imagination."
+
+"You like me for it?" And Lord Warburton looked at her with an
+uncertain eye. "I think you mean you're laughing at me for it."
+
+"Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to
+laugh at."
+
+"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more.
+What do you suppose one could do for him?"
+
+"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to
+imagine that yourself," Isabel said. "Pansy too would like you
+for that."
+
+"Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already."
+
+"Very much, I think."
+
+He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. "Well
+then, I don't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for
+him?"
+
+A quick blush sprang to his brow. "You told me she would have no
+wish apart from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would
+favour me--!" He paused a little and then suggested "Don't you
+see?" through his blush.
+
+"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father,
+and that it would probably take her very far."
+
+"That seems to me a very proper feeling," said Lord Warburton.
+
+"Certainly; it's a very proper feeling." Isabel remained silent
+for some moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the
+music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing
+apartments. Then at last she said: "But it hardly strikes me as
+the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for
+a wife."
+
+"I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does
+well!"
+
+"Yes, of course you must think that."
+
+"I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course."
+
+"No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry
+you, and I don't know who should know it better than you. But
+you're not in love."
+
+"Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!"
+
+Isabel shook her head. "You like to think you are while you sit
+here with me. But that's not how you strike me."
+
+"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But
+what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more
+loveable than Miss Osmond?"
+
+"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons."
+
+"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons."
+
+"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care
+a straw for them."
+
+"Ah, really in love--really in love!" Lord Warburton exclaimed,
+folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a
+little. "You must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't
+pretend I'm as I once was."
+
+"Well, if you're sure," said Isabel, "it's all right."
+
+He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking
+before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned
+quickly to his friend. "Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?"
+She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each
+other. If she wished to be satisfied she saw something that
+satisfied her; she saw in his expression the gleam of an idea
+that she was uneasy on her own account--that she was perhaps even
+in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it
+told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he
+suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her
+step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or
+of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief,
+extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between
+them than they were conscious of at the moment.
+
+"My dear Lord Warburton," she said, smiling, "you may do, so far
+as I'm concerned, whatever comes into your head."
+
+And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room,
+where, within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed
+by a pair of gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who
+met her as if they had been looking for her. While she talked
+with them she found herself regretting she had moved; it looked a
+little like running away--all the more as Lord Warburton didn't
+follow her. She was glad of this, however, and at any rate she
+was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing
+back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still planted in
+the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. "You did right
+not to go away. I've some comfort for you."
+
+"I need it," the young man softly wailed, "when I see you so
+awfully thick with him!"
+
+"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it
+won't be much, but what I can I'll do."
+
+He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. "What has suddenly
+brought you round?"
+
+"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!" she
+answered, smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took
+leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two
+ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for
+their carriage. Just as it approached Lord Warburton came out of
+the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a
+moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and
+she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue.
+Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her
+finger, murmured gently: "Don't forget to send your letter to her
+father!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own
+phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however,
+and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been
+to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living
+in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might
+attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not
+the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The
+Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he
+bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was,
+like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency
+in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very
+dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have
+cared to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off,
+his dulness needed more explanation than was convenient. The
+Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant
+grievance of her life that she had not an habitation there. She
+was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that
+city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were other
+members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at
+all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or
+rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had
+much more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons
+why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow
+of Saint Peter's. They are reasons, however, that do not closely
+concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that
+Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence was simply
+a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently
+needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She
+was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in
+Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At
+Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one had
+heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly
+increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life
+than herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was
+intellectual enough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and
+the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the
+church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest.
+She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly
+that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it
+for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the
+hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there
+during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she had
+not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't
+want her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have
+gone all the same, for after all she didn't care two straws about
+Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn't let her, and the money
+question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the
+Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not
+been blinded by envy to Isabel's personal merits. She had always
+observed that she got on better with clever women than with silly
+ones like herself; the silly ones could never understand her
+wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really clever ones--always
+understood her silliness. It appeared to her that, different as
+they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she had
+somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet
+upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they
+should both know it when once they had really touched it. And
+then she lived, with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a
+pleasant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Isabel would
+"look down" on her, and she as constantly saw this operation
+postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like
+fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared
+much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her
+sister-in-law regarded her with none but level glances and
+expressed for the poor Countess as little contempt as admiration.
+In reality Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her as
+of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not
+indifferent to her husband's sister, however; she was rather a
+little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her very
+extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she
+was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a
+remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle when you
+shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess's spiritual
+principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her.
+She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons.
+Isabel would have invited her again (there was no question of
+inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not
+scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species
+--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said
+at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment
+that she had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted
+wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course
+another obstacle to the Countess's going again to Rome; but at
+the period with which this history has now to deal she was in
+receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo
+Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote
+to his sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether
+or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it
+I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any terms.
+She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her
+former visit had been that her brother had found his match.
+Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to
+have had serious thoughts--if any of the Countess's thoughts were
+serious--of putting her on her guard. But she had let that pass,
+and after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as
+ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Countess was
+not very exact at measurements, but it seemed to her that if
+Isabel should draw herself up she would be the taller spirit of
+the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether Isabel had
+drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see
+Osmond overtopped.
+
+Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought
+her the card of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription
+"Henrietta C. Stackpole." The Countess pressed her finger-tips to
+her forehead; she didn't remember to have known any such
+Henrietta as that. The servant then remarked that the lady had
+requested him to say that if the Countess should not recognise
+her name she would know her well enough on seeing her. By the
+time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded
+herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett's;
+the only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the
+only modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess.
+She recognised Miss Stackpole immediately, the more so that Miss
+Stackpole seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was
+thoroughly good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on
+by a person of that sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss
+Stackpole had come on account of her mother--whether she had
+heard of the American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like
+Isabel's friend; the Countess could see at a glance that this
+lady was much more contemporary; and she received an impression
+of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in distant
+countries--in the character (the professional character) of
+literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf
+thrown over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight
+black velvet (oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set
+upon a multitude of glossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and
+vaguely, with the accent of her "Creole" ancestors, as she always
+confessed; she sighed a great deal and was not at all
+enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was always
+closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something brisk
+and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost
+conscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her
+ever vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its
+address. The Countess could not but feel that the correspondent
+of the Interviewer was much more in the movement than the
+American Corinne. She explained that she had called on the
+Countess because she was the only person she knew in Florence,
+and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to see
+something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs.
+Touchett, but Mrs. Touchett was in America, and even if she had
+been in Florence Henrietta would not have put herself out for
+her, since Mrs. Touchett was not one of her admirations.
+
+"Do you mean by that that I am?" the Countess graciously asked.
+
+"Well, I like you better than I do her," said Miss Stackpole. "I
+seem to remember that when I saw you before you were very
+interesting. I don't know whether it was an accident or whether
+it's your usual style. At any rate I was a good deal struck with
+what you said. I made use of it afterwards in print."
+
+"Dear me!" cried the Countess, staring and half-alarmed; "I had
+no idea I ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at
+the time."
+
+"It was about the position of woman in this city," Miss Stackpole
+remarked. "You threw a good deal of light upon it."
+
+"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you
+mean? And you wrote it down and published it?" the Countess went
+on. "Ah, do let me see it!"
+
+"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like," Henrietta
+said. "I didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high
+rank. And then I quoted your views."
+
+The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her
+clasped hands. "Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention
+my name? I should have rather liked to see my name in the papers.
+I forget what my views were; I have so many! But I'm not ashamed
+of them. I'm not at all like my brother--I suppose you know my
+brother? He thinks it a kind of scandal to be put in the papers;
+if you were to quote him he'd never forgive you."
+
+"He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him," said Miss
+Stackpole with bland dryness. "That's another reason," she added,
+"why I wanted to come to see you. You know Mr. Osmond married my
+dearest friend."
+
+"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think
+what I knew about you."
+
+"I'm quite willing to be known by that," Henrietta declared. "But
+that isn't what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to
+break up my relations with Isabel."
+
+"Don't permit it," said the Countess.
+
+"That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome."
+
+"So am I!" the Countess cried. "We'll go together."
+
+"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll
+mention you by name as my companion."
+
+The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa
+beside her visitor. "Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband
+won't like it, but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know
+how to read."
+
+Henrietta's large eyes became immense. "Doesn't know how to read?
+May I put that into my letter?"
+
+"Into your letter?"
+
+"In the Interviewer. That's my paper."
+
+"Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with
+Isabel?"
+
+Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her
+hostess. "She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and
+she answered that she would engage a room for me at a pension.
+She gave no reason."
+
+The Countess listened with extreme interest. "The reason's Osmond,"
+she pregnantly remarked.
+
+"Isabel ought to make a stand," said Miss Stackpole. "I'm afraid
+she has changed a great deal. I told her she would."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why
+doesn't my brother like you?" the Countess ingenuously added.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to
+like me; I don't want every one to like me; I should think less
+of myself if some people did. A journalist can't hope to do much
+good unless he gets a good deal hated; that's the way he knows
+how his work goes on. And it's just the same for a lady. But I
+didn't expect it of Isabel."
+
+"Do you mean that she hates you?" the Countess enquired.
+
+"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for."
+
+"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!" the Countess exclaimed.
+
+"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see
+there's a difference. If you know anything," Miss Stackpole went
+on, "I should like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the
+line I shall take."
+
+The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug.
+"I know very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He
+doesn't like me any better than he appears to like you."
+
+"Yet you're not a lady correspondent," said Henrietta pensively.
+
+"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--
+I'm to stay in the house!" And the Countess smiled almost
+fiercely; her exultation, for the moment, took little account of
+Miss Stackpole's disappointment.
+
+This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. "I shouldn't have
+gone if she HAD asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm
+glad I hadn't to make up my mind. It would have been a very
+difficult question. I shouldn't have liked to turn away from her,
+and yet I shouldn't have been happy under her roof. A pension
+will suit me very well. But that's not all."
+
+"Rome's very good just now," said the Countess; "there are all
+sorts of brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?"
+
+"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very
+brilliant?" Henrietta enquired.
+
+"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur.
+He's making love to Isabel."
+
+"Making love to her?"
+
+"So I'm told; I don't know the details," said the Countess lightly.
+"But Isabel's pretty safe."
+
+Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said
+nothing. "When do you go to Rome?" she enquired abruptly.
+
+"Not for a week, I'm afraid."
+
+"I shall go to-morrow," Henrietta said. "I think I had better not
+wait."
+
+"Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told
+Isabel receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall
+call on you at your pension." Henrietta sat still--she was lost
+in thought; and suddenly the Countess cried: "Ah, but if you
+don't go with me you can't describe our journey!"
+
+Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was
+thinking of something else and presently expressed it. "I'm not
+sure that I understand you about Lord Warburton."
+
+"Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all."
+
+"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?"
+Henrietta enquired with unprecedented distinctness.
+
+The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: "It's
+certain all the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!" she
+added.
+
+"That idea would be enough to prevent me," said Miss Stackpole.
+"I should want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's.
+Do you mean that Isabel's guilty--guilty--?" And she paused a
+little, choosing her expression.
+
+"Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean
+that Osmond's very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear,
+is a great deal at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised."
+
+"No, I'm just anxious," Henrietta said.
+
+"Ah, you're not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have
+more confidence. I'll tell you," the Countess added quickly: "if
+it will be a comfort to you I engage to draw him off."
+
+Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity
+of her gaze. "You don't understand me," she said after a while.
+"I haven't the idea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for
+Isabel--in that way. I'm only afraid she's unhappy--that's what I
+want to get at."
+
+The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient
+and sarcastic. "That may very well be; for my part I should like
+to know whether Osmond is." Miss Stackpole had begun a little to
+bore her.
+
+"If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it,"
+Henrietta went on.
+
+"You'll see; she'll tell you," said the Countess.
+
+"Ah, she may NOT tell me--that's what I'm afraid of!"
+
+"Well, if Osmond isn't amusing himself--in his own old way--I
+flatter myself I shall discover it," the Countess rejoined.
+
+"I don't care for that," said Henrietta.
+
+"I do immensely! If Isabel's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but
+I can't help it. I might tell her something that would make her
+worse, but I can't tell her anything that would console her. What
+did she go and marry him for? If she had listened to me she'd
+have got rid of him. I'll forgive her, however, if I find she has
+made things hot for him! If she has simply allowed him to trample
+upon her I don't know that I shall even pity her. But I don't
+think that's very likely. I count upon finding that if she's
+miserable she has at least made HIM so."
+
+Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful
+expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr.
+Osmond unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of
+a flight of fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in
+the Countess, whose mind moved in a narrower circle than she had
+imagined, though with a capacity for coarseness even there. "It
+will be better if they love each other," she said for
+edification.
+
+"They can't. He can't love any one."
+
+"I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for
+Isabel. I shall positively start to-morrow."
+
+"Isabel certainly has devotees," said the Countess, smiling very
+vividly. "I declare I don't pity her."
+
+"It may be I can't assist her," Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it
+were well not to have illusions.
+
+"You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I
+believe that's what you came from America for," the Countess
+suddenly added.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to look after her," Henrietta said serenely.
+
+Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and
+an eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had
+come. "Ah, that's very pretty c'est bien gentil! Isn't it what
+they call friendship?"
+
+"I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come."
+
+"She's very happy--she's very fortunate," the Countess went on.
+"She has others besides." And then she broke out passionately.
+"She's more fortunate than I! I'm as unhappy as she--I've a very
+bad husband; he's a great deal worse than Osmond. And I've no
+friends. I thought I had, but they're gone. No one, man or woman,
+would do for me what you've done for her."
+
+Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion.
+She gazed at her companion a moment, and then: "Look here,
+Countess, I'll do anything for you that you like. I'll wait over
+and travel with you."
+
+"Never mind," the Countess answered with a quick change of tone:
+"only describe me in the newspaper!"
+
+Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her
+understand that she could give no fictitious representation of
+her journey to Rome. Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious
+reporter. On quitting her she took the way to the Lung' Arno,
+the sunny quay beside the yellow river where the bright-faced
+inns familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had learned her
+way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very
+quick in such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great
+decision of step out of the little square which forms the
+approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the
+left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of
+the hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she
+drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil
+and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our
+privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may
+read the brief query: "Could I see you this evening for a few
+moments on a very important matter?" Henrietta added that she
+should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with this little
+document she approached the porter, who now had taken up his
+station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Goodwood were at home.
+The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out
+about twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her
+card and begged it might be handed him on his return. She left
+the inn and pursued her course along the quay to the severe
+portico of the Uffizi, through which she presently reached the
+entrance of the famous gallery of paintings. Making her way in,
+she ascended the high staircase which leads to the upper
+chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated
+with antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments,
+presented an empty vista in which the bright winter light
+twinkled upon the marble floor. The gallery is very cold and
+during the midwinter weeks but scantily visited. Miss Stackpole
+may appear more ardent in her quest of artistic beauty than she
+has hitherto struck us as being, but she had after all her
+preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the little
+Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the
+sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her
+hands to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Henrietta had
+a special devotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the
+most beautiful picture in the world. On her way, at present, from
+New York to Rome, she was spending but three days in Florence,
+and yet reminded herself that they must not elapse without her
+paying another visit to her favourite work of art. She had a
+great sense of beauty in all ways, and it involved a good many
+intellectual obligations. She was about to turn into the Tribune
+when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a little
+exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
+
+"I've just been at your hotel," she said. "I left a card for
+you."
+
+"I'm very much honoured," Caspar Goodwood answered as if he
+really meant it.
+
+"It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and
+I know you don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about
+something."
+
+He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. "I shall be very
+glad to hear what you wish to say."
+
+"You don't like to talk with me," said Henrietta. "But I don't
+care for that; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to
+ask you to come and see me; but since I've met you here this will
+do as well."
+
+"I was just going away," Goodwood stated; "but of course I'll
+stop." He was civil, but not enthusiastic.
+
+Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she
+was so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to
+her on any terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had
+seen all the pictures.
+
+"All I want to. I've been here an hour."
+
+"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio," said Henrietta. "I came
+up on purpose to have a look at it." She went into the Tribune
+and he slowly accompanied her.
+
+"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't
+remember pictures--especially that sort." She had pointed out her
+favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she
+wished to talk with him.
+
+"No," said Henrietta, "it's about something less harmonious!"
+They had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of
+treasures, to themselves; there was only a custode hovering
+about the Medicean Venus. "I want you to do me a favour," Miss
+Stackpole went on.
+
+Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no
+embarrassment at the sense of not looking eager. His face was
+that of a much older man than our earlier friend. "I'm sure it's
+something I shan't like," he said rather loudly.
+
+"No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no
+favour."
+
+"Well, let's hear it," he went on in the tone of a man quite
+conscious of his patience.
+
+"You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a
+favour. Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me
+I'd gladly do you one." Her soft, exact tone, in which there was
+no attempt at effect, had an extreme sincerity; and her
+companion, though he presented rather a hard surface, couldn't help
+being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely showed it,
+however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked away,
+nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly;
+he seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued
+therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. "I
+may say now, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I've ever
+annoyed you (and I think sometimes I have) it's because I knew I
+was willing to suffer annoyance for you. I've troubled you--
+doubtless. But Is'd TAKE trouble for you."
+
+Goodwood hesitated. "You're taking trouble now."
+
+"Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it's better on
+the whole that you should go to Rome."
+
+"I thought you were going to say that!" he answered rather
+artlessly.
+
+"You HAVE considered it then?"
+
+"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it.
+Otherwise I shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I
+stayed in Paris two months for. I was thinking it over."
+
+"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best
+because you were so much attracted."
+
+"Best for whom, do you mean?" Goodwood demanded.
+
+"Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next."
+
+"Oh, it won't do HER any good! I don't flatter myself that."
+
+"Won't it do her some harm?--that's the question."
+
+"I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs.
+Osmond. But if you want to know, I do want to see her myself."
+
+"Yes, and that's why you go."
+
+"Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?"
+
+"How will it help you?--that's what I want to know," said Miss
+Stackpole.
+
+"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking
+about in Paris."
+
+"It will make you more discontented."
+
+"Why do you say 'more' so?" Goodwood asked rather sternly. "How
+do you know I'm discontented?"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta, hesitating a little, "you seem never to
+have cared for another."
+
+"How do you know what I care for?" he cried with a big blush.
+"Just now I care to go to Rome."
+
+Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous
+expression. "Well," she observed at last, "I only wanted to tell
+you what I think; I had it on my mind. Of course you think it's
+none of my business. But nothing is any one's business, on that
+principle."
+
+"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your
+interest," said Caspar Goodwood. "I shall go to Rome and I shan't
+hurt Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that's the
+real issue."
+
+"Is she in need of help?" he asked slowly, with a penetrating
+look.
+
+"Most women always are," said Henrietta, with conscientious
+evasiveness and generalising less hopefully than usual. "If you
+go to Rome," she added, "I hope you'll be a true friend--snot a
+selfish one!" And she turned off and began to look at the
+pictures.
+
+Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she
+wandered round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her.
+"You've heard something about her here," he then resumed. "I
+should like to know what you've heard."
+
+Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this
+occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she
+decided, after thinking some minutes, to make no superficial
+exception. "Yes, I've heard," she answered; "but as I don't want
+you to go to Rome I won't tell you."
+
+"Just as you please. I shall see for myself," he said. Then
+inconsistently, for him, "You've heard she's unhappy!" he added.
+
+"Oh, you won't see that!" Henrietta exclaimed.
+
+"I hope not. When do you start?"
+
+"To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?"
+
+Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome
+in Miss Stackpole's company. His indifference to this advantage
+was not of the same character as Gilbert Osmond's, but it had at
+this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a tribute to
+Miss Stackpole's virtues than a reference to her faults. He
+thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in
+theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady
+correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of
+things in a progressive country, and though he never read their
+letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social
+prosperity. But it was this very eminence of their position that
+made him wish Miss Stackpole didn't take so much for granted. She
+took for granted that he was always ready for some allusion to
+Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when they met in Paris, six weeks
+after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption
+with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to
+allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was NOT always thinking of her; he was
+perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least
+colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly
+flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He
+wished she didn't care so much; he even wished, though it might
+seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. In
+spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections--which
+show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour was from
+Gilbert Osmond's. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would
+have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the European
+railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee to
+knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently
+found one's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's
+wish to have the window open; and if they were worse at night
+even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and dream of
+an American saloon-car. But he couldn't take a night-train when
+Miss Stackpole was starting in the morning; it struck him that
+this would be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he
+wait until after she had gone unless he should wait longer than
+he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day. She
+worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a
+European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of
+irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his
+duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions
+about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked
+extremely grave for some moments and then said, wholly without
+the flourish of gallantry but in a tone of extreme distinctness,
+"Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll go too, as I may be of
+assistance to you."
+
+"Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!" Henrietta returned
+imperturbably.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to
+be displeased by the continuance of Ralph's visit to Rome. That
+knowledge was very present to her as she went to her cousin's
+hotel the day after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a
+tangible proof of his sincerity; and at this moment, as at
+others, she had a sufficient perception of the sources of
+Osmond's opposition. He wished her to have no freedom of mind,
+and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of freedom.
+It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, that it
+was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that
+she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband's
+aversion to it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself,
+discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in direct
+opposition to his wishes; he was her appointed and inscribed
+master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous blankness
+at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however;
+constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary
+decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them
+filled her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving
+herself away she had lost sight of this contingency in the
+perfect belief that her husband's intentions were as generous as
+her own. She seemed to see, none the less, the rapid approach
+of the day when she should have to take back something she had
+solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous;
+she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do
+nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden
+upon her to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to
+call upon Ralph; but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very
+soon depart this prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph
+depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could
+perfectly understand her husband's wish for the event; she
+didn't, to be just, see how he COULD like her to be with her
+cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond's sore,
+mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively
+interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have
+to decide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart
+beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were
+moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture, she found
+herself wishing Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of
+no use that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she
+called herself a feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she
+loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed preferable to
+repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred act--of her
+life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous. To break
+with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open
+acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission
+that their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there
+could be no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no
+formal readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that
+one thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing
+else would do; there was no conceivable substitute for that
+success. For the moment, Isabel went to the Hotel de Paris as
+often as she thought well; the measure of propriety was in the
+canon of taste, and there couldn't have been a better proof that
+morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation.
+Isabel's application of that measure had been particularly free
+to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't
+leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of
+him. This indeed was Gilbert's business as well as her own.
+
+She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. "I want you to
+answer me a question. It's about Lord Warburton."
+
+"I think I guess your question," Ralph answered from his
+arm-chair, out of which his thin legs protruded at greater length
+than ever.
+
+"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it."
+
+"Oh, I don't say I can do that."
+
+"You're intimate with him," she said; "you've a great deal of
+observation of him."
+
+"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!"
+
+"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature."
+
+"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar," said
+Ralph with an air of private amusement.
+
+"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?"
+
+"Very much, I think. I can make that out."
+
+"Ah!" said Isabel with a certain dryness.
+
+Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with
+mystification. "You say that as if you were disappointed."
+
+Isabel got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them
+thoughtfully. "It's after all no business of mine."
+
+"You're very philosophic," said her cousin. And then in a moment:
+"May I enquire what you're talking about?"
+
+Isabel stared. "I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he
+wants, of all things in the world, to marry Pansy. I've told you
+that before, without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk
+one this morning, I think. Is it your belief that he really cares
+for her?"
+
+"Ah, for Pansy, no!" cried Ralph very positively.
+
+"But you said just now he did."
+
+Ralph waited a moment. "That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Isabel shook her head gravely. "That's nonsense, you know."
+
+"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine."
+
+"That would be very tiresome." She spoke, as she flattered
+herself, with much subtlety.
+
+"I ought to tell you indeed," Ralph went on, "that to me he has
+denied it."
+
+"It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also
+told you that he's in love with Pansy?"
+
+"He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me
+know, of course, that he thinks she would do very well at
+Lockleigh."
+
+"Does he really think it?"
+
+"Ah, what Warburton really thinks--!" said Ralph.
+
+Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose
+gloves on which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however,
+she looked up, and then, "Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!" she
+cried abruptly and passionately.
+
+It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and
+the words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long
+murmur of relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that
+at last the gulf between them had been bridged. It was this that
+made him exclaim in a moment: "How unhappy you must be!"
+
+He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession,
+and the first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard
+him. "When I talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense," she
+said with a quick smile. "The idea of my troubling you with my
+domestic embarrassments! The matter's very simple; Lord Warburton
+must get on by himself. I can't undertake to see him through."
+
+"He ought to succeed easily," said Ralph.
+
+Isabel debated. "Yes--but he has not always succeeded."
+
+"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is
+Miss Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?"
+
+"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all
+he'll let the matter drop."
+
+"He'll do nothing dishonourable," said Ralph.
+
+"I'm very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for
+him to leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person,
+and it's cruel to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to
+give him up."
+
+"Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But
+Warburton isn't obliged to mind that."
+
+"No, cruel to her," said Isabel. "She would be very unhappy if
+she were to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr.
+Rosier. That idea seems to amuse you; of course you're not in
+love with him. He has the merit--for Pansy--of being in love with
+Pansy. She can see at a glance that Lord Warburton isn't."
+
+"He'd be very good to her," said Ralph.
+
+"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has
+not said a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her
+good-bye to-morrow with perfect propriety."
+
+"How would your husband like that?"
+
+"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must
+obtain satisfaction himself."
+
+"Has he commissioned you to obtain it?" Ralph ventured to ask.
+
+"It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton's--an
+older friend, that is, than Gilbert--I should take an interest in
+his intentions."
+
+"Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?"
+
+Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. "Let me understand. Are you
+pleading his cause?"
+
+"Not in the least. I'm very glad he shouldn't become your
+stepdaughter's husband. It makes such a very queer relation to
+you!" said Ralph, smiling. "But I'm rather nervous lest your
+husband should think you haven't pushed him enough."
+
+Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. "He knows me
+well enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no
+intention of pushing, I presume. I'm not afraid I shall not be
+able to justify myself!" she said lightly.
+
+Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again,
+to Ralph's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of
+her natural face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had
+an almost savage desire to hear her complain of her husband--hear
+her say that she should be held accountable for Lord Warburton's
+defection. Ralph was certain that this was her situation; he knew
+by instinct, in advance, the form that in such an event Osmond's
+displeasure would take. It could only take the meanest and
+cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of it--to let her
+see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It little
+mattered that Isabel would know much better; it was for his own
+satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was
+not deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond;
+he felt cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so.
+But it scarcely mattered, for be only failed. What had she come
+for then, and why did she seem almost to offer him a chance to
+violate their tacit convention? Why did she ask him his advice if
+she gave him no liberty to answer her? How could they talk of her
+domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her humorously to
+designate them, if the principal factor was not to be mentioned?
+These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
+trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he
+was bound to consider. "You'll be decidedly at variance, all the
+same," he said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking
+as if she scarce understood, "You'll find yourselves thinking
+very differently," he continued.
+
+"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!" She took
+up her parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might
+say. "It's a matter we can hardly quarrel about, however," she
+added; "for almost all the interest is on his side. That's very
+natural. Pansy's after all his daughter--not mine." And she put
+out her hand to wish him goodbye.
+
+Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him
+without his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed
+too great an opportunity to lose. "Do you know what his interest
+will make him say?" he asked as he took her hand. She shook her
+head, rather dryly--not discouragingly--and he went on. "It will
+make him say that your want of zeal is owing to jealousy." He
+stopped a moment; her face made him afraid.
+
+"To jealousy?"
+
+"To jealousy of his daughter."
+
+She blushed red and threw back her head. "You're not kind," she
+said in a voice that he had never heard on her lips.
+
+"Be frank with me and you'll see," he answered.
+
+But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own,
+which he tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room.
+She made up her mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion
+on the same day, going to the girl's room before dinner. Pansy
+was already dressed; she was always in advance of the time: it
+seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and the graceful
+stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she was
+seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had
+blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in
+accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought
+up sand which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that
+the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in
+Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and
+Pansy's virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark,
+heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst
+of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with
+quick deference, to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever
+struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task--the
+only thing was to perform it as simply as possible. She felt
+bitter and angry, but she warned herself against betraying this
+heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at least too
+stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. Put Pansy seemed to have
+guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she
+had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer
+to the fire and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled
+down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her
+clasped hands on her stepmother's knees. What Isabel wished to do
+was to hear from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with
+Lord Warburton; but if she desired the assurance she felt herself
+by no means at liberty to provoke it. The girl's father would
+have qualified this as rank treachery; and indeed Isabel knew
+that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a disposition
+to encourage Lord Warburton her own duty was to hold her tongue.
+It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest;
+Pansy's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than
+Isabel had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry
+something of the effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in
+the vague firelight, with her pretty dress dimly shining, her
+hands folded half in appeal and half in submission, her soft
+eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of the situation,
+she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked out for
+sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When
+Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what
+might have been going on in relation to her getting married, but
+that her silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only
+been the desire to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward,
+raised her face nearer and nearer, and with a little murmur which
+evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she had greatly
+wished her to speak and that she begged her to advise her now.
+
+"It's difficult for me to advise you," Isabel returned. "I don't
+know how I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must
+get his advice and, above all, you must act on it."
+
+At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. "I
+think I should like your advice better than papa's," she
+presently remarked.
+
+"That's not as it should be," said Isabel coldly. "I love you
+very much, but your father loves you better."
+
+"It isn't because you love me--it's because you're a lady," Pansy
+answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. "A
+lady can advise a young girl better than a man."
+
+"I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's
+wishes."
+
+"Ah yes," said the child eagerly, "I must do that."
+
+"But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not
+for your own sake, it's for mine," Isabel went on. "If I try to
+learn from you what you expect, what you desire, it's only that I
+may act accordingly."
+
+Pansy stared, and then very quickly, "Will you do everything I
+want?" she asked.
+
+"Before I say yes I must know what such things are."
+
+Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life
+was to marry Mr. Rosier. He had asked her and she had told him
+she would do so if her papa would allow it. Now her papa
+wouldn't allow it.
+
+"Very well then, it's impossible," Isabel pronounced.
+
+"Yes, it's impossible," said Pansy without a sigh and with the
+same extreme attention in her clear little face.
+
+"You must think of something else then," Isabel went on; but
+Pansy, sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat
+without the least success.
+
+"You think of those who think of you," she said with a faint
+smile. "I know Mr. Rosier thinks of me."
+
+"He ought not to," said Isabel loftily. "Your father has
+expressly requested he shouldn't."
+
+"He can't help it, because he knows I think of HIM."
+
+"You shouldn't think of him. There's some excuse for him,
+perhaps; but there's none for you."
+
+"I wish you would try to find one," the girl exclaimed as if she
+were praying to the Madonna.
+
+"I should be very sorry to attempt it," said the Madonna with
+unusual frigidity. "If you knew some one else was thinking of
+you, would you think of him?"
+
+"No one can think of me as Mr. Rosier does; no one has the
+right."
+
+"Ah, but I don't admit Mr. Rosier's right!" Isabel hypocritically
+cried.
+
+Pansy only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Isabel,
+taking advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched
+consequences of disobeying her father. At this Pansy stopped her
+with the assurance that she would never disobey him, would never
+marry without his consent. And she announced, in the serenest,
+simplest tone, that, though she might never marry Mr. Rosier, she
+would never cease to think of him. She appeared to have accepted
+the idea of eternal singleness; but Isabel of course was free to
+reflect that she had no conception of its meaning. She was
+perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This
+might seem an important step toward taking another, but for
+Pansy, evidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt
+no bitterness toward her father; there was no bitterness in her
+heart; there was only the sweetness of fidelity to Edward Rosier,
+and a strange, exquisite intimation that she could prove it
+better by remaining single than even by marrying him.
+
+"Your father would like you to make a better marriage," said
+Isabel. "Mr. Rosier's fortune is not at all large."
+
+"How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have
+myself so little money; why should I look for a fortune?"
+
+"Your having so little is a reason for looking for more." With
+which Isabel was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt
+as if her face were hideously insincere. It was what she was
+doing for Osmond; it was what one had to do for Osmond! Pansy's
+solemn eyes, fixed on her own, almost embarrassed her; she was
+ashamed to think she had made so light of the girl's preference.
+
+"What should you like me to do?" her companion softly demanded.
+
+The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in
+timorous vagueness. "To remember all the pleasure it's in your
+power to give your father."
+
+"To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?"
+
+For a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then
+she heard herself utter it in the stillness that Pansy's
+attention seemed to make. "Yes--to marry some one else."
+
+The child's eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed she was
+doubting her sincerity, and the impression took force from her
+slowly getting up from her cushion. She stood there a moment with
+her small hands unclasped and then quavered out: "Well, I hope no
+one will ask me!"
+
+"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been
+ready to ask you."
+
+"I don't think he can have been ready," said Pansy.
+
+"It would appear so if he had been sure he'd succeed."
+
+"If he had been sure? Then he wasn't ready!"
+
+Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a
+moment looking into the fire. "Lord Warburton has shown you great
+attention," she resumed; "of course you know it's of him I
+speak." She found herself, against her expectation, almost placed
+in the position of justifying herself; which led her to introduce
+this nobleman more crudely than she had intended.
+
+"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if
+you mean that he'll propose for me I think you're mistaken."
+
+"Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely."
+
+Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. "Lord Warburton
+won't propose simply to please papa."
+
+"Your father would like you to encourage him," Isabel went on
+mechanically.
+
+"How can I encourage him?"
+
+"I don't know. Your father must tell you that."
+
+Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as
+if she were in possession of a bright assurance. "There's no
+danger--no danger!" she declared at last.
+
+There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity
+in her believing it, which conduced to Isabel's awkwardness. She
+felt accused of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To
+repair her self-respect she was on the point of saying that Lord
+Warburton had let her know that there was a danger. But she
+didn't; she only said--in her embarrassment rather wide of the
+mark--that he surely had been most kind, most friendly.
+
+"Yes, he has been very kind," Pansy answered. "That's what I like
+him for."
+
+"Why then is the difficulty so great?"
+
+"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't want--what did
+you say I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don't want to
+marry, and he wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble
+me. That's the meaning of his kindness. It's as if he said to me:
+'I like you very much, but if it doesn't please you I'll never
+say it again.' I think that's very kind, very noble," Pansy went
+on with deepening positiveness. "That is all we've said to each
+other. And he doesn't care for me either. Ah no, there's no
+danger."
+
+Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of
+which this submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid
+of Pansy's wisdom--began almost to retreat before it. "You must
+tell your father that," she remarked reservedly.
+
+"I think I'd rather not," Pansy unreservedly answered.
+
+"You oughtn't to let him have false hopes."
+
+"Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long
+as he believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind
+you say, papa won't propose any one else. And that will be an
+advantage for me," said the child very lucidly.
+
+There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her
+companion draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy
+responsibility. Pansy had a sufficient illumination of her own,
+and Isabel felt that she herself just now had no light to spare
+from her small stock. Nevertheless it still clung to her that she
+must be loyal to Osmond, that she was on her honour in dealing
+with his daughter. Under the influence of this sentiment she
+threw out another suggestion before she retired--a suggestion
+with which it seemed to her that she should have done her utmost.
+
+"Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to
+marry a nobleman."
+
+Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain
+for Isabel to pass. "I think Mr. Rosier looks like one!" she
+remarked very gravely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond's drawing-room for
+several days, and Isabel couldn't fail to observe that her
+husband said nothing to her about having received a letter from
+him. She couldn't fail to observe, either, that Osmond was in a
+state of expectancy and that, though it was not agreeable to him
+to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend kept him
+waiting quite too long. At the end of four days he alluded to his
+absence.
+
+"What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one
+like a tradesman with a bill?"
+
+"I know nothing about him," Isabel said. "I saw him last Friday
+at the German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to
+you."
+
+"He has never written to me."
+
+"So I supposed, from your not having told me."
+
+"He's an odd fish," said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel's
+making no rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his
+lordship five days to indite a letter. "Does he form his words
+with such difficulty?"
+
+"I don't know," Isabel was reduced to replying. "I've never had a
+letter from him."
+
+"Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in
+intimate correspondence."
+
+She answered that this had not been the case, and let the
+conversation drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the
+drawing-room late in the afternoon, her husband took it up again.
+
+"When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what
+did you say to him?" he asked.
+
+She just faltered. "I think I told him not to forget it.
+
+"Did you believe there was a danger of that?"
+
+"As you say, he's an odd fish."
+
+"Apparently he has forgotten it," said Osmond. "Be so good as to
+remind him."
+
+"Should you like me to write to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I've no objection whatever."
+
+"You expect too much of me."
+
+"Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you."
+
+"I'm afraid I shall disappoint you," said Isabel.
+
+"My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment."
+
+"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed
+myself! If you really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must
+lay them yourself."
+
+For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said:
+"That won't be easy, with you working against me."
+
+Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a
+way of looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were
+thinking of her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have
+a wonderfully cruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a
+disagreeable necessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time
+as a presence. That effect had never been so marked as now. "I
+think you accuse me of something very base," she returned.
+
+"I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all
+come forward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know
+that it's base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she
+may do. I've no doubt you've the finest ideas about it."
+
+"I told you I would do what I could," she went on.
+
+"Yes, that gained you time."
+
+It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once
+thought him beautiful. "How much you must want to make sure of
+him!" she exclaimed in a moment.
+
+She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her
+words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They
+made a comparison between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact
+that she had once held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt
+herself rich enough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took
+possession of her--a horrible delight in having wounded him; for
+his face instantly told her that none of the force of her
+exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing otherwise, however; he
+only said quickly: "Yes, I want it immensely."
+
+At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was
+followed the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check
+on seeing Osmond. He looked rapidly from the master of the house
+to the mistress; a movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to
+interrupt or even a perception of ominous conditions. Then he
+advanced, with his English address, in which a vague shyness
+seemed to offer itself as an element of good-breeding; in which
+the only defect was a difficulty in achieving transitions. Osmond
+was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel remarked,
+promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking about
+their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn't known
+what was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away.
+"No," he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; "I'm only on
+the point of going." And then he mentioned that he found himself
+suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow or
+the day after. "I'm awfully sorry to leave poor Touchett!" he
+ended by exclaiming.
+
+For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned
+back in his chair, listening. Isabel didn't look at him; she
+could only fancy how he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's
+face, where they were the more free to rest that those of his
+lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel was sure that had she
+met his glance she would have found it expressive. "You had
+better take poor Touchett with you," she heard her husband say,
+lightly enough, in a moment.
+
+"He had better wait for warmer weather," Lord Warburton answered.
+"I shouldn't advise him to travel just now."
+
+He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not
+soon see them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a
+course he strongly recommended. Why shouldn't they come to
+England in the autumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought.
+It would give him such pleasure to do what he could for them--to
+have them come and spend a month with him. Osmond, by his own
+admission, had been to England but once; which was an absurd
+state of things for a man of his leisure and intelligence. It was
+just the country for him--he would be sure to get on well there.
+Then Lord Warburton asked Isabel if she remembered what a good
+time she had had there and if she didn't want to try it again.
+Didn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was
+really very good. Touchett didn't take proper care of it, but it
+was the sort of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone.
+Why didn't they come and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must
+have asked them. Hadn't asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!
+--and Lord Warburton promised to give the master of Gardencourt a
+piece of his mind. Of course it was a mere accident; he would be
+delighted to have them. Spending a month with Touchett and a
+month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the people they
+must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. Lord
+Warburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had
+told him that she had never been to England and whom he had
+assured it was a country she deserved to see. Of course she
+didn't need to go to England to be admired--that was her fate
+everywhere; but she would be an immense success there, she
+certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked if she were
+not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked
+good-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other
+day he hadn't said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had
+half a mind to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Osmond for a
+final interview. What could be more dreary than final interviews?
+One never said the things one wanted--one remembered them all an
+hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said a lot of
+things one shouldn't, simply from a sense that one had to say
+something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled one's wits. He
+had it at present, and that was the effect it produced on him. If
+Mrs. Osmond didn't think he spoke as he ought she must set it
+down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs.
+Osmond. He was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of
+writing to her instead of calling--but he would write to her at
+any rate, to tell her a lot of things that would be sure to occur
+to him as soon as he had left the house. They must think
+seriously about coming to Lockleigh.
+
+If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or
+in the announcement of his departure it failed to come to the
+surface. Lord Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed
+it in no other manner, and Isabel saw that since he had
+determined on a retreat he was capable of executing it gallantly.
+She was very glad for him; she liked him quite well enough to
+wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He would do that on any
+occasion--not from impudence but simply from the habit of
+success; and Isabel felt it out of her husband's power to
+frustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there,
+went on in her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor;
+said what was proper to him; read, more or less, between the
+lines of what he said himself; and wondered how he would have
+spoken if he had found her alone. On the other she had a perfect
+consciousness of Osmond's emotion. She felt almost sorry for him;
+he was condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of
+cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish
+into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs.
+Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he treated
+their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so clever
+a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Osmond's
+cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His
+present appearance, however, was not a confession of
+disappointment; it was simply a part of Osmond's habitual system,
+which was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was
+really intent. He had been intent on this prize from the first;
+but he had never allowed his eagerness to irradiate his refined
+face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he treated every
+one--with an air of being interested in him only for his own
+advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally,
+so perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign
+now of an inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect
+of gain--not the faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of
+that, if it was any satisfaction to her. Strangely, very
+strangely, it was a satisfaction; she wished Lord Warburton to
+triumph before her husband, and at the same time she wished her
+husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton. Osmond, in his
+way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the advantage of
+an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it was
+something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned
+back in his place, listening but vaguely to the other's friendly
+offers and suppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to
+assume that they were addressed essentially to his wife--he had
+at least (since so little else was left him) the comfort of
+thinking how well he personally had kept out of it, and how the
+air of indifference, which he was now able to wear, had the added
+beauty of consistency. It was something to be able to look as if
+the leave-taker's movements had no relation to his own mind. The
+latter did well, certainly; but Osmond's performance was in its
+very nature more finished. Lord Warburton's position was after
+all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't
+leave Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had
+stopped short of fruition; he had never committed himself, and
+his honour was safe. Osmond appeared to take but a moderate
+interest in the proposal that they should go and stay with him
+and in his allusion to the success Pansy might extract from their
+visit. He murmured a recognition, but left Isabel to say that it
+was a matter requiring grave consideration. Isabel, even while
+she made this remark, could see the great vista which had
+suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Pansy's little
+figure marching up the middle of it.
+
+Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but
+neither Isabel nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He
+had the air of giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on
+a small chair, as if it were only for a moment, keeping his hat
+in his hand. But he stayed and stayed; Isabel wondered what he
+was waiting for. She believed it was not to see Pansy; she had an
+impression that on the whole he would rather not see Pansy. It
+was of course to see herself alone--he had something to say to
+her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she was afraid it
+would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense with
+explanations. Osmond, however, presently got up, like a man of
+good taste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor
+might wish to say just the last word of all to the ladies. "I've
+a letter to write before dinner," he said; "you must excuse me.
+I'll see if my daughter's disengaged, and if she is she shall
+know you're here. Of course when you come to Rome you'll always
+look us up. Mrs. Osmond will talk to you about the English
+expedition: she decides all those things."
+
+The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this
+little speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but
+on the whole it was all the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected
+that after he left the room Lord Warburton would have no pretext
+for saying, "Your husband's very angry"; which would have been
+extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless, if he had done so,
+she would have said: "Oh, don't be anxious. He doesn't hate you:
+it's me that he hates!"
+
+It was only when they had been left alone together that her
+friend showed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in
+another chair, handling two or three of the objects that were
+near him. "I hope he'll make Miss Osmond come," he presently
+remarked. "I want very much to see her."
+
+"I'm glad it's the last time," said Isabel.
+
+"So am I. She doesn't care for me."
+
+"No, she doesn't care for you."
+
+"I don't wonder at it," he returned. Then he added with
+inconsequence: "You'll come to England, won't you?"
+
+"I think we had better not."
+
+"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have
+come to Lockleigh once, and you never did?"
+
+"Everything's changed since then," said Isabel.
+
+"Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we're concerned. To
+see you under my roof"--and he hung fire but an instant--"would
+be a great satisfaction."
+
+She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that
+occurred. They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment
+Pansy came in, already dressed for dinner and with a little red
+spot in either cheek. She shook hands with Lord Warburton and
+stood looking up into his face with a fixed smile--a smile that
+Isabel knew, though his lordship probably never suspected it, to
+be near akin to a burst of tears.
+
+"I'm going away," he said. "I want to bid you good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Lord Warburton." Her voice perceptibly trembled.
+
+"And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy."
+
+"Thank you, Lord Warburton," Pansy answered.
+
+He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. "You ought to
+be very happy--you've got a guardian angel."
+
+"I'm sure I shall be happy," said Pansy in the tone of a person
+whose certainties were always cheerful.
+
+"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it
+should ever fail you, remember--remember--" And her interlocutor
+stammered a little. "Think of me sometimes, you know!" he said
+with a vague laugh. Then he shook hands with Isabel in silence,
+and presently he was gone.
+
+When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from
+her stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very
+different.
+
+"I think you ARE my guardian angel!" she exclaimed very sweetly.
+
+Isabel shook her head. "I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the
+most your good friend."
+
+"You're a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle
+with me."
+
+"I've asked your father nothing," said Isabel, wondering.
+
+"He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he
+gave me a very kind kiss."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "that was quite his own idea!"
+
+She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic,
+and she was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he
+couldn't put himself the least in the wrong. They were
+dining out that day, and after their dinner they went to another
+entertainment; so that it was not till late in the evening that
+Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him before going to bed
+he returned her embrace with even more than his usual
+munificence, and Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that
+his daughter had been injured by the machinations of her
+stepmother. It was a partial expression, at any rate, of what he
+continued to expect of his wife. She was about to follow Pansy,
+but he remarked that he wished she would remain; he had
+something to say to her. Then he walked about the drawing-room a
+little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.
+
+"I don't understand what you wish to do," he said in a moment. "I
+should like to know--so that I may know how to act."
+
+"Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired."
+
+"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a
+comfortable place." And he arranged a multitude of cushions that
+were scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This
+was not, however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the
+nearest chair. The fire had gone out; the lights in the great
+room were few. She drew her cloak about her; she felt mortally
+cold. "I think you're trying to humiliate me," Osmond went on.
+"It's a most absurd undertaking."
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean," she returned.
+
+"You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully."
+
+"What is it that I've managed?"
+
+"You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again."
+And he stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets,
+looking down at her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed
+meant to let her know that she was not an object, but only a
+rather disagreeable incident, of thought.
+
+"If you mean that Lord Warburton's under an obligation to come
+back you're wrong," Isabel said. "He's under none whatever."
+
+"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I
+don't mean he'll come from a sense of duty."
+
+"There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted
+Rome."
+
+"Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible." And
+Osmond began to walk about again. "However, about that perhaps
+there's no hurry," he added. "It's rather a good idea of his that
+we should go to England. If it were not for the fear of finding
+your cousin there I think I should try to persuade you."
+
+"It may be that you'll not find my cousin," said Isabel.
+
+"I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as
+possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that
+you told me so much about at one time: what do you call it?--
+Gardencourt. It must be a charming thing. And then, you know,
+I've a devotion to the memory of your uncle: you made me take a
+great fancy to him. I should like to see where he lived and died.
+That indeed is a detail. Your friend was right. Pansy ought to
+see England."
+
+"I've no doubt she would enjoy it," said Isabel.
+
+"But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off," Osmond
+continued; "and meantime there are things that more nearly
+interest us. Do you think me so very proud?" he suddenly asked.
+
+"I think you very strange."
+
+"You don't understand me."
+
+"No, not even when you insult me."
+
+"I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of
+certain facts, and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's
+not mine. It's surely a fact that you have kept all this matter
+quite in your own hands."
+
+"Are you going back to Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked. "I'm very
+tired of his name."
+
+"You shall hear it again before we've done with it."
+
+She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to
+her that this ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the
+vision of such a fall made her almost giddy: that was the only
+pain. He was too strange, too different; he didn't touch her.
+Still, the working of his morbid passion was extraordinary, and
+she felt a rising curiosity to know in what light he saw himself
+justified. "I might say to you that I judge you've nothing to say
+to me that's worth hearing," she returned in a moment. "But I
+should perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be worth my
+hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse
+me."
+
+"Of having prevented Pansy's marriage to Warburton. Are those
+words plain enough?"
+
+"On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so;
+and when you told me that you counted on me--that I think was
+what you said--I accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so,
+but I did it."
+
+"You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to
+make me more willing to trust you. Then you began to use your
+ingenuity to get him out of the way."
+
+"I think I see what you mean," said Isabel.
+
+"Where's the letter you told me he had written me?" her husband
+demanded.
+
+"I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him."
+
+"You stopped it on the way," said Osmond.
+
+Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which
+covered her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of
+disdain, first cousin to that of pity. "Oh, Gilbert, for a man
+who was so fine--!" she exclaimed in a long murmur.
+
+"I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted.
+You've got him out of the say without appearing to do so, and
+you've placed me in the position in which you wished to see me--
+that of a man who has tried to marry his daughter to a lord, but
+has grotesquely failed."
+
+"Pansy doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone," Isabel
+said.
+
+"That has nothing to do with the matter."
+
+"And he doesn't care for Pansy."
+
+"That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted
+this particular satisfaction," Osmond continued; "you might have
+taken some other. It doesn't seem to me that I've been
+presumptuous--that I have taken too much for granted. I've been
+very modest about it, very quiet. The idea didn't originate with
+me. He began to show that he liked her before I ever thought of
+it. I left it all to you."
+
+"Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must
+attend to such things yourself."
+
+He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. "I thought you
+were very fond of my daughter."
+
+"I've never been more so than to-day."
+
+"Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However,
+that perhaps is natural."
+
+"Is this all you wished to say to me?" Isabel asked, taking a
+candle that stood on one of the tables.
+
+"Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?"
+
+"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had
+another opportunity to try to stupefy me."
+
+"It's not that. It's proved that Pansy can aim high."
+
+"Poor little Pansy!" said Isabel as she turned away with her
+candle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar
+Goodwood had come to Rome; an event that took place three days
+after Lord Warburton's departure. This latter fact had been
+preceded by an incident of some importance to Isabel--the
+temporary absence, once again, of Madame Merle, who had gone to
+Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a villa at
+Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's
+happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet
+of women might not also by chance be the most dangerous.
+Sometimes, at night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see
+her husband and her friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable
+combination. It seemed to her that she had not done with her;
+this lady had something in reserve. Isabel's imagination applied
+itself actively to this elusive point, but every now and then it
+was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming woman
+was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She
+had already learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was
+in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known to her
+immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to
+Isabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible
+he might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her
+marriage, had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if
+she remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last
+look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant survival
+of her earlier time--the only one in fact with which a permanent
+pain was associated. He had left her that morning with a sense of
+the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between
+vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden
+current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer
+wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was
+on the tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the
+lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally betrayed itself
+in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to see him, because he
+represented the only serious harm that (to her belief) she had
+ever done in the world: he was the only person with an
+unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she couldn't
+help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried
+with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she
+tried to think it had been at his want of consideration. He had
+come to her with his unhappiness when her own bliss was so
+perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of those
+pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there had been a
+violence in the impression. There had been a violence at any rate
+in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own fit of
+weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted
+three or four days.
+
+The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all
+the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books.
+He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to
+have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and
+whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. It would have been
+different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his
+unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's;
+unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,
+uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She
+could never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had
+compensations, as she was able to say in the case of her English
+suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no
+esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a compensation for
+anything--least of all for having failed to marry Isabel Archer.
+And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had--save of course
+his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never
+thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended
+his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the only form
+exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an
+enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least
+because he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his
+figure a kind of bareness and bleakness which made the accident
+of meeting it in memory or in apprehension a peculiar concussion;
+it was deficient in the social drapery commonly muffling, in an
+overcivilized age, the sharpness of human contacts. His perfect
+silence, moreover, the fact that she never heard from him and
+very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this impression of
+his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from time to
+time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was all
+bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had
+thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had
+more than once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her
+husband about him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in
+Florence; a reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of
+confidence in Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the
+young man's disappointment was not her secret but his own. It
+would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to another,
+and Mr. Goodwood's affairs could have, after all, little interest
+for Gilbert. When it had come to the point she had never written
+to him; it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the
+least she could do was to let him alone. Nevertheless she would
+have been glad to be in some way nearer to him. It was not that
+it ever occurred to her that she might have married him; even
+after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her
+that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had
+not had the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself
+in trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with
+which she wished to set herself right. I have mentioned how
+passionately she needed to feel that her unhappiness should not
+have come to her through her own fault. She had no near prospect
+of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace with the world--
+to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to her from
+time to time that there was an account still to be settled with
+Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day
+on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned
+he was coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more
+disagreeable for him than for any one else to make out--since he
+WOULD make it out, as over a falsified balance-sheet or something
+of that sort--the intimate disarray of her affairs. Deep in her
+breast she believed that he had invested his all in her happiness,
+while the others had invested only a part. He was one more person
+from whom she should have to conceal her stress. She was reassured,
+however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent several days
+without coming to see her.
+
+Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual,
+and Isabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend.
+She threw herself into it, for now that she had made such a point
+of keeping her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she
+had not been superficial--the more so as the years, in their
+flight, had rather enriched than blighted those peculiarities
+which had been humorously criticised by persons less interested
+than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty a
+spice of heroism. Henrietta was as keen and quick and fresh as
+ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her remarkably open eyes,
+lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had put up no
+shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her opinions
+none of their national reference. She was by no means quite
+unchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old
+she had never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at
+once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each. She
+had a reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with
+motives. Formerly, when she came to Europe it was because she
+wished to see it, but now, having already seen it, she had no
+such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend that the desire to
+examine decaying civilisations had anything to do with her
+present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her
+independence of the old world than of a sense of further
+obligations to it. "It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to
+Isabel; "it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for
+that. It is something to stay at home; this is much more
+important." It was not therefore with a sense of doing anything
+very important that she treated herself to another pilgrimage to
+Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected it;
+her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing
+all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be
+there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she
+had a perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But
+she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that
+she cared for it so little. Her friend easily recognised it, and
+with it the worth of the other's fidelity. She had crossed the
+stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Isabel was
+sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed so
+happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions just now were few, but
+even if they had been more numerous there would still have been
+something of individual joy in her sense of being justified in
+having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made large
+concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with
+all abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own
+triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the relief
+of confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had
+owned it, that she was not in the least at her ease. Henrietta
+had herself approached this point with the smallest possible
+delay, and had accused her to her face of being wretched. She was
+a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph, nor Lord Warburton,
+nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
+
+"Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly. She hated to hear
+herself say it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
+
+"What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she
+were enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
+
+"He does nothing. But he doesn't like me."
+
+"He's very hard to please!" cried Miss Stackpole. "Why don't you
+leave him?"
+
+"I can't change that way," Isabel said.
+
+"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've
+made a mistake. You're too proud."
+
+"I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my
+mistake. I don't think that's decent. I'd much rather die."
+
+"You won't think so always," said Henrietta.
+
+"I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it
+seems to me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's
+deeds. I married him before all the world; I was perfectly free;
+it was impossible to do anything more deliberate. One can't
+change that way," Isabel repeated.
+
+"You HAVE changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you
+don't mean to say you like him."
+
+Isabel debated. "No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because
+I'm weary of my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on
+the housetops."
+
+Henrietta gave a laugh. "Don't you think you're rather too
+considerate?"
+
+"It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!" Isabel
+answered.
+
+It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken
+comfort in Miss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in
+opposition to a young lady capable of advising his wife to
+withdraw from the conjugal roof. When she arrived in Rome he had
+said to Isabel that he hoped she would leave her friend the
+interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered that he at least had
+nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta that as Osmond
+didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but they could
+easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss
+Stackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly
+to drive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward,
+on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated
+authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta
+occasionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that Miss
+Osmond had a little look as if she should remember everything one
+said. "I don't want to be remembered that way," Miss Stackpole
+declared; "I consider that my conversation refers only to the
+moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits
+there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring
+them out some day against me." She could not teach herself to
+think favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of
+conversation, of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of
+twenty, unnatural and even uncanny. Isabel presently saw that
+Osmond would have liked her to urge a little the cause of her
+friend, insist a little upon his receiving her, so that he might
+appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate acceptance
+of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in
+effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you
+cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy.
+Osmond held to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--
+all of which were elements difficult to reconcile. The right
+thing would have been that Miss Stackpole should come to dine at
+Palazzo Roccanera once or twice, so that (in spite of his
+superficial civility, always so great) she might judge for
+herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the moment,
+however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was
+nothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take
+herself off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got
+from his wife's friends; he took occasion to call Isabel's
+attention to it.
+
+"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you
+might make a new collection," he said to her one morning in
+reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe
+reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abruptness.
+"It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the people in
+the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I have
+always thought a conceited ass--besides his being the most
+ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that
+one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of his
+health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him
+privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill
+there's only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind
+for that. I can't say much more for the great Warburton. When one
+really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that performance was
+something rare! He comes and looks at one's daughter as if she
+were a suite of apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks
+out of the windows, raps on the walls and almost thinks he'll
+take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a lease? Then,
+on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he
+doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out
+for a piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's
+lodging in the poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole,
+however, is your most wonderful invention. She strikes me as a
+kind of monster. One hasn't a nerve in one's body that she
+doesn't set quivering. You know I never have admitted that she's
+a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of a new steel pen--
+the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes;
+aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks and
+moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that
+she doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see
+her, but I hear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my
+ears; I can't get rid of it. I know exactly what she says, and
+every inflexion of the tone in which she says it. She says
+charming things about me, and they give you great comfort. I
+don't like at all to think she talks about me--I feel as I should
+feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat."
+
+Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him,
+rather less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects,
+in two of which the reader may be supposed to be especially
+interested. She let her friend know that Caspar Goodwood had
+discovered for himself that she was unhappy, though indeed her
+ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he hoped to give her
+by coming to Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice
+in the street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were
+driving, and he had a habit of looking straight in front of him,
+as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time. Isabel
+could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must have
+been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.
+Touchett's door at the close of their last interview. He was
+dressed just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel
+remembered the colour of his cravat; and yet in spite of this
+familiar look there was a strangeness in his figure too,
+something that made her feel it afresh to be rather terrible he
+should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and more overtopping
+than of old, and in those days he certainly reached high enough.
+She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back after him;
+but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like a
+February sky.
+
+Miss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel
+the latest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United
+States the year before, and she was happy to say she had been
+able to show him considerable attention. She didn't know how much
+he had enjoyed it, but she would undertake to say it had done him
+good; he wasn't the same man when he left as he had been when be
+came. It had opened his eyes and shown him that England wasn't
+everything. He had been very much liked in most places, and
+thought extremely simple--more simple than the English were
+commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him
+affected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity
+was an affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging;
+he thought all the chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all
+the farmers' daughters were chambermaids--she couldn't exactly
+remember which. He hadn't seemed able to grasp the great school
+system; it had been really too much for him. On the whole he had
+behaved as if there were too much of everything--as if he could
+only take in a small part. The part he had chosen was the hotel
+system and the river navigation. He had seemed really fascinated
+with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one he had visited.
+But the river steamers were his principal interest; he wanted to
+do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled together
+from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting
+cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had
+wanted to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have
+no idea of geography--had an impression that Baltimore was a
+Western city and was perpetually expecting to arrive at the
+Mississippi. He appeared never to have heard of any river in
+America but the Mississippi and was unprepared to recognise
+the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to confess at last
+that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent some
+pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering
+ice-cream from the coloured man. He could never get used to that
+idea--that you could get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you
+couldn't, nor fans, nor candy, nor anything in the English cars!
+He found the heat quite overwhelming, and she had told him she
+indeed expected it was the biggest he had ever experienced. He
+was now in England, hunting--"hunting round" Henrietta called it.
+These amusements were those of the American red men; we had left
+that behind long ago, the pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be
+generally believed in England that we wore tomahawks and
+feathers; but such a costume was more in keeping with English
+habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to join her in Italy,
+but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come over.
+He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of
+the ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was
+what she liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient
+regime had been swept away. There were no dukes and marquises
+there now; she remembered on the contrary one day when there were
+five American families, walking all round. Mr. Bantling was very
+anxious that she should take up the subject of England again, and
+he thought she might get on better with it now; England had
+changed a good deal within two or three years. He was determined
+that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady
+Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her
+straight. The mystery about that other one had never been
+explained.
+
+Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written
+Isabel a note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly
+granted; she would be at home at six o'clock that afternoon. She
+spent the day wondering what he was coming for--what good he
+expected to get of it. He had presented himself hitherto as a
+person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who would take
+what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality,
+however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty
+in appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction
+at least that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he
+had been misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he
+was not disappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have
+been; he had not come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She
+never found out what he had come for; he offered her no
+explanation; there could be none but the very simple one that he
+wanted to see her. In other words he had come for his amusement.
+Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal of eagerness,
+and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the
+ghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to
+Rome for his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if
+he cared for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had
+got over his heartache everything was as it should be and her
+responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he took his
+recreation a little stiffly, but he had never been loose and easy
+and she had every reason to believe he was satisfied with what he
+saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence, though he was in hers,
+and Isabel consequently received no side-light upon his state of
+mind. He was open to little conversation on general topics; it
+came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,
+"Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk." He spoke
+a good deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever;
+considering, that is, how much there was in Rome to talk about.
+His arrival was not calculated to simplify her relations with her
+husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn't like her friends Mr. Goodwood
+had no claim upon his attention save as having been one of the
+first of them. There was nothing for her to say of him but that
+he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis exhausted
+the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert; it
+was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday
+evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her
+husband still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as
+of not inviting them.
+
+To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather
+early; he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity.
+Isabel every now and then had a moment of anger; there was
+something so literal about him; she thought he might know that
+she didn't know what to do with him. But she couldn't call him
+stupid; he was not that in the least; he was only extraordinarily
+honest. To be as honest as that made a man very different from
+most people; one had to be almost equally honest with HIM. She
+made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering
+herself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted
+of women. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her
+any personal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than
+had seemed probable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted
+on; in such a case be had an irresistible need of disappointing
+you. It was in virtue of this principle that he gave himself the
+entertainment of taking a fancy to a perpendicular Bostonian whom
+he bad been depended upon to treat with coldness. He asked Isabel
+if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marry her, and expressed
+surprise at her not having accepted him. It would have been an
+excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which would
+strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.
+He declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn't
+easy at first, you had to climb up an interminable steep
+staircase up to the top of the tower; but when you got there you
+had a big view and felt a little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we
+know, had delightful qualities, and he gave Caspar Goodwood the
+benefit of them all. Isabel could see that Mr. Goodwood thought
+better of her husband than he had ever wished to; he had given
+her the impression that morning in Florence of being inaccessible
+to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to dinner, and
+Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even desired
+to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was
+very original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an
+English portmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which
+would never wear out, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood
+took to riding on the Campagna and devoted much time to this
+exercise; it was therefore mainly in the evening that Isabel saw
+him. She bethought herself of saying to him one day that if he
+were willing he could render her a service. And then she added
+smiling:
+
+"I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of
+you."
+
+"You're the person in the world who has most right," he answered.
+"I've given you assurances that I've never given any one else."
+
+The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who
+was ill at the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as
+possible. Mr. Goodwood had never seen him, but he would know who
+the poor fellow was; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once
+invited him to Gardencourt. Caspar remembered the invitation
+perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a man of
+imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of a poor
+gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the Hotel de
+Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of
+Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A
+singular change had in fact occurred in this lady's relations
+with Ralph Touchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and
+see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to come out had
+immediately gone of her own motion. After this she had paid him a
+daily visit--always under the conviction that they were great
+enemies. "Oh yes, we're intimate enemies," Ralph used to say; and
+he accused her freely--as freely as the humour of it would allow
+--of coming to worry him to death. In reality they became
+excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she should never
+have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he had
+always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an
+excellent fellow. They talked about everything and always
+differed; about everything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to
+which Ralph always had a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr.
+Bantling on the other hand proved a great resource; Ralph was
+capable of discussing Mr. Bantling with Henrietta for hours.
+Discussion was stimulated of course by their inevitable
+difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with taking the
+ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.
+Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but
+after he had been left alone with his host he found there were
+various other matters they could take up. It must be admitted
+that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar
+granted all Miss Stackpole's merits in advance, but had no
+further remark to make about her. Neither, after the first
+allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--a theme in
+which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt very
+sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a
+pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond
+anything to be done. There was always something to be done, for
+Goodwood, and he did it in this case by repeating several times
+his visit to the Hotel de Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had
+been very clever; she had artfully disposed of the superfluous
+Caspar. She had given him an occupation; she had converted him
+into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of making him travel
+northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather
+should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.
+Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in
+this, and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart.
+She had a constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a
+horror of the occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door,
+which he had so rarely entered. Ralph must sink to his last rest
+in his own dear house, in one of those deep, dim chambers of
+Gardencourt where the dark ivy would cluster round the edges of
+the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel in these days
+something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more
+perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had
+spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as
+I say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could
+muster; for several events occurred which seemed to confront and
+defy her. The Countess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with
+her trunks, her dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her
+frivolity, the strange, the unholy legend of the number of her
+lovers. Edward Rosier, who had been away somewhere,--no one, not
+even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Rome and began to write
+her long letters, which she never answered. Madame Merle returned
+from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: "What on earth
+did you do with Lord Warburton?" As if it were any business of
+hers!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+One day, toward the end of February, Ralph Touchett made up his
+mind to return to England. He had his own reasons for this
+decision, which he was not bound to communicate; but Henrietta
+Stackpole, to whom he mentioned his intention, flattered herself
+that she guessed them. She forbore to express them, however; she
+only said, after a moment, as she sat by his sofa: "I suppose you
+know you can't go alone?"
+
+"I've no idea of doing that," Ralph answered. "I shall have people
+with me."
+
+"What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?"
+
+"Ah," said Ralph jocosely, "after all, they're human beings."
+
+"Are there any women among them?" Miss Stackpole desired to know.
+
+"You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a
+soubrette in my employment."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta calmly, "you can't go to England that way.
+You must have a woman's care."
+
+"I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will
+last me a good while."
+
+"You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you," said
+Henrietta.
+
+"Go with me?"  Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
+
+"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the
+same. It would be better for your health to lie down again."
+
+Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. "I like
+you very much," he said in a moment.
+
+Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. "You needn't
+think that by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you,
+and what is more I'll take care of you."
+
+"You're a very good woman," said Ralph.
+
+"Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be
+easy. But you had better go, all the same."
+
+Before she left him, Ralph said to her: "Do you really mean to
+take care of me?"
+
+"Well, I mean to try."
+
+"I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!" And it was
+perhaps a sign of submission that a few minutes after she had
+left him alone he burst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to
+him so inconsequent, such a conclusive proof of his having
+abdicated all functions and renounced all exercise, that he
+should start on a journey across Europe under the supervision of
+Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that the prospect
+pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt even
+impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to see
+his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed
+to him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he
+wanted to die at home; it was the only wish he had left--to
+extend himself in the large quiet room where he had last seen his
+father lie, and close his eyes upon the summer dawn.
+
+That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed
+his visitor that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to
+conduct him back to England. "Ah then," said Caspar, "I'm afraid
+I shall be a fifth wheel to the coach. Mrs. Osmond has made me
+promise to go with you."
+
+"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind."
+
+"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you."
+
+"Granting that, SHE'S kind," smiled Ralph.
+
+"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness,"
+Goodwood answered without lending himself to the joke. "For
+myself, however," he added, "I'll go so far as to say that I
+would much rather travel with you and Miss Stackpole than with
+Miss Stackpole alone."
+
+"And you'd rather stay here than do either," said Ralph. "There's
+really no need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily
+efficient."
+
+"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Osmond."
+
+"You can easily get her to let you off."
+
+"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look
+after you, but that isn't the principal thing. The principal
+thing is that she wants me to leave Rome."
+
+"Ah, you see too much in it," Ralph suggested.
+
+"I bore her," Goodwood went on; "she has nothing to say to me, so
+she invented that."
+
+"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you
+with me. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience,"
+Ralph added in a moment.
+
+"Well," said Caspar Goodwood simply, "she thinks I'm watching
+her."
+
+"Watching her?"
+
+"Trying to make out if she's happy."
+
+"That's easy to make out," said Ralph. "She's the most visibly
+happy woman I know."
+
+"Exactly so; I'm satisfied," Goodwood answered dryly. For all his
+dryness, however, he had more to say. "I've been watching her; I
+was an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She
+pretends to be happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I
+thought I should like to see for myself what it amounts to. I've
+seen," he continued with a harsh ring in his voice, "and I don't
+want to see any more. I'm now quite ready to go."
+
+"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph
+rejoined. And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had
+about Isabel Osmond.
+
+Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she
+found it proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who
+returned at Miss Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady
+had paid her in Florence.
+
+"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the
+Countess. "I think it right you should know that."
+
+"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her
+house three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!" the
+Countess cried.
+
+"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house."
+
+The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: "Is
+that the story that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things
+go. If he wishes to marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it?
+Perhaps he has gone to buy the wedding-ring and will come back
+with it next month, after I'm gone."
+
+"No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him."
+
+"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I
+didn't know she carried it so far."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting
+that the Countess was unpleasantly perverse. "I really must stick
+to my point--that Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is
+that my brother's capable of everything."
+
+"I don't know what your brother's capable of," said Henrietta
+with dignity.
+
+"It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her
+sending him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose
+she thought I would make him faithless?" the Countess continued
+with audacious insistence. "However, she's only keeping him, one
+can feel that. The house is full of him there; he's quite in the
+air. Oh yes, he has left traces; I'm sure I shall see him yet."
+
+"Well," said Henrietta after a little, with one of those
+inspirations which had made the fortune of her letters to the
+Interviewer, "perhaps he'll be more successful with you than with
+Isabel!"
+
+When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel
+replied that she could have done nothing that would have pleased
+her more. It had always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and
+this young woman were made to understand each other. "I don't
+care whether he understands me or not," Henrietta declared. "The
+great thing is that he shouldn't die in the cars."
+
+"He won't do that," Isabel said, shaking her head with an
+extension of faith.
+
+"He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't
+know what you want to do."
+
+"I want to be alone," said Isabel.
+
+"You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home."
+
+"Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators."
+
+"Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?" Henrietta rather grimly
+asked.
+
+"The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes
+me uncomfortable."
+
+Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. "You're like the
+stricken deer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me
+such a sense of helplessness!" she broke out.
+
+"I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do."
+
+"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having
+come on purpose, to leave you just as I find you."
+
+"You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed," Isabel said.
+
+"Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me
+something."
+
+"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such
+a solemn one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping
+it."
+
+"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the
+greatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what
+I want you to promise."
+
+"The worst? What do you call the worst?"
+
+"Before your character gets spoiled."
+
+"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled," Isabel
+answered, smiling. "I'm taking very good care of it. I'm
+extremely struck," she added, turning away, "with the off-hand
+way in which you speak of a woman's leaving her husband. It's
+easy to see you've never had one!"
+
+"Well," said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument,
+"nothing is more common in our Western cities, and it's to them,
+after all, that we must look in the future." Her argument,
+however, does not concern this history, which has too many other
+threads to unwind. She announced to Ralph Touchett that she was
+ready to leave Rome by any train he might designate, and Ralph
+immediately pulled himself together for departure. Isabel went to
+see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta
+had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get
+rid of them all.
+
+For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said
+in a low tone, with a quick smile: "My dear Ralph--!"
+
+It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on
+in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously: "I've seen less of you
+than I might, but it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a
+great deal about you."
+
+"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done."
+
+"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let
+other people speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and
+that's so flat."
+
+"I might have seen more of you certainly," Isabel said. "But when
+one's married one has so much occupation."
+
+"Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England
+I shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a
+bachelor." He continued to talk as if they should certainly meet
+again, and succeeded in making the assumption appear almost just.
+He made no allusion to his term being near, to the probability
+that he should not outlast the summer. If he preferred it so,
+Isabel was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently distinct
+without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had
+been well enough for the earlier time, though about this, as
+about his other affairs, Ralph had never been egotistic. Isabel
+spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should divide
+it, of the precautions he should take. "Henrietta's my greatest
+precaution," he went on. "The conscience of that woman's sublime."
+
+"Certainly she'll be very conscientious."
+
+"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her
+duty that she goes with me. There's a conception of duty for
+you."
+
+"Yes, it's a generous one," said Isabel, "and it makes me deeply
+ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know."
+
+"Your husband wouldn't like that."
+
+"No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same."
+
+"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being
+a cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!"
+
+"That's why I don't go," said Isabel simply--yet not very
+lucidly.
+
+Ralph understood well enough, however. "I should think so, with
+all those occupations you speak of."
+
+"It isn't that. I'm afraid," said Isabel. After a pause she
+repeated, as if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words:
+"I'm afraid."
+
+Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely
+deliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do
+public penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted?
+or were her words simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis?
+However this might be, Ralph could not resist so easy an
+opportunity. "Afraid of your husband?"
+
+"Afraid of myself!" she said, getting up. She stood there a
+moment and then added: "If I were afraid of my husband that would
+be simply my duty. That's what women are expected to be."
+
+"Ah yes," laughed Ralph; "but to make up for it there's always
+some man awfully afraid of some woman!"
+
+She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a
+different turn. "With Henrietta at the head of your little band,"
+she exclaimed abruptly, "there will be nothing left for Mr.
+Goodwood!"
+
+"Ah, my dear Isabel," Ralph answered, "he's used to that. There
+is nothing left for Mr. Goodwood."
+
+She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him.
+They stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his.
+"You've been my best friend," she said.
+
+"It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I'm of
+no use to you."
+
+Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him
+again. She could not accept that; she could not part with him
+that way. "If you should send for me I'd come," she said at last.
+
+"Your husband won't consent to that."
+
+"Oh yes, I can arrange it."
+
+"I shall keep that for my last pleasure!" said Ralph.
+
+In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and
+that evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was
+among the first to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation
+with Gilbert Osmond, who almost always was present when his wife
+received. They sat down together, and Osmond, talkative,
+communicative, expansive, seemed possessed with a kind of
+intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his legs crossed,
+lounging and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but not at
+all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the
+little sofa creak beneath him. Osmond's face wore a sharp,
+aggressive smile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been
+quickened by good news. He remarked to Goodwood that he was sorry
+they were to lose him; he himself should particularly miss him.
+He saw so few intelligent men--they were surprisingly scarce in
+Rome. He must be sure to come back; there was something very
+refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like himself, in talking
+with a genuine outsider.
+
+"I'm very fond of Rome, you know," Osmond said; "but there's
+nothing I like better than to meet people who haven't that
+superstition. The modern world's after all very fine. Now you're
+thoroughly modern and yet are not at all common. So many of the
+moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If they're the children
+of the future we're willing to die young. Of course the ancients
+too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything that's
+really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's nothing new,
+unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that
+in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of
+light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of
+vulgarity which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever
+was anything like it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at
+all, before the present century. You see a faint menace of it
+here and there in the last, but to-day the air has grown so dense
+that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we've
+liked you--!" With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand
+gently on Goodwood's knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance
+and embarrassment. "I'm going to say something extremely offensive
+and patronising, but you must let me have the satisfaction of it.
+We've liked you because--because you've reconciled us a little to
+the future. If there are to be a certain number of people like
+you--a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as well as for
+myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't I
+speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and
+the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've
+understood from you that your occupations have been--a--
+commercial? There's a danger in that, you know; but it's the way
+you have escaped that strikes us. Excuse me if my little
+compliment seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't
+hear me. What I mean is that you might have been--a--what I was
+mentioning just now. The whole American world was in a conspiracy
+to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about you that
+saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern
+man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."
+
+I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks
+will give ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more
+personal than he usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had
+attended to them more closely he might have thought that the
+defence of delicacy was in rather odd hands. We may believe,
+however, that Osmond knew very well what he was about, and that
+if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness not in
+his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Goodwood
+had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he
+scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely
+knew what Osmond was talking about; he wanted to be alone with
+Isabel, and that idea spoke louder to him than her husband's
+perfectly-pitched voice. He watched her talking with other people
+and wondered when she would be at liberty and whether he might
+ask her to go into one of the other rooms. His humour was not,
+like Osmond's, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in
+his consciousness of things. Up to this time he had not disliked
+Osmond personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and
+obliging and more than he had supposed like the person whom
+Isabel Archer would naturally marry. His host had won in the open
+field a great advantage over him, and Goodwood had too strong a
+sense of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that
+account. He had not tried positively to think well of him; this
+was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even in the
+days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had
+happened, Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather
+a brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a
+redundancy of leisure which it amused him to work off in little
+refinements of conversation. But he only half trusted him; he
+could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish
+refinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he
+found some private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a
+general impression that his triumphant rival had in his
+composition a streak of perversity. He knew indeed that Osmond
+could have no reason to wish him evil; he had nothing to fear
+from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and could afford
+to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true that
+Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have
+liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for
+practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing
+inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this
+art in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he
+deceived first. He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited
+success; of which there could be no better proof than the deep,
+dumb irritation that reigned in his soul when he heard Osmond
+speak of his wife's feelings as if he were commissioned to answer
+for them.
+
+That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him
+this evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a
+point even than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony
+prevailing at Palazzo Roccanera. He had been more careful than
+ever to speak as if he and his wife had all things in sweet
+community and it were as natural to each of them to say "we" as
+to say "I". In all this there was an air of intention that had
+puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect
+for his comfort that Mrs. Osmond's relations with her husband
+were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her
+husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface
+of things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had
+never given him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Stackpole
+had told him that she had lost her illusions, but writing for the
+papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational. She was too fond of
+early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been much
+on her guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at
+him. This indeed, it may be said for her, would have been quite
+against her conscience. She had now seen the reality of Isabel's
+situation, and it had inspired her with a just reserve. Whatever
+could be done to improve it the most useful form of assistance
+would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her
+wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the
+state of Mr. Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present
+only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the
+American journals, of which she received several by every post
+and which she always perused with a pair of scissors in her hand.
+The articles she cut out she placed in an envelope addressed to
+Mr. Goodwood, which she left with her own hand at his hotel. He
+never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't he come five
+thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the least
+authorised to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of
+authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-
+ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to
+care, he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the
+future had nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction
+of knowing the truth; apparently he could not even be trusted to
+respect her if she WERE unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless,
+useless. To this last character she had called his attention by
+her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome. He had no objection
+whatever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it made him
+grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have
+asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. There
+had been no danger of her choosing one that would have kept him
+in Rome.
+
+To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave
+her to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the
+knowledge that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he
+had gained no knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable,
+impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so
+hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he knew there are
+disappointments that last as long as life. Osmond went on
+talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching again
+upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a
+moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was
+impossible that without malice he should have selected so unusual
+a topic. But what did it matter, after all, whether he were
+demonic or not, and whether she loved him or hated him? She might
+hate him to the death without one's gaining a straw one's self.
+"You travel, by the by, with Ralph Touchett," Osmond said. "I
+suppose that means you'll move slowly?"
+
+"I don't know. I shall do just as he likes."
+
+"You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you
+must really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you
+what we feel. Touchett has been on our minds all winter; it has
+looked more than once as if he would never leave Rome. He ought
+never to have come; it's worse than an imprudence for people in
+that state to travel; it's a kind of indelicacy. I wouldn't for
+the world be under such an obligation to Touchett as he has been
+to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably have to look after
+him, and every one isn't so generous as you."
+
+"I've nothing else to do," Caspar said dryly.
+
+Osmond looked at him a moment askance. "You ought to marry, and
+then you'd have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you
+wouldn't be quite so available for deeds of mercy."
+
+"Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?" the
+young man mechanically asked.
+
+"Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't
+always active; it's often passive; but that takes even more
+attention. Then my wife and I do so many things together. We
+read, we study, we make music, we walk, we drive--we talk even,
+as when we first knew each other. I delight, to this hour, in my
+wife's conversation. If you're ever bored take my advice and get
+married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that case; but you'll
+never bore yourself. You'll always have something to say to
+yourself--always have a subject of reflection."
+
+"I'm not bored," said Goodwood. "I've plenty to think about and
+to say to myself."
+
+"More than to say to others!" Osmond exclaimed with a light
+laugh. "Where shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned
+Touchett to his natural caretakers--I believe his mother's at
+last coming back to look after him. That little lady's superb;
+she neglects her duties with a finish--! Perhaps you'll spend the
+summer in England?"
+
+"I don't know. I've no plans."
+
+"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free."
+
+"Oh yes, I'm very free."
+
+"Free to come back to Rome I hope," said Osmond as he saw a group
+of new visitors enter the room. "Remember that when you do come
+we count on you!"
+
+Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed
+without his having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as
+one of several associated interlocutors. There was something
+perverse in the inveteracy with which she avoided him; his
+unquenchable rancour discovered an intention where there was
+certainly no appearance of one. There was absolutely no appearance
+of one. She met his eyes with her clear hospitable smile, which
+seemed almost to ask that he would come and help her to entertain
+some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he opposed
+but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked
+to the few people he knew, who found him for the first time
+rather self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar
+Goodwood, though he often contradicted others. There was often
+music at Palazzo Roccanera, and it was usually very good. Under
+cover of the music he managed to contain himself; but toward the
+end, when he saw the people beginning to go, he drew near to
+Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he might not speak to her
+in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured himself was
+empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found her
+self absolutely prevented. "I'm afraid it's impossible. People
+are saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me."
+
+"I shall wait till they are all gone then."
+
+She hesitated a moment. "Ah, that will be delightful!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several
+people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The
+Countess Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she
+said, displayed no consciousness that the entertainment was over;
+she had still a little circle of gentlemen in front of the fire,
+who every now and then broke into a united laugh. Osmond had
+disappeared--he never bade good-bye to people; and as the
+Countess was extending her range, according to her custom at this
+period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a
+little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law would
+sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.
+
+"May I not say a word to you now?" Goodwood presently asked her.
+She got up immediately, smiling. "Certainly, we'll go somewhere
+else if you like." They went together, leaving the Countess with
+her little circle, and for a moment after they had crossed the
+threshold neither of them spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she
+stood in the middle of the room slowly fanning herself; she had
+for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to wait for him to
+speak. Now that he was alone with her all the passion he had
+never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes
+and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim
+and blurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover
+before him with gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen
+more distinctly he would have perceived her smile was fixed and a
+trifle forced--that she was frightened at what she saw in his own
+face. "I suppose you wish to bid me goodbye?" she said.
+
+"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome," he
+answered with almost plaintive honesty.
+
+"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell
+you how kind I think you."
+
+For a moment more he said nothing. "With a few words like that
+you make me go."
+
+"You must come back some day," she brightly returned.
+
+"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible."
+
+"Oh no; I don't mean all that."
+
+"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and
+I'll go," Goodwood added.
+
+"Come back whenever you like," said Isabel with attempted
+lightness.
+
+"I don't care a straw for your cousin!" Caspar broke out.
+
+"Is that what you wished to tell me?"
+
+"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask
+you--" he paused a moment, and then--"what have you really made
+of your life?" he said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again,
+as if for an answer; but she said nothing, and he went on: "I
+can't understand, I can't penetrate you! What am I to believe--
+what do you want me to think?" Still she said nothing; she only
+stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to ease. "I'm
+told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
+That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're
+happy, and you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're
+completely changed. You conceal everything; I haven't really come
+near you."
+
+"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of
+warning.
+
+"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you
+done well?"
+
+"You ask a great deal."
+
+"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell
+me. I shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of
+my business." He had spoken with a visible effort to control
+himself, to give a considerate form to an inconsiderate state of
+mind. But the sense that it was his last chance, that he loved
+her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he
+should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration
+to his low voice. "You're perfectly inscrutable, and that's what
+makes me think you've something to hide. I tell you I don't care
+a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him.
+I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away with him.
+I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you
+should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to
+leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were
+as contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather
+know the truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come
+here for nothing. That isn't what I came for. I thought I
+shouldn't care. I came because I wanted to assure myself that I
+needn't think of you any more. I haven't thought of anything else,
+and you're quite right to wish me to go away. But if I must go,
+there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single moment, is
+there? If you're really hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say will
+hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for.
+I thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I
+shouldn't say it if I didn't believe I should never see you again.
+It's the last time--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to
+say that, I know; and you've no right to listen. But you don't
+listen; you never listen, you're always thinking of something else.
+After this I must go, of course; so I shall at least have a
+reason. Your asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can't
+judge by your husband," he went on irrelevantly, almost
+incoherently; "I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each
+other. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine?
+When I say that to you, you look strange. But you always look
+strange. Yes, you've something to hide. It's none of my business
+--very true. But I love you," said Caspar Goodwood.
+
+As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door
+by which they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.
+
+"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it," she uttered softly.
+
+"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off
+with. I love you as I've never loved you."
+
+"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go."
+
+"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but you
+can't, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing
+--nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole
+satisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!"
+
+"That I tell you what?"
+
+"Whether I may pity you."
+
+"Should you like that?" Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
+
+"To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing
+something. I'd give my life to it."
+
+She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her
+eyes. They rested a moment on his. "Don't give your life to it;
+but give a thought to it every now and then." And with that she
+went back to the Countess Gemini.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on
+the evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the
+incidents, and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not
+surprised by it. Things had passed between them which added no
+stimulus to sociability, and to appreciate which we must glance a
+little backward. It has been mentioned that Madame Merle returned
+from Naples shortly after Lord Warburton had left Rome, and that
+on her first meeting with Isabel (whom, to do her justice, she
+came immediately to see) her first utterance had been an enquiry
+as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she appeared to
+hold her dear friend accountable.
+
+"Please don't talk of him," said Isabel for answer; "we've heard
+so much of him of late."
+
+Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly,
+and smiled at the left corner of her mouth. "You've heard, yes.
+But you must remember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find
+him here and to be able to congratulate Pansy."
+
+"You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord
+Warburton."
+
+"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?"
+Madame Merle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with
+the intonation of good-humour.
+
+Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured
+too. "You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have
+stayed here to watch the affair."
+
+"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?"
+
+"You had better ask Pansy," said Isabel.
+
+"I shall ask her what you've said to her."
+
+These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused
+on Isabel's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was
+a critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet
+hitherto; she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid
+of intermeddling. But apparently she had only reserved herself for
+this occasion, since she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye
+and an air of irritation which even her admirable ease was not
+able to transmute. She had suffered a disappointment which excited
+Isabel's surprise--our heroine having no knowledge of her zealous
+interest in Pansy's marriage; and she betrayed it in a manner
+which quickened Mrs. Osmond's alarm. More clearly than ever before
+Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not
+where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this
+bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the
+practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in
+her destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered,
+and her nearness was not the charming accident she had so long
+supposed. The sense of accident indeed had died within her that
+day when she happened to be struck with the manner in which the
+wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No
+definite suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was enough
+to make her view this friend with a different eye, to have been
+led to reflect that there was more intention in her past
+behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes, there had
+been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to herself;
+and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was it
+that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not
+been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body
+and which married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by
+her visitor's challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was
+something in this challenge which had at the very outset excited
+an answering defiance; a nameless vitality which she could see to
+have been absent from her friend's professions of delicacy and
+caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to interfere, certainly,
+but only so long as there was nothing to interfere with. It will
+perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in casting
+doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several years
+of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a
+strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle's
+interest was identical with Osmond's: that was enough. "I think
+Pansy will tell you nothing that will make you more angry," she
+said in answer to her companion's last remark.
+
+"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve
+the situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for
+ever?"
+
+"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please
+let it rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and
+I've nothing more to say or to hear. I've no doubt," Isabel
+added, "that he'll be very happy to discuss the subject with
+you."
+
+"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening."
+
+"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you
+needn't apply to me for information."
+
+"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set
+my heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--
+it satisfied the imagination."
+
+"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned."
+
+"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not
+directly. But when one's such an old friend one can't help having
+something at stake. You forget how long I've known Pansy. You
+mean, of course," Madame Merle added, "that YOU are one of the
+persons concerned."
+
+"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all."
+
+Madame Merle hesitated a little. "Ah yes, your work's done."
+
+"Take care what you say," said Isabel very gravely.
+
+"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least.
+Your husband judges you severely."
+
+Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with
+bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle's informing
+her that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as
+against his wife that struck her most; for she was not quick to
+believe that this was meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very
+rarely insolent, and only when it was exactly right. It was not
+right now, or at least it was not right yet. What touched Isabel
+like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was the knowledge
+that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his
+thoughts. "Should you like to know how I judge HIM?" she asked
+at last.
+
+"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me
+to know."
+
+There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her
+Isabel thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would
+leave her. "Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't despair,"
+she said abruptly, with a desire that this should close their
+interview.
+
+But Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction.
+She only gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement,
+scattered upon the air a faint, agreeable fragrance. "I don't
+despair; I feel encouraged. And I didn't come to scold you; I
+came if possible to learn the truth. I know you'll tell it if I
+ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that one can count
+upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in it."
+
+"What truth do you speak of?" Isabel asked, wondering.
+
+"Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his
+own movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I
+mean, or to please you. Think of the confidence I must still
+have in you, in spite of having lost a little of it," Madame
+Merle continued with a smile, "to ask such a question as that!"
+She sat looking at her friend, to judge the effect of her words,
+and then went on: "Now don't be heroic, don't be unreasonable,
+don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in speaking
+so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven't
+the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And
+don't you see how well it is that your husband should know it?
+It's true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever
+in trying to extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous
+suppositions. But that doesn't alter the fact that it would make
+a difference in his view of his daughter's prospects to know
+distinctly what really occurred. If Lord Warburton simply got
+tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's a pity. If he
+gave her up to please you it's another. That's a pity too, but in
+a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign
+yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your
+step-daughter married. Let him off--let us have him!"
+
+Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her
+companion and apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As
+she went on Isabel grew pale; she clasped her hands more tightly
+in her lap. It was not that her visitor had at last thought it
+the right time to be insolent; for this was not what was most
+apparent. It was a worse horror than that. "Who are you--what are
+you?" Isabel murmured. "What have you to do with my husband?"
+It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as if
+she had loved him.
+
+"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think,
+however, that I shall do so."
+
+"What have you to do with me?" Isabel went on.
+
+Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing
+her eyes from Isabel's face. "Everything!" she answered.
+
+Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was
+almost a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's
+eyes seemed only a darkness. "Oh misery!" she murmured at last;
+and she fell back, covering her face with her hands. It had come
+over her like a high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right.
+Madame Merle had married her. Before she uncovered her face again
+that lady had left the room.
+
+Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far
+away, under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage
+and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old
+Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her
+happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her
+weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet
+still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the
+silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached
+itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed
+angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no
+one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its
+smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her
+haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried
+her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly
+acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion.
+But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where
+people had suffered. This was what came to her in the starved
+churches, where the marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins,
+seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the musty
+incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was no
+gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of
+worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles,
+could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these
+objects nor have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual
+visitation. Pansy, as we know, was almost always her companion,
+and of late the Countess Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had
+lent brilliancy to their equipage; but she still occasionally
+found herself alone when it suited her mood and where it suited
+the place. On such occasions she had several resorts; the most
+accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which
+edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front of Saint
+John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the
+far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,
+between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it.
+After the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed
+more than usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar
+shrine to the other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with
+her she felt the touch of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving
+the walls of Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes where the
+wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the hedges, or
+waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while
+she strolled further and further over the flower-freckled turf, or
+sat on a stone that had once had a use and gazed through the veil
+of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene--at
+the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft confusions of
+colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills
+where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.
+
+On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a
+resolution not to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution
+proved vain, and this lady's image hovered constantly before her.
+She asked herself, with an almost childlike horror of the
+supposition, whether to this intimate friend of several years the
+great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. She knew
+the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best
+of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance with
+wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,
+and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated
+it with some success this elementary privilege had been denied
+her. Perhaps it was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even
+deeply false; for that was what Madame Merle had been--deeply,
+deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt Lydia had made this discovery long
+before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Isabel had
+flattered herself at this time that she had a much richer view of
+things, especially of the spontaneity of her own career and the
+nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor stiffly-reasoning
+Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted; she had
+brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which
+could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so
+much have desired such an event. There were people who had the
+match-making passion, like the votaries of art for art; but
+Madame Merle, great artist as she was, was scarcely one of these.
+She thought too ill of marriage, too ill even of life; she had
+desired that particular marriage but had not desired others. She
+had therefore had a conception of gain, and Isabel asked herself
+where she had found her profit. It took her naturally a long time
+to discover, and even then her discovery was imperfect. It came
+back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed to like her
+from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly
+affectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that
+her young friend had been subject to the good old man's charity.
+She had found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing
+money, but in the more refined idea of introducing one of her
+intimates to the young woman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She
+had naturally chosen her closest intimate, and it was already
+vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert occupied this position. She
+found herself confronted in this manner with the conviction that
+the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the least sordid
+had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money. Strange
+to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought a
+good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular
+injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been
+saying to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might
+marry a woman for her money perfectly well; the thing was often
+done. But at least he should let her know. She wondered whether,
+since he had wanted her money, her money would now satisfy him.
+Would he take her money and let her go  Ah, if Mr. Touchett's
+great charity would but help her to-day it would be blessed
+indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame Merle had
+wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the boon
+must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in
+regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must
+they have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a
+singular, but a characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned
+from her silent drive she had broken its silence by the soft
+exclamation: "Poor, poor Madame Merle!"
+
+Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same
+afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable
+curtains of time-softened damask which dressed the interesting
+little salon of the lady to whom it referred; the
+carefully-arranged apartment to which we once paid a visit in
+company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that apartment, towards
+six o'clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his hostess stood
+before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion
+commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so
+much to its apparent as to its real importance.
+
+"I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it," said
+Madame Merle.
+
+"Did I say I was unhappy?" Osmond asked with a face grave
+enough to suggest that he might have been.
+
+"No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common
+gratitude."
+
+"Don't talk about gratitude," he returned dryly. "And don't
+aggravate me," he added in a moment.
+
+Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her
+white hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament,
+as it were, to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but
+impressively sad. "On your side, don't try to frighten me. I
+wonder if you guess some of my thoughts."
+
+"I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite
+enough of my own."
+
+"That's because they're so delightful."
+
+Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked
+at his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also
+partly an expression of fatigue. "You do aggravate me," he
+remarked in a moment. "I'm very tired."
+
+"Eh moi donc!" cried Madame Merle.
+
+"With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my
+own fault."
+
+"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest.
+That's a great gift."
+
+"Do you call it an interest?" Osmond enquired with detachment.
+
+"Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time."
+
+"The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter."
+
+"You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so
+brilliant."
+
+"Damn my brilliancy!" he thoughtfully murmured. "How little,
+after all, you know me!"
+
+"If I don't know you I know nothing," smiled Madame Merle.
+"You've the feeling of complete success."
+
+"No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me."
+
+"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express
+yourself more too."
+
+Osmond just hung fire. "I wish you'd express yourself less!"
+
+"You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never
+been a chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I
+should like to say to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to
+do with herself," she went on with a change of tone.
+
+"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn.
+She means to carry out her ideas."
+
+"Her ideas to-day must be remarkable."
+
+"Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever."
+
+"She was unable to show me any this morning," said Madame Merle.
+"She seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind.
+She was completely bewildered."
+
+"You had better say at once that she was pathetic."
+
+"Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much."
+
+He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle
+of one foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. "I
+should like to know what's the matter with you," he said at last.
+
+"The matter--the matter--!" And here Madame Merle stopped. Then
+she went on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer
+thunder in a clear sky: "The matter is that I would give my right
+hand to be able to weep, and that I can't!"
+
+"What good would it do you to weep?"
+
+"It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you."
+
+"If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you
+shed them."
+
+"Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like
+a wolf. I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile
+this morning; I was horrid," she said.
+
+"If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she
+probably didn't perceive it," Osmond answered.
+
+"It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help
+it; I was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good;
+I don't know. You've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up
+my soul."
+
+"It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition,"
+Osmond said. "It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit
+of your influence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an
+immortal principle? How can it suffer alteration?"
+
+"I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I
+believe it can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened
+to mine, which was a very good one to start with; and it's you I
+have to thank for it. You're VERY bad," she added with gravity in
+her emphasis.
+
+"Is this the way we're to end?" Osmond asked with the same
+studied coldness.
+
+"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did--How do bad people
+end?--especially as to their COMMON crimes. You have made me as
+bad as yourself."
+
+"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough," said
+Osmond, his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to
+the words.
+
+Madame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to
+diminish, and she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on
+which we have had the pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her
+eye turners sombre; her smile betrayed a painful effort.
+"Good enough for anything that I've done with myself? I suppose
+that's what you mean."
+
+"Good enough to be always charming!" Osmond exclaimed, smiling
+too.
+
+"Oh God!" his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe
+freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked
+on Isabel's part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it
+with her hands.
+
+"Are you going to weep after all?" Osmond asked; and on her
+remaining motionless he went on: "Have I ever complained to you?"
+
+She dropped her hands quickly. "No, you've taken your revenge
+otherwise--you have taken it on HER."
+
+Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the
+ceiling and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an
+informal way, to the heavenly powers. "Oh, the imagination of
+women! It's always vulgar, at bottom. You talk of revenge like a
+third-rate novelist."
+
+"Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph
+too much."
+
+"I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph."
+
+"You've made your wife afraid of you."
+
+Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his
+elbows on his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old
+Persian rug, at his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any
+one's valuation of anything, even of time, and of preferring to
+abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him at moments an
+irritating person to converse with. "Isabel's not afraid of me,
+and it's not what I wish," he said at last. "To what do you want
+to provoke me when you say such things as that?"
+
+"I've thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle
+answered. "Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it
+was really you she feared."
+
+"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not
+responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see
+her at all: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made
+you afraid of me that I can see," he went on; "how then should I
+have made her? You're at least as brave. I can't think where
+you've picked up such rubbish; one might suppose you knew me by
+this time." He got up as he spoke and walked to the chimney,
+where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them
+for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain
+with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it in
+his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the
+mantel, he pursued: "You always see too much ins everything; you
+overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you
+think."
+
+"I think you're very simple." And Madame Merle kept her eye on
+her cup. "I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of
+old; but it's only since your marriage that I've understood you.
+I've seen better what you have been to your wife than I ever saw
+what you were for me. Please be very careful of that precious
+object."
+
+"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack," said Osmond dryly as
+he put it down. "If you didn't understand me before I married it
+was cruelly rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I
+took a fancy to my box myself; I thought it would be a
+comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked that she
+should like me."
+
+"That she should like you so much!"
+
+"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That
+she should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that."
+
+"I never adored you," said Madame Merle.
+
+"Ah, but you pretended to!"
+
+"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,"
+Madame Merle went on.
+
+"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort,"
+said Osmond. "If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the
+tragedy's hardly for her."
+
+"The tragedy's for me!" Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a
+long low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the
+contents of her mantel-shelf.
+
+"It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a
+false position."
+
+"You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look
+for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me,
+at least my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy.
+Fortunately I haven't a fault to find with her."
+
+"Ah," she said softly, "if I had a child--!"
+
+Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, "The children
+of others may be a great interest!" he announced.
+
+"You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all
+that holds us together."
+
+"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?" Osmond asked.
+
+"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that,"
+Madame Merle pursued, "that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want
+it to be MY work," she added, with her face, which had grown hard
+and bitter, relaxing to its habit of smoothness.
+
+Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the
+former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, "On the
+whole, I think," he said, "you had better leave it to me."
+
+After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from
+the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had
+mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather
+abstractedly. "Have I been so vile all for nothing?" she vaguely
+wailed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient
+monuments Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these
+interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an
+antiquarian aim. The Countess, who professed to think her
+sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and
+gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had
+been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense,
+though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards
+herself the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome
+that she only desired to float with the current. She would gladly
+have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the Baths
+of Titus if it had been a condition of her remaining at Palazzo
+Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe cicerone; she used
+to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an excuse for
+talking about other matters than the love affairs of the ladies of
+Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering
+information. It must be added that during these visits the
+Countess forbade herself every form of active research; her
+preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything
+was most interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto
+examined the Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--
+with all the respect that she owed her--could not see why she
+should not descend from the vehicle and enter the building. Pansy
+had so little chance to ramble that her view of the case was not
+wholly disinterested; it may be divined that she had a secret
+hope that, once inside, her parents' guest might be induced to
+climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Countess
+announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild
+afternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in
+occasional puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the
+Coliseum together, but Isabel left her companions to wander over
+the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges from
+which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and where now the
+wild flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices;
+and to-day she felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled
+arena. It made an intermission too, for the Countess often asked
+more from one's attention than she gave in return; and Isabel
+believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the dust
+gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so
+remained below therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating
+aunt to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the
+custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was
+half in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone of
+the great blocks of travertine--the latent colour that is the
+only living element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered
+a peasant or a tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where, in
+the clear stillness, a multitude of swallows kept circling and
+plunging. Isabel presently became aware that one of the other
+visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had turned his
+attention to her own person and was looking at her with a certain
+little poise of the head which she had some weeks before perceived
+to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such
+an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and
+this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the
+question of speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she
+was unaccompanied he drew near, remarking that though she would
+not answer his letters she would perhaps not wholly close her
+ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied that her stepdaughter
+was close at hand and that she could only give him five minutes;
+whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon a broken block.
+
+"It's very soon told," said Edward Rosier. "I've sold all my
+bibelots!" Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it
+was as if he had told her he had had all his teeth drawn. "I've
+sold them by auction at the Hotel Drouot," he went on. "The sale
+took place three days ago, and they've telegraphed me the result.
+It's magnificent."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things."
+
+"I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond
+think me rich enough now?"
+
+"Is it for that you did it?" Isabel asked gently.
+
+"For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I
+think of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't
+stop for the sale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think
+it would have killed me. But I put them into good hands, and they
+brought high prices. I should tell you I have kept my enamels.
+Now I have the money in my pocket, and he can't say I'm poor!"
+the young man exclaimed defiantly.
+
+"He'll say now that you're not wise," said Isabel, as if Gilbert
+Osmond had never said this before.
+
+Rosier gave her a sharp look. "Do you mean that without my
+bibelots I'm nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about
+me? That's what they told me in Paris; oh they were very frank
+about it. But they hadn't seen HER!"
+
+"My dear friend, you deserve to succeed," said Isabel very
+kindly.
+
+"You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I
+shouldn't." And he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation
+of his own. He had the air of a man who knows he has been the
+talk of Paris for a week and is full half a head taller in
+consequence, but who also has a painful suspicion that in spite
+of this increase of stature one or two persons still have the
+perversity to think him diminutive. "I know what happened here
+while I was away," he went on; "What does Mr. Osmond expect after
+she has refused Lord Warburton?"
+
+Isabel debated. "That she'll marry another nobleman."
+
+"What other nobleman?"
+
+"One that he'll pick out."
+
+Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.
+"You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at
+me."
+
+"I didn't mean to laugh," said Isabel. "I laugh very seldom. Now
+you had better go away."
+
+"I feel very safe!" Rosier declared without moving. This might
+be; but it evidently made him feel more so to make the
+announcement in rather a loud voice, balancing himself a little
+complacently on his toes and looking all round the Coliseum as if
+it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Isabel saw him change
+colour; there was more of an audience than he had suspected. She
+turned and perceived that her two companions had returned from
+their excursion. "You must really go away," she said quickly.
+"Ah, my dear lady, pity me!" Edward Rosier murmured in a voice
+strangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted.
+And then he added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his
+misery is seized by a happy thought: "Is that lady the Countess
+Gemini? I've a great desire to be presented to her."
+
+Isabel looked at him a moment. "She has no influence with her
+brother."
+
+"Ah, what a monster you make him out!" And Rosier faced the
+Countess, who advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation
+partly due perhaps to the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law
+to be engaged in conversation with a very pretty young man.
+
+"I'm glad you've kept your enamels!" Isabel called as she left
+him. She went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier,
+had stopped short, with lowered eyes. "We'll go back to the
+carriage," she said gently.
+
+"Yes, it's getting late," Pansy returned more gently still. And
+she went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back.
+Isabel, however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a
+meeting had immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr.
+Rosier. He had removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had
+evidently introduced himself, while the Countess's expressive
+back displayed to Isabel's eye a gracious inclination. These
+facts, none the less, were presently lost to sight, for Isabel
+and Pansy took their places again in the carriage. Pansy, who
+faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her lap;
+then she raised them and rested them on Isabel's. There shone out
+of each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion
+which touched Isabel to the heart. At the same time a wave of
+envy passed over her soul, as she compared the tremulous longing,
+the definite ideal of the child with her own dry despair. "Poor
+little Pansy!" she affectionately said.
+
+"Oh never mind!" Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology.
+And then there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming.
+"Did you show your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?" Isabel
+asked at last.
+
+"Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased."
+
+"And you're not tired, I hope."
+
+"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired."
+
+The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the
+footman to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting.
+He presently returned with the announcement that the Signora
+Contessa begged them not to wait--she would come home in a cab!
+
+About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted
+themselves with Mr. Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress
+for dinner, found Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to
+have been awaiting her; she got up from her low chair. "Pardon my
+taking the liberty," she said in a small voice. "It will be the
+last--for some time."
+
+Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an
+excited, frightened look. "You're not going away!" Isabel
+exclaimed.
+
+"I'm going to the convent."
+
+"To the convent?"
+
+Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round
+Isabel and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a
+moment, perfectly still; but her companion could feel her
+tremble. The quiver of her little body expressed everything she
+was unable to say. Isabel nevertheless pressed her. "Why are you
+going to the convent?"
+
+"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better,
+every now and then, for making a little retreat. He says the
+world, always the world, is very bad for a young girl. This is
+just a chance for a little seclusion--a little reflexion." Pansy
+spoke in short detached sentences, as if she could scarce trust
+herself; and then she added with a triumph of self-control: "I
+think papa's right; I've been so much in the world this winter."
+
+Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to
+carry a larger meaning than the girl herself knew. "When was this
+decided?" she asked. "I've heard nothing of it."
+
+"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't
+be too much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come
+for me at a quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks.
+It's only for a few weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall
+find all those ladies who used to be so kind to me, and I shall
+see the little girls who are being educated. I'm very fond of
+little girls," said Pansy with an effect of diminutive grandeur.
+"And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I shall be very quiet
+and think a great deal."
+
+Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost
+awe-struck. "Think of ME sometimes."
+
+"Ah, come and see me soon!" cried Pansy; and the cry was very
+different from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered
+herself.
+
+Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only
+felt how little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his
+daughter was a long, tender kiss.
+
+Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame
+Catherine had arrived in a cab and had departed again with the
+signorina. On going to the drawing-room before dinner she found
+the Countess Gemini alone, and this lady characterised the
+incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss of the head, "En
+voila, ma chere, une pose!" But if it was an affectation she
+was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could only
+dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed. It
+had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him
+that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several
+minutes after he had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden
+departure: she spoke of it only after they were seated at table.
+But she had forbidden herself ever to ask Osmond a question. All
+she could do was to make a declaration, and there was one that
+came very naturally. "I shall miss Pansy very much."
+
+He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket
+of flowers in the middle of the table. "Ah yes," he said at last,
+"I had thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but
+not too often. I dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good
+sisters; but I doubt if I can make you understand. It doesn't
+matter; don't trouble yourself about it. That's why I had not
+spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter into it. But I've
+always had the idea; I've always thought it a part of the
+education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and
+fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the
+present time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled.
+Pansy's a little dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked
+about too much. This bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself
+society--one should take her out of it occasionally. Convents are
+very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of
+her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among those
+tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born;
+several of them are noble. She will have her books and her
+drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal
+arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be
+a certain little sense of sequestration. She'll have time to
+think, and there's something I want her to think about." Osmond
+spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side,
+as if he were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone,
+however, was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as
+putting a thing into words--almost into pictures--to see,
+himself, how it would look. He considered a while the picture he
+had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he went
+on: "The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a
+great institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an
+essential need in families, in society. It's a school of good
+manners; it's a school of repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my
+daughter from the world," he added; "I don't want to make her fix
+her thoughts on any other. This one's very well, as SHE should
+take it, and she may think of it as much as she likes. Only she
+must think of it in the right way."
+
+Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found
+it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far
+her husband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the
+point of playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his
+daughter. She could not understand his purpose, no--not wholly;
+but she understood it better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch
+as she was convinced that the whole proceeding was an elaborate
+mystification, addressed to herself and destined to act upon her
+imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden and arbitrary,
+something unexpected and refined; to mark the difference between
+his sympathies and her own, and show that if he regarded his
+daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be
+more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished
+to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill
+into Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood
+and had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good
+sisters, who were very fond of her, and there was therefore for
+the moment no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same the
+girl had taken fright; the impression her father desired to make
+would evidently be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had
+never faded from Isabel's imagination, and as her thoughts
+attached themselves to this striking example of her husband's
+genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowers--poor
+little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond wished it to
+be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it hard
+to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief
+presently, in hearing the high, strained voice of her
+sister-in-law. The Countess too, apparently, had been thinking
+the thing out, but had arrived at a different conclusion
+from Isabel.
+
+"It's very absurd, my dear Osmond," she said, "to invent so many
+pretty reasons for poor Pansy's banishment. Why, don't you say at
+once that you want to get her out of my way? Haven't you
+discovered that I think very well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he
+seems to me simpaticissimo. He has made me believe in true love;
+I never did before! Of course you've made up your mind that with
+those convictions I'm dreadful company for Pansy."
+
+Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly
+good-humoured. "My dear Amy," he answered, smiling as if he were
+uttering a piece of gallantry, "I don't know anything about your
+convictions, but if I suspected that they interfere with mine it
+would be much simpler to banish YOU."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her
+tenure of her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident
+Isabel received a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt
+and bearing the stamp of Mrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph
+cannot last many days," it ran, "and if convenient would like to
+see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only if you've not
+other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good deal
+about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to
+see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and
+there's no other company." Isabel was prepared for this news,
+having received from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of
+her journey to England with her appreciative patient. Ralph had
+arrived more dead than alive, but she had managed to convey him
+to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which, as Miss
+Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She added
+that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one,
+inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly use, was
+quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett. Afterwards
+she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to
+Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had
+promptly given her to understand that she didn't wish any
+interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had written to her aunt shortly
+after Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical
+condition and suggesting that she should lose no time in returning
+to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgement of
+this admonition, and the only further news Isabel received from
+her was the second telegram I have just quoted.
+
+Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then,
+thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of
+her husband's study. Here she again paused an instant, after
+which she opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the
+table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped
+against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small
+coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been
+copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of
+water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already
+transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate,
+finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he
+recognised his wife without looking round.
+
+"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said.
+
+"When I come to your room I always knock," he answered, going on
+with his work.
+
+"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying."
+
+"Ah, I don't believe that," said Osmond, looking at his drawing
+through a magnifying glass. "He was dying when we married; he'll
+outlive us all."
+
+Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the
+careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly,
+full of her own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must
+go to Gardencourt."
+
+"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of
+impartial curiosity.
+
+"To see Ralph before he dies."
+
+To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to
+give his chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that
+would brook no negligence. "I don't see the need of it," he said
+at last. "He came to see you here. I didn't like that; I thought
+his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated it because it
+was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it's
+not to have been the last. Ah, you're not grateful!"
+
+"What am I to be grateful for?"
+
+Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of
+dust from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time
+looked at his wife. "For my not having interfered while he was
+here."
+
+"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me
+know you didn't like it. I was very glad when he went away."
+
+"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him."
+
+Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little
+drawing. "I must go to England," she said, with a full
+consciousness that her tone might strike an irritable man of
+taste as stupidly obstinate.
+
+"I shall not like it if you do," Osmond remarked.
+
+"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like
+nothing I do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie."
+
+Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why
+you must go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge
+on me."
+
+"I know nothing about revenge."
+
+"I do," said Osmond. "Don't give me an occasion."
+
+"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I
+would commit some folly."
+
+"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me."
+
+"If I disobeyed you?" said Isabel in a low tone which had the
+effect of mildness.
+
+"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of
+the most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition."
+
+"How can you call it calculated?  I received my aunt's telegram
+but three minutes ago."
+
+"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see
+why we should prolong our discussion; you know my wish." And he
+stood there as if he expected to see her withdraw.
+
+But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem;
+she still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an
+extraordinary degree, of making her feel this need. There was
+something in her imagination he could always appeal to against
+her judgement. "You've no reason for such a wish," said Isabel,
+"and I've every reason for going. I can't tell you how unjust you
+seem to me. But I think you know. It's your own opposition that's
+calculated. It's malignant."
+
+She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before,
+and the sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But
+he showed no surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof
+that he had believed his wife would in fact be unable to resist
+for ever his ingenious endeavour to draw her out. "It's all the
+more intense then," he answered. And he added almost as if he
+were giving her a friendly counsel: "This is a very important
+matter." She recognised that; she was fully conscious of the
+weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had
+arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she said
+nothing, and he went on. "You say I've no reason? I have the very
+best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to
+do. It's dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your
+cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to
+make concessions to him. I've already made the very handsomest.
+Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins and
+needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I
+expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has never liked
+me. That's why you like him--because he hates me," said Osmond
+with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. "I've an ideal
+of what my wife should do and should not do. She should not
+travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to
+sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin's nothing to you;
+he's nothing to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about
+US, but I assure you that WE, WE, Mrs. Osmond, is all I know. I
+take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of
+not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced or separated; for
+me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any human
+creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable
+proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making.
+You don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly
+willing, because--because--" And he paused a moment, looking as if
+he had something to say which would be very much to the point.
+"Because I think we should accept the consequences of our
+actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!"
+
+He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had
+dropped out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his
+wife's quick emotion; the resolution with which she had entered
+the room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last
+words were not a command, they constituted a kind of appeal; and,
+though she felt that any expression of respect on his part could
+only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something
+transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag
+of one's country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and
+precious--the observance of a magnificent form. They were as
+perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers had ever
+been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not
+changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and
+now, in the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous
+sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment
+promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to
+preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as
+far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all
+the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which she had so long
+been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to slow
+renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she
+must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim
+rather than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of
+mockery," she said. "How can you speak of an indissoluble union
+--how can you speak of your being contented? Where's our union
+when you accuse me of falsity? Where's your contentment when you
+have nothing but hideous suspicion in your heart?"
+
+"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such
+drawbacks."
+
+"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
+
+"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
+
+"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."
+
+He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had
+lived long enough in Italy to catch this trick. "Ah, if you've
+come to threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to
+his table, where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had
+been working and stood studying it.
+
+"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said
+Isabel.
+
+He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least
+was not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, "Are you
+out of your mind?" he enquired.
+
+"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially
+if all you say is true?" She was unable to see how it could be
+anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it
+might be.
+
+He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on
+the hypothesis of your defying me," he said. And he took up one
+of his little brushes again.
+
+She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her
+eye his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive
+figure; after which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her
+energy, her passion, were all dispersed again; she felt as if a
+cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed her. Osmond possessed in
+a supreme degree the art of eliciting any weakness. On her way
+back to her room she found the Countess Gemini standing in the
+open doorway of a little parlour in which a small collection of
+heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had an open
+volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a
+page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of
+Isabel's step she raised her head.
+
+"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me
+some amusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--!
+Do you think this would do me any good?"
+
+Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but
+without reading or understanding it. "I'm afraid I can't advise
+you. I've had bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying."
+
+The Countess threw down her book. "Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm
+awfully sorry for you."
+
+"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
+
+"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added.
+"You must have been with Osmond."
+
+Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an
+intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of
+her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her
+present embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at
+this lady's fluttering attention. "I've been with Osmond," she
+said, while the Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
+
+"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he
+say he was glad poor Mr. Touchett's dying?"
+
+"He said it's impossible I should go to England."
+
+The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was
+agile; she already foresaw the extinction of any further
+brightness in her visit to Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel
+would go into mourning, and then there would be no more
+dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a moment in her
+countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid, picturesque
+play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After
+all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had
+already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for
+Isabel's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's
+trouble was deep.
+
+It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the
+Countess had no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother
+with the expression of her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat
+with an almost joyous expectation, for if she had wished to see
+Osmond overtopped the conditions looked favourable now. Of course
+if Isabel should go to England she herself would immediately
+leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there
+with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire to hear that
+Isabel would go to England. "Nothing's impossible for you, my
+dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are you rich and clever
+and good?"
+
+"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak."
+
+"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a
+tone which sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.
+
+From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel
+drew back; she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had
+affectionately taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank
+bitterness. "Because we're so happy together that we can't
+separate even for a fortnight."
+
+"Ah," cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, "when I want
+to make a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no
+money!"
+
+Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an
+hour. It may appear to some readers that she gave herself much
+trouble, and it is certain that for a woman of a high spirit she
+had allowed herself easily to be arrested. It seemed to her that
+only now she fully measured the great undertaking of matrimony.
+Marriage meant that in such a case as this, when one had to
+choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's husband. "I'm
+afraid--yes, I'm afraid," she said to herself more than once,
+stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not
+her husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not
+even her own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which
+had often held her in check; it was simply the violence there
+would be in going when Osmond wished her to remain. A gulf of
+difference had opened between them, but nevertheless it was his
+desire that she should stay, it was a horror to him that she
+should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he could feel
+an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was
+capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for
+all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the
+man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the
+altar. She sank down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a
+pile of cushions.
+
+When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before
+her. She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on
+her thin lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining
+intimation. She lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window
+of her spirit, but now she was leaning far out. "I knocked," she
+began, "but you didn't answer me. So I ventured in. I've been
+looking at you for the past five minutes. You're very unhappy."
+
+"Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me."
+
+"Will you give me leave to try?" And the Countess sat down on
+the sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was
+something communicative and exultant in her expression. She
+appeared to have a deal to say, and it occurred to Isabel for the
+first time that her sister-in-law might say something really
+human. She made play with her glittering eyes, in which there was
+an unpleasant fascination. "After all," she soon resumed, "I must
+tell you, to begin with, that I don't understand your state of
+mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so many reasons, so many
+ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my husband's dearest
+wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply let me alone
+--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Isabel, you're
+not simple enough."
+
+"No, I'm not simple enough," said Isabel.
+
+"There's something I want you to know," the Countess declared--
+"because I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps
+you've guessed it. But if you have, all I can say is that I
+understand still less why you shouldn't do as you like."
+
+"What do you wish me to know?" Isabel felt a foreboding that made
+her heart beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself,
+and this alone was portentous.
+
+But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her
+subject. "In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have
+you never really suspected?"
+
+"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know
+what you mean."
+
+"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a
+woman with such a pure mind!" cried the Countess.
+
+Isabel slowly got up. "You're going to tell me something
+horrible."
+
+"You can call it by whatever name you will!" And the Countess
+rose also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful.
+She stood a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed
+to Isabel even then, of ugliness; after which she said: "My first
+sister-in-law had no children."
+
+Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax.
+"Your first sister-in-law?"
+
+"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond
+has been married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I
+thought it mightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less
+particular, must have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly
+three years and died childless. It wasn't till after her death
+that Pansy arrived."
+
+Isabel's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in
+pale, vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so
+much more to follow than she could see. "Pansy's not my husband's
+child then?"
+
+"Your husband's--in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some
+one else's wife's. Ah, my good Isabel," cried the Countess, "with
+you one must dot one's i's!"
+
+"I don't understand. Whose wife's?" Isabel asked.
+
+"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen,
+more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor,
+knowing what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and
+there was no reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better;
+though he had to fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own
+wife's having died in childbirth, and of his having, in grief and
+horror, banished the little girl from his sight for as long as
+possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife had really
+died, you know, of quite another matter and in quite another place:
+in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone, one August,
+because her health appeared to require the air, but where she was
+suddenly taken worse-- fatally ill. The story passed, sufficiently;
+it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody heeded, as
+nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without
+researches," the Countess lucidly proceeded; "as also, you'll
+understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Osmond
+and me. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to
+settle it?--that is to settle ME if I should say anything. I said
+nothing, right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can
+believe that of me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to
+you now, after all this time, as I've never, never spoken. It was
+to be enough for me, from the first, that the child was my
+niece--from the moment she was my brother's daughter. As for her
+veritable mother--!" But with this Pansy's wonderful aunt
+dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression of her
+sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to
+look at her than she had ever had to meet.
+
+She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own
+lips, an echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again,
+hanging her head. "Why have you told me this?" she asked in a
+voice the Countess hardly recognised.
+
+"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been
+bored, frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if,
+stupidly, all this time I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse,
+if you don't mind my saying so, the things, all round you, that
+you've appeared to succeed in not knowing. It's a sort of
+assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that I've always been a
+bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that of keeping
+quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found
+itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know," the
+Countess inimitably added. "The facts are exactly what I tell
+you."
+
+"I had no idea," said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a
+manner that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this
+confession.
+
+"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never
+occurred to you that he was for six or seven years her lover?"
+
+"I don't know. Things HAVE occurred to me, and perhaps that was
+what they all meant."
+
+"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about
+Pansy!" the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
+
+"Oh, no idea, for me," Isabel went on, "ever DEFINITELY took that
+form." She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and
+what hadn't. "And as it is--I don't understand."
+
+She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess
+seemed to have seen her revelation fall below its
+possibilities of effect. She had expected to kindle some
+responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a spark. Isabel showed
+as scarce more impressed than she might have been, as a young
+woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister passage of
+public history. "Don't you recognise how the child could never
+pass for HER husband's?--that is with M. Merle himself," her
+companion resumed. "They had been separated too long for that,
+and he had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If
+she had ever had children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost
+them. The conditions happened to make it workable, under stress
+(I mean at so awkward a pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge
+the little girl. His wife was dead--very true; but she had not
+been dead too long to put a certain accommodation of dates out of
+the question--from the moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn't
+started; which was what they had to take care of. What was more
+natural than that poor Mrs. Osmond, at a distance and for a world
+not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her,
+poverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her
+her life? With the aid of a change of residence--Osmond had been
+living with her at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps,
+and he in due course left it for ever--the whole history was
+successfully set going. My poor sister-in-law, in her grave,
+couldn't help herself, and the real mother, to save HER skin,
+renounced all visible property in the child."
+
+"Ah, poor, poor woman!" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into
+tears. It was a long time since she had shed any; she had
+suffered a high reaction from weeping. But now they flowed with
+an abundance in which the Countess Gemini found only another
+discomfiture.
+
+"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed.
+"Yes indeed, you have a way of your own--!"
+
+"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!" said
+Isabel with a sudden check.
+
+"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!"
+the Countess went on. "I quite agree with you, however, that it
+was much too soon."
+
+"But to me, to me--?" And Isabel hesitated as if she had not
+heard; as if her question--though it was sufficiently there in
+her eyes--were all for herself.
+
+"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what
+you call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover
+of another woman--SUCH a lover as he had been, cara mia,
+between their risks and their precautions, while the thing
+lasted! That state of affairs had passed away; the lady had
+repented, or at all events, for reasons of her own, drawn back:
+she had always had, too, a worship of appearances so intense that
+even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may therefore
+imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on conveniently to
+ANY of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between
+them."
+
+"Yes," Isabel mechanically echoed, "the whole past is between
+them."
+
+"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I
+say, they had kept it up."
+
+She was silent a little. "Why then did she want him to marry
+me?"
+
+"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and
+because she believed you would be good to Pansy."
+
+"Poor woman--and Pansy who doesn't like her!" cried Isabel.
+
+"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She
+knows it; she knows everything."
+
+"Will she know that you've told me this?"
+
+"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for
+it, and do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your
+believing that I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself
+uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as it happens this time, I don't.
+I've told plenty of little idiotic fibs, but they've never hurt
+any one but myself."
+
+Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of
+fantastic wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the
+carpet at her feet. "Why did Osmond never marry her?" she finally
+asked.
+
+"Because she had no money." The Countess had an answer for
+everything, and if she lied she lied well. "No one knows, no one
+has ever known, what she lives on, or how she has got all those
+beautiful things. I don't believe Osmond himself knows. Besides,
+she wouldn't have married him."
+
+"How can she have loved him then?"
+
+"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I
+suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband
+was living. By the time M. Merle had rejoined--I won't say his
+ancestors, because he never had any--her relations with Osmond
+had changed, and she had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has
+never had, about him," the Countess went on, leaving Isabel to
+wince for it so tragically afterwards--"she HAD never had, what
+you might call any illusions of INTELLIGENCE. She hoped she might
+marry a great man; that has always been her idea. She has waited
+and watched and plotted and prayed; but she has never succeeded.
+I don't call Madame Merle a success, you know. I don't know what
+she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very little to
+show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except, of
+course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of
+expense--has been her bringing you and Osmond together. Oh, she
+did that, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've
+watched them for years; I know everything--everything. I'm
+thought a great scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of
+mind to follow up those two. She hates me, and her way of showing
+it is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When people say
+I've had fifteen lovers she looks horrified and declares that
+quite half of them were never proved. She has been afraid of me
+for years, and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false
+things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd expose
+her, and she threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his
+court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember
+that afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the
+garden? She let me know then that if I should tell tales two
+could play at that game. She pretends there's a good deal more to
+tell about me than about her. It would be an interesting
+comparison! I don't care a fig what she may say, simply because I
+know YOU don't care a fig. You can't trouble your head about me
+less than you do already. So she may take her revenge as she
+chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great
+idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of
+full-blown lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always
+worshipped that god. There should be no scandal about Caesar's
+wife, you know; and, as I say, she has always hoped to marry
+Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn't marry Osmond; the fear
+that on seeing her with Pansy people would put things together--
+would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror lest the
+mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the
+mother has never done so."
+
+"Yes, yes, the mother has done so," said Isabel, who had listened
+to all this with a face more and more wan. "She betrayed herself
+to me the other day, though I didn't recognise her. There
+appeared to have been a chance of Pansy's making a great
+marriage, and in her disappointment at its not coming off she
+almost dropped the mask."
+
+"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She
+has failed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall
+make it up."
+
+Isabel started at the words "her daughter," which her guest threw
+off so familiarly. "It seems very wonderful," she murmured; and
+in this bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of
+being personally touched by the story.
+
+"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!" the
+Countess went on. "She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable
+origin. I myself have liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she
+was hers, but because she had become yours."
+
+"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have
+suffered at seeing me--!" Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at
+the thought.
+
+"I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has
+enjoyed. Osmond's marriage has given his daughter a great little
+lift. Before that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the
+mother thought? That you might take such a fancy to the child
+that you'd do something for her. Osmond of course could never
+give her a portion. Osmond was really extremely poor; but of
+course you know all about that. Ah, my dear," cried the Countess,
+"why did you ever inherit money?" She stopped a moment as if she
+saw something singular in Isabel's face. "Don't tell me now that
+you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would refuse
+to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and
+natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it,
+once in your life!"
+
+"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry,"
+Isabel said. "I'm much obliged to you."
+
+"Yes, you seem to be!" cried the Countess with a mocking laugh.
+"Perhaps you are--perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I
+should have thought."
+
+"How should I take it?" Isabel asked.
+
+"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of." Isabel
+made no answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went
+on. "They've always been bound to each other; they remained so
+even after she broke off--or HE did. But he has always been more
+for her than she has been for him. When their little carnival was
+over they made a bargain that each should give the other complete
+liberty, but that each should also do everything possible to help
+the other on. You may ask me how I know such a thing as that. I
+know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how much better women
+are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but Osmond has
+never lifted a little finger for HER. She has worked for him,
+plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once
+found money for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her.
+She's an old habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on
+the whole he wouldn't miss her if she were removed. And, what's
+more, today she knows it. So you needn't be jealous!" the
+Countess added humorously.
+
+Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of
+breath; her head was humming with new knowledge. "I'm much
+obliged to you," she repeated. And then she added abruptly, in
+quite a different tone: "How do you know all this?"
+
+This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel's
+expression of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a
+bold stare, with which, "Let us assume that I've invented it!"
+she cried. She too, however, suddenly changed her tone and,
+laying her hand on Isabel's arm, said with the penetration of her
+sharp bright smile: "Now will you give up your journey?"
+
+Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and
+in a moment had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support.
+She stood a minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her
+dizzy head, with closed eyes and pale lips.
+
+"I've done wrong to speak--I've made you ill!" the Countess
+cried.
+
+"Ah, I must see Ralph!" Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in
+the quick passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of
+far-reaching, infinite sadness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the
+Countess had left her Isabel had a rapid and decisive conference
+with her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this
+she thought (except of her journey) only of one thing. She must
+go and see Pansy; from her she couldn't turn away. She had not
+seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to understand that it was
+too soon to begin. She drove at five o'clock to a high floor in a
+narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was
+admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious
+person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come
+with Pansy to see the sisters. She knew they were good women, and
+she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that the
+well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she
+disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her;
+not for the world would she have spent a night there. It produced
+to-day more than before the impression of a well-appointed
+prison; for it was not possible to pretend Pansy was free to
+leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a
+new and violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation
+was to make her reach out a hand.
+
+The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while
+she went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear
+young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with
+new-looking furniture; a large clean stove of white porcelain,
+unlighted, a collection of wax flowers under glass, and a series
+of engravings from religious pictures on the walls. On the other
+occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than like
+Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment
+only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress
+returned at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another
+person. Isabel got up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the
+sisterhood, but to her extreme surprise found herself confronted
+with Madame Merle. The effect was strange, for Madame Merle was
+already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh
+was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture
+move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her
+audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark
+things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the
+room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence,
+of handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in
+court. It made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to
+speak on the spot she would have been quite unable. But no such
+necessity was distinct to her; it seemed to her indeed that she
+had absolutely nothing to say to Madame Merle. In one's relations
+with this lady, however, there were never any absolute
+necessities; she had a manner which carried off not only her own
+deficiencies but those of other people. But she was different
+from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel
+instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her
+habitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and
+she had undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This
+gave her a peculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and
+though Isabel saw that she was more than ever playing a part it
+seemed to her that on the whole the wonderful woman had never
+been so natural. She looked at her young friend from head to
+foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness
+rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their last
+meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She
+had been irritated then, she was reconciled now.
+
+"You can leave us alone," she said to the portress; "in five
+minutes this lady will ring for you." And then she turned to
+Isabel, who, after noting what has just been mentioned, had
+ceased to notice and had let her eyes wander as far as the limits
+of the room would allow. She wished never to look at Madame Merle
+again. "You're surprised to find me here, and I'm afraid you're
+not pleased," this lady went on. "You don't see why I should have
+come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've been
+rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission." There
+was none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said
+simply and mildly; but Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and
+pain, could not have told herself with what intention it was
+uttered. "But I've not been sitting long," Madame Merle
+continued; "that is I've not been long with Pansy. I came to see
+her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be
+rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good
+for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I can't
+tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the
+chance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well;
+still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The
+good woman--what's her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection
+whatever. I stayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming
+little room, not in the least conventual, with a piano and
+flowers. She has arranged it delightfully; she has so much taste.
+Of course it's all none of my business, but I feel happier since
+I've seen her. She may even have a maid if she likes; but of
+course she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little black
+frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see Mother
+Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't
+find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a
+most coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked
+uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks
+delightfully of Pansy; says it's a great happiness for them to
+have her. She's a little saint of heaven and a model to the
+oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame Catherine the
+portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the
+signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to
+let me go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I
+must tell you that--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother
+Superior; it was of such high importance that you should be
+treated with respect. I requested her to let the Mother Superior
+alone and asked her how she supposed I would treat you!"
+
+So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman
+who had long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But
+there were phases and gradations in her speech, not one of which
+was lost upon Isabel's ear, though her eyes were absent from her
+companion's face. She had not proceeded far before Isabel noted a
+sudden break in her voice, a lapse in her continuity, which was
+in itself a complete drama. This subtle modulation marked a
+momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely new attitude
+on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in the
+space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and
+in the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why.
+The person who stood there was not the same one she had seen
+hitherto, but was a very different person--a person who knew her
+secret. This discovery was tremendous, and from the moment she
+made it the most accomplished of women faltered and lost her
+courage. But only for that moment. Then the conscious stream of
+her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed on as
+smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had
+the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been
+touched with a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the
+alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only safety
+was in her not betraying herself. She resisted this, but the
+startled quality of her voice refused to improve--she couldn't
+help it--while she heard herself say she hardly knew what. The
+tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able only just to glide
+into port, faintly grazing the bottom.
+
+Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a
+large clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for
+it might have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had
+lost her pluck and saw before her the phantom of exposure--this
+in itself was a revenge, this in itself was almost the promise of
+a brighter day. And for a moment during which she stood
+apparently looking out of the window, with her back half-turned,
+Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side of the window
+lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she saw; she
+saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. She
+saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already
+become a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the
+vessel in which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic
+price, the dry staring fact that she had been an applied handled
+hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and
+iron. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul
+again; it was as if she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour.
+There was a moment during which, if she had turned and spoken,
+she would have said something that would hiss like a lash. But
+she closed her eyes, and then the hideous vision dropped. What
+remained was the cleverest woman in the world standing there
+within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to think as
+the meanest. Isabel's only revenge was to be silent still--to
+leave Madame Merle in this unprecedented situation. She left her
+there for a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who
+at last seated herself with a movement which was in itself a
+confession of helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow eyes, looking
+down at her. Madame Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered
+Isabel's face. She might see what she would, but her danger was
+over. Isabel would never accuse her, never reproach her; perhaps
+because she never would give her the opportunity to defend
+herself.
+
+"I'm come to bid Pansy good-bye," our young woman said at last.
+"I go to England to-night."
+
+"Go to England to-night!" Madame  Merle repeated sitting there and
+looking up at her.
+
+"I'm going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett's dying."
+
+"Ah, you'll feel that." Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a
+chance to express sympathy. "Do you go alone?"
+
+"Yes; without my husband."
+
+Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of
+the general sadness of things. "Mr. Touchett never liked me, but
+I'm sorry he's dying. Shall you see his mother?"
+
+"Yes; she has returned from America."
+
+"She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too
+have changed," said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She
+paused a moment, then added: "And you'll see dear old Gardencourt
+again!"
+
+"I shall not enjoy it much," Isabel answered.
+
+"Naturally--in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the
+houses I know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best
+to live in. I don't venture to send a message to the people,"
+Madame Merle added; "but I should like to give my love to the
+place."
+
+Isabel turned away. "I had better go to Pansy. I've not much
+time."
+
+While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened
+and admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a
+discreet smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a
+pair of plump white hands. Isabel recognised Madame Catherine,
+whose acquaintance she had already made, and begged that she
+would immediately let her see Miss Osmond. Madame Catherine
+looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly and said: "It
+will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her myself."
+Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
+
+"Will you let me remain a little?" this lady asked. "It's so good
+to be here."
+
+"You may remain always if you like!" And the good sister gave a
+knowing laugh.
+
+She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up
+a long staircase. All these departments were solid and bare,
+light and clean; so, thought Isabel, are the great penal
+establishments. Madame Catherine gently pushed open the door of
+Pansy's room and ushered in the visitor; then stood smiling with
+folded hands while the two others met and embraced.
+
+"She's glad to see you," she repeated; "it will do her good." And
+she placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no
+movement to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. "How does
+this dear child look?" she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
+
+"She looks pale," Isabel answered.
+
+"That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. Elle
+eclaire la maison," said the good sister.
+
+Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it
+was perhaps this that made her look pale. "They're very good to
+me--they think of everything!" she exclaimed with all her
+customary eagerness to accommodate.
+
+"We think of you always--you're a precious charge," Madame
+Catherine remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence
+was a habit and whose conception of duty was the acceptance of
+every care. It fell with a leaden weight on Isabel's ears; it
+seemed to represent the surrender of a personality, the authority
+of the Church.
+
+When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down
+and hid her head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some
+moments, while Isabel gently stroked her hair. Then she got up,
+averting her face and looking about the room. "Don't you think
+I've arranged it well? I've everything I have at home."
+
+"It's very pretty; you're very comfortable." Isabel scarcely knew
+what she could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her
+think she had come to pity her, and on the other it would be a
+dull mockery to pretend to rejoice with her. So she simply added
+after a moment: "I've come to bid you good-bye. I'm going to
+England."
+
+Pansy's white little face turned red. "To England! Not to come
+back?"
+
+"I don't know when I shall come back."
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry," Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if
+she had no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of
+disappointment.
+
+"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish
+to see him," Isabel said.
+
+"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And
+will papa go?"
+
+"No; I shall go alone."
+
+For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered
+what she thought of the apparent relations of her father with his
+wife; but never by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be
+seen that she deemed them deficient in an air of intimacy. She
+made her reflexions, Isabel was sure; and she must have had a
+conviction that there were husbands and wives who were more
+intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet even in thought;
+she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle stepmother
+as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have stood
+almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the
+saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their
+painted heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter
+case she would (for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned
+the awful phenomenon, so she put away all knowledge of the secrets
+of larger lives than her own. "You'll be very far away," she
+presently went on.
+
+"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter," Isabel
+explained; "since so long as you're here I can't be called near
+you."
+
+"Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very
+often."
+
+"I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring
+nothing with me. I can't amuse you."
+
+"I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes."
+
+"Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England."
+
+"You're not happy, Mrs. Osmond," said Pansy.
+
+"Not very. But it doesn't matter."
+
+"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should
+like to come out."
+
+"I wish indeed you might."
+
+"Don't leave me here," Pansy went on gently.
+
+Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. "Will you
+come away with me now?" she asked.
+
+Pansy looked at her pleadingly. "Did papa tell you to bring me?"
+
+"No; it's my own proposal."
+
+"I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?"
+
+"I don't think he knew I was coming."
+
+"He thinks I've not had enough," said Pansy. "But I have. The
+ladies are very kind to me and the little girls come to see me.
+There are some very little ones--such charming children. Then my
+room--you can see for yourself. All that's very delightful. But
+I've had enough. Papa wished me to think a little--and I've
+thought a great deal."
+
+"What have you thought?"
+
+"Well, that I must never displease papa."
+
+"You knew that before."
+
+"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything--I'll do anything,"
+said Pansy. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush
+came into her face. Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the
+poor girl had been vanquished. It was well that Mr. Edward Rosier
+had kept his enamels! Isabel looked into her eyes and saw there
+mainly a prayer to be treated easily. She laid her hand on
+Pansy's as if to let her know that her look conveyed no diminution
+of esteem; for the collapse of the girl's momentary resistance
+(mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only her tribute to
+the truth of things. She didn't presume to judge others, but she
+had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no vocation
+for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of
+sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed
+her pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be
+merciful. Yes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a
+few articles!
+
+Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. "Good-bye then. I
+leave Rome to-night."
+
+Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the
+child's face. "You look strange, you frighten me."
+
+"Oh, I'm very harmless," said Isabel.
+
+"Perhaps you won't come back?"
+
+"Perhaps not. I can't tell."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Osmond, you won't leave me!"
+
+Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. "My dear child, what
+can I do for you?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--but I'm happier when I think of you."
+
+"You can always think of me."
+
+"Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid," said Pansy.
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+"Of papa--a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see
+me."
+
+"You must not say that," Isabel observed.
+
+"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do
+it more easily."
+
+Isabel considered. "I won't desert you," she said at last.
+"Good-bye, my child."
+
+Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two
+sisters; and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her
+visitor to the top of the staircase. "Madame Merle has been
+here," she remarked as they went; and as Isabel answered nothing
+she added abruptly: "I don't like Madame Merle!"
+
+Isabel hesitated, then stopped. "You must never say that--that
+you don't like Madame Merle."
+
+Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never
+been a reason for non-compliance. "I never will again," she said
+with exquisite gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had
+to separate, as it appeared to be part of the mild but very
+definite discipline under which Pansy lived that she should not
+go down. Isabel descended, and when she reached the bottom the
+girl was standing above. "You'll come back?" she called out in a
+voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
+
+"Yes--I'll come back."
+
+Madame Catherine met Mrs. Osmond below and conducted her to the
+door of the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a
+minute. "I won't go in," said the good sister. "Madame Merle's
+waiting for you."
+
+At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of
+asking if there were no other egress from the convent. But a
+moment's reflexion assured her that she would do well not to
+betray to the worthy nun her desire to avoid Pansy's other
+friend. Her companion grasped her arm very gently and, fixing her
+a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said in French and almost
+familiarly: "Eh bien, chere Madame, qu'en pensez-vous?"
+
+"About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you."
+
+"We think it's enough," Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And
+she pushed open the door of the parlour.
+
+Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a
+woman so absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little
+finger. As Madame Catherine closed the door she got up, and
+Isabel saw that she had been thinking to some purpose. She had
+recovered her balance; she was in full possession of her
+resources. "I found I wished to wait for you," she said urbanely.
+"But it's not to talk about Pansy."
+
+Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of
+Madame Merle's declaration she answered after a moment: "Madame
+Catherine says it's enough."
+
+"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another
+word about poor Mr. Touchett," Madame Merle added. "Have you
+reason to believe that he's really at his last?"
+
+"I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only
+confirms a probability."
+
+"I'm going to ask you a strange question," said Madame Merle.
+"Are you very fond of your cousin?" And she gave a smile as
+strange as her utterance.
+
+"Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you."
+
+She just hung fire. "It's rather hard to explain. Something has
+occurred to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you
+the benefit of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service.
+Have you never guessed it?"
+
+"He has done me many services."
+
+"Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman."
+
+"HE made me--?"
+
+Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on
+more triumphantly: "He imparted to you that extra lustre which
+was required to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him
+you've to thank." She stopped; there was something in Isabel's
+eyes.
+
+"I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money."
+
+"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea.
+He brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was
+large!"
+
+Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world
+illumined by lurid flashes. "I don't know why you say such
+things. I don't know what you know."
+
+"I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that."
+
+Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a
+moment with her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only
+revenge: "I believed it was you I had to thank!"
+
+Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud
+penance. "You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so."
+
+"Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you
+again."
+
+Madame Merle raised her eyes. "I shall go to America," she
+quietly remarked while Isabel passed out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other
+circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as
+Isabel descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped
+into the arms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of
+Henrietta Stackpole. She had telegraphed to her friend from
+Turin, and though she had not definitely said to herself that
+Henrietta would meet her, she had felt her telegram would produce
+some helpful result. On her long journey from Rome her mind had
+been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the
+future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took
+little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though
+they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts
+followed their course through other countries--strange-looking,
+dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there was no change of
+seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual dreariness of
+winter. She had plenty to think about; but it was neither
+reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind.
+Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of
+memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at
+their will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose
+and fell by a logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things
+she remembered. Now that she was in the secret, now that she knew
+something that so much concerned her and the eclipse of which had
+made life resemble an attempt to play whist with an imperfect
+pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual relations, their
+meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before her with
+a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand
+trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver.
+She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that they
+had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after
+all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing
+seemed of use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was
+suspended; all desire too save the single desire to reach her
+much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her starting-point,
+and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary
+solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would
+come back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to
+her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his
+dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect
+of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything
+more--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a
+marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
+
+She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost
+as good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so
+passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from
+hope and regret, that she recalled to herself one of those
+Etruscan figures couched upon the receptacle of their ashes.
+There was nothing to regret now--that was all over. Not only the
+time of her folly, but the time of her repentance was far. The
+only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so--well, so
+unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal
+inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever
+it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and
+doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she
+was going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an
+impression that she should never again see Madame Merle. This
+impression carried her into the future, of which from time to
+time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant
+years, still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live,
+and these intimations contradicted the spirit of the present
+hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away,
+further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege
+was evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any
+appetite for renunciation--was the sense that life would be her
+business for a long time to come. And at moments there was
+something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the conviction. It was
+a proof of strength--it was a proof she should some day be happy
+again. It couldn't be she was to live only to suffer; she was
+still young, after all, and a great many things might happen to
+her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury of life
+repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable, too
+capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid
+to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to
+be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of
+precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were
+fine one would suffer? It involved then perhaps an admission that
+one had a certain grossness; but Isabel recognised, as it passed
+before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She
+should never escape; she should last to the end. Then the middle
+years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her
+indifference closed her in.
+
+Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were
+afraid she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there
+in the crowd, looking about her, looking for her servant. She
+asked nothing; she wished to wait. She had a sudden perception
+that she should be helped. She rejoiced Henrietta had come; there
+was something terrible in an arrival in London. The dusky, smoky,
+far-arching vault of the station, the strange, livid light, the
+dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous fear and
+made her put her arm into her friend's. She remembered she had
+once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle
+in which there was something that touched her. She remembered how
+she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded
+streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day,
+and the incident came before her as the deed of another person.
+
+"It's too beautiful that you should have come," said Henrietta,
+looking at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to
+challenge the proposition. "If you hadn't--if you hadn't; well, I
+don't know," remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her
+powers of disapproval.
+
+Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on
+another figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and
+in a moment she recognised the genial countenance of Mr.
+Bantling. He stood a little apart, and it was not in the power of
+the multitude that pressed about him to make him yield an inch of
+the ground he had taken--that of abstracting himself discreetly
+while the two ladies performed their embraces.
+
+"There's Mr. Bantling," said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly,
+scarcely caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.
+
+"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!"
+Henrietta exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with
+a smile--a smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the
+occasion. "Isn't it lovely she has come?" Henrietta asked. "He
+knows all about it," she added; "we had quite a discussion. He
+said you wouldn't, I said you would."
+
+"I thought you always agreed," Isabel smiled in return. She felt
+she could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr.
+Bantling's brave eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed
+to say he wished her to remember he was an old friend of her
+cousin--that he understood, that it was all right. Isabel gave
+him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a beautiful
+blameless knight.
+
+"Oh, I always agree," said Mr. Bantling. "But she doesn't, you
+know."
+
+"Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?" Henrietta
+enquired. "Your young lady has probably remained at Calais."
+
+"I don't care," said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she
+had never found so interesting.
+
+"Stay with her while I go and see," Henrietta commanded, leaving
+the two for a moment together.
+
+They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked
+Isabel how it had been on the Channel.
+
+"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough," she said, to her
+companion's obvious surprise. After which she added: "You've been
+to Gardencourt, I know."
+
+"Now how do you know that?"
+
+"I can't tell you--except that you look like a person who has
+been to Gardencourt."
+
+"Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you
+know."
+
+"I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully
+kind," said Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It
+seemed to her she should never again feel a superficial
+embarrassment.
+
+Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He
+blushed a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often
+very blue, and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. "You
+can ask Miss Stackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days
+ago."
+
+"Did you see my cousin?"
+
+"Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had
+been there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual,
+except that he was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and
+that he can't speak," Mr. Bantling pursued. "He was awfully
+jolly and funny all the same. He was just as clever as ever. It's
+awfully wretched."
+
+Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid.
+"Was that late in the day?"
+
+"Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know."
+
+"I'm greatly obliged to you. Can I go down tonight?"
+
+"Ah, I don't think SHE'LL let you go," said Mr. Bantling. "She
+wants you to stop with her. I made Touchett's man promise to
+telegraph me to-day, and I found the telegram an hour ago at my
+club. 'Quiet and easy,' that's what it says, and it's dated two
+o'clock. So you see you can wait till to-morrow. You must be
+awfully tired."
+
+"Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Bantling, "We were certain you would like the last
+news." On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed
+after all to agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel's maid,
+whom she had caught in the act of proving her utility. This
+excellent person, instead of losing herself in the crowd, had
+simply attended to her mistress's luggage, so that the latter was
+now at liberty to leave the station. "You know you're not to
+think of going to the country to-night," Henrietta remarked to
+her. "It doesn't matter whether there's a train or not. You're to
+come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a corner to be
+had in London, but I've got you one all the same. It isn't a
+Roman palace, but it will do for a night."
+
+"I'll do whatever you wish," Isabel said.
+
+"You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish."
+
+"She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?"
+Mr. Bantling enquired jocosely.
+
+Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. "I see
+you're in a great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the
+Paddington Station to-morrow morning at ten."
+
+"Don't come for my sake, Mr. Bantling," said Isabel.
+
+"He'll come for mine," Henrietta declared as she ushered her
+friend into a cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole
+Street--to do her justice there had been dinner enough--she asked
+those questions to which she had alluded at the station. "Did
+your husband make you a scene about your coming?" That was Miss
+Stackpole's first enquiry.
+
+"No; I can't say he made a scene."
+
+"He didn't object then?"
+
+"Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a
+scene."
+
+"What was it then?"
+
+"It was a very quiet conversation."
+
+Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. "It must have been
+hellish," she then remarked. And Isabel didn't deny that it had
+been hellish. But she confined herself to answering Henrietta's
+questions, which was easy, as they were tolerably definite. For
+the present she offered her no new information. "Well," said Miss
+Stackpole at last, "I've only one criticism to make. I don't see
+why you promised little Miss Osmond to go back."
+
+"I'm not sure I myself see now," Isabel replied. "But I did
+then."
+
+"If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return."
+
+Isabel waited a moment. "Perhaps I shall find another."
+
+"You'll certainly never find a good one."
+
+"In default of a better my having promised will do," Isabel
+suggested.
+
+"Yes; that's why I hate it."
+
+"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a
+complication, but what will going back be?"
+
+"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!"
+said Henrietta with much intention.
+
+"He will, though," Isabel answered gravely. "It won't be the
+scene of a moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life."
+
+For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder,
+and then Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had
+requested, announced abruptly: "I've been to stay with Lady
+Pensil!"
+
+"Ah, the invitation came at last!"
+
+"Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me."
+
+"Naturally enough."
+
+"It was more natural than I think you know," said Henrietta, who
+fixed her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning
+suddenly: "Isabel Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why?
+Because I criticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr.
+Osmond, at least, was born on the other side!"
+
+It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was
+so modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel's mind
+was not possessed at present with the comicality of things; but
+she greeted with a quick laugh the image that her companion had
+raised. She immediately recovered herself, however, and with the
+right excess of intensity, "Henrietta Stackpole," she asked, "are
+you going to give up your country?"
+
+"Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look
+the fact: in the face. I'm going to marry Mr. Bantling and locate
+right here in London."
+
+"It seems very strange," said Isabel, smiling now.
+
+"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I
+think I know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain."
+
+"One can't explain one's marriage," Isabel answered. "And yours
+doesn't need to be explained. Mr. Bantling isn't a riddle."
+
+"No, he isn't a bad pun--or even a high flight of American
+humour. He has a beautiful nature," Henrietta went on. "I've
+studied him for many years and I see right through him. He's as
+clear as the style of a good prospectus. He's not intellectual,
+but he appreciates intellect. On the other hand he doesn't
+exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in the United
+States."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "you're changed indeed! It's the first time
+I've ever heard you say anything against your native land."
+
+"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power;
+that, after all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I AM changed; a woman
+has to change a good deal to marry."
+
+"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see
+something of the inner life."
+
+Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. "That's the key to the
+mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as
+good a right as any one!" she added with artless elation.
+Isabel was duly diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in
+her view. Henrietta, after all, had confessed herself human and
+feminine, Henrietta whom she had hitherto regarded as a light
+keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a disappointment to find
+she had personal susceptibilities, that she was subject to common
+passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Bantling had not been
+completely original. There was a want of originality in her
+marrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a
+moment, to Isabel's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a
+deeper tinge. A little later indeed she reflected that Mr.
+Bantling himself at least was original. But she didn't see how
+Henrietta could give up her country. She herself had relaxed her
+hold of it, but it had never been her country as it had been
+Henrietta's. She presently asked her if she had enjoyed her visit
+to Lady Pensil.
+
+"Oh yes," said Henrietta, "she didn't know what to make of me."
+
+"And was that very enjoyable?"
+
+"Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She
+thinks she knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman
+of my modern type. It would be so much easier for her if I were
+only a little better or a little worse. She's so puzzled; I
+believe she thinks it's my duty to go and do something immoral.
+She thinks it's immoral that I should marry her brother; but,
+after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll never understand
+my mixture--never!"
+
+"She's not so intelligent as her brother then," said Isabel. "He
+appears to have understood."
+
+"Oh no, he hasn't!" cried Miss Stackpole with decision. "I really
+believe that's what he wants to marry me for--just to find out
+the mystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed idea--a
+kind of fascination."
+
+"It's very good in you to humour it."
+
+"Oh well," said Henrietta, "I've something to find out too!" And
+Isabel saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned
+an attack. She was at last about to grapple in earnest with
+England.
+
+Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington
+Station, where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company
+both of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling, that the gentleman bore
+his perplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he
+had found out at least the great point--that Miss Stackpole would
+not be wanting in initiative. It was evident that in the
+selection of a wife he had been on his guard against this
+deficiency.
+
+"Henrietta has told me, and I'm very glad," Isabel said as she
+gave him her hand.
+
+"I dare say you think it awfully odd," Mr. Bantling replied,
+resting on his neat umbrella.
+
+"Yes, I think it awfully odd."
+
+"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always
+rather liked striking out a line," said Mr. Bantling serenely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Isabel's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even
+quieter than it had been on the first. Ralph Touchett kept but a
+small household, and to the new servants Mrs. Osmond was a
+stranger; so that instead of being conducted to her own apartment
+she was coldly shown into the drawing-room and left to wait while
+her name was carried up to her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs.
+Touchett appeared in no hurry to come to her. She grew impatient
+at last; she grew nervous and scared--as scared as if the objects
+about her had begun to show for conscious things, watching her
+trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark and cold; the
+dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The house
+was perfectly still--with a stillness that Isabel remembered; it
+had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle.
+She left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the
+library and along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep
+silence, her footstep made an echo. Nothing was changed; she
+recognised everything she had seen years before; it might have
+been only yesterday she had stood there. She envied the security
+of valuable "pieces" which change by no hair's breadth, only grow
+in value, while their owners lose inch by inch youth, happiness,
+beauty; and she became aware that she was walking about as her
+aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany. She
+was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It
+suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day
+in just that way and found her alone, everything might have been
+different. She might have had another life and she might have
+been a woman more blest. She stopped in the gallery in front of a
+small picture--a charming and precious Bonington--upon which her
+eyes rested a long time. But she was not looking at the picture;
+she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in
+Albany she would have married Caspar Goodwood.
+
+Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to
+the big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older,
+but her eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin
+lips seemed a repository of latent meanings. She wore a little
+grey dress of the most undecorated fashion, and Isabel wondered,
+as she had wondered the first time, if her remarkable kinswoman
+resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a gaol. Her lips
+felt very thin indeed on Isabel's hot cheek.
+
+"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Ralph,"
+Mrs. Touchett said. "The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had
+taken her place. He has a man who's supposed to look after him,
+but the man's good for nothing; he's always looking out of the
+window--as if there were anything to see! I didn't wish to move,
+because Ralph seemed to be sleeping and I was afraid the sound
+would disturb him. I waited till the nurse came back. I remembered
+you knew the house."
+
+"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking
+everywhere," Isabel answered. And then she asked if Ralph slept
+much.
+
+"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure
+that it's always sleep."
+
+"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?"
+
+Mrs. Touchett declined the office of saying. "You can try him,"
+was the limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to
+conduct Isabel to her room. "I thought they had taken you there;
+but it's not my house, it's Ralph's; and I don't know what they
+do. They must at least have taken your luggage; I don't suppose
+you've brought much. Not that I care, however. I believe they've
+given you the same room you had before; when Ralph heard you were
+coming he said you must have that one."
+
+"Did he say anything else?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!" cried Mrs. Touchett
+as she preceded her niece up the staircase.
+
+It was the same room, and something told Isabel it had not been
+slept in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not
+voluminous; Mrs. Touchett sat down a moment with her eyes upon
+it. "Is there really no hope?" our young woman asked as she stood
+before her.
+
+"None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a
+successful life."
+
+"No--it has only been a beautiful one." Isabel found herself
+already contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that; there's no beauty without
+health. That is a very odd dress to travel in."
+
+Isabel glanced at her garment. "I left Rome at an hour's notice;
+I took the first that came."
+
+"Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That
+seemed to be their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them
+--but they seemed to have the right idea: that you never wear
+anything less than black brocade."
+
+"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them
+the truth," said Isabel. "Lily wrote me you had dined with her."
+
+"She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second
+time she should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it
+must have been expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did
+I enjoy my visit to America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I
+didn't go for my pleasure."
+
+These were interesting items, but Mrs. Touchett soon left her
+niece, whom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal.
+For this repast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated
+table in the melancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Isabel
+saw her aunt not to be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity
+for the poor woman's inexpressiveness, her want of regret, of
+disappointment, came back to her. Unmistakeably she would have
+found it a blessing to-day to be able to feel a defeat, a mistake,
+even a shame or two. She wondered if she were not even missing
+those enrichments of consciousness and privately trying--
+reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet;
+the testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the
+other hand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know
+remorse at all it might take her too far. Isabel could perceive,
+however, how it had come over her dimly that she had failed of
+something, that she saw herself in the future as an old woman
+without memories. Her little sharp face looked tragical. She told
+her niece that Ralph had as yet not moved, but that he probably
+would be able to see her before dinner. And then in a moment she
+added that he had seen Lord Warburton the day before; an
+announcement which startled Isabel a little, as it seemed an
+intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that
+an accident might bring them together. Such an accident would not
+be happy; she had not come to England to struggle again with Lord
+Warburton. She none the less presently said to her aunt that he
+had been very kind to Ralph; she had seen something of that in
+Rome.
+
+"He has something else to think of now," Mrs. Touchett returned.
+And she paused with a gaze like a gimlet.
+
+Isabel saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she
+meant. But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster
+and she wished to gain a moment. "Ah yes--the House of Lords and
+all that."
+
+"He's not thinking of the Lords; he's thinking of the ladies. At
+least he's thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he's engaged to
+be married."
+
+"Ah, to be married!" Isabel mildly exclaimed.
+
+"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to
+know. Poor Ralph can't go to the wedding, though I believe it's
+to take place very soon.
+
+"And who's the young lady?"
+
+"A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--
+something of that sort."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel said. "It must be a sudden decision."
+
+"Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has
+only just been made public."
+
+"I'm very glad," Isabel repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew
+her aunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed
+soreness, and the desire to prevent her companion from seeing
+anything of this kind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick
+satisfaction, the tone almost of relief. Mrs. Touchett of course
+followed the tradition that ladies, even married ones, regard the
+marriage of their old lovers as an offence to themselves.
+Isabel's first care therefore was to show that however that might
+be in general she was not offended now. But meanwhile, as I say,
+her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some moments thoughtful
+--she presently forgot Mrs. Touchett's observation--it was not
+because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed
+half Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in
+the city of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband
+that Lord Warburton was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was
+of course not aware how extremely wan she must have looked while
+she made this intellectual effort. But at last she collected
+herself and said to her aunt: "He was sure to do it some time or
+other."
+
+Mrs. Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of
+the head. "Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!" she cried suddenly.
+They went on with their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if
+she had heard of Lord Warburton's death. She had known him only
+as a suitor, and now that was all over. He was dead for poor
+Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A servant had been hovering
+about; at last Mrs. Touchett requested him to leave them alone.
+She had finished her meal; she sat with her hands folded on the
+edge of the table. "I should like to ask you three questions,"
+she observed when the servant had gone.
+
+"Three are a great many."
+
+"I can't do with less; I've been thinking. They're all very good
+ones."
+
+"That's what I'm afraid of. The best questions are the worst,"
+Isabel answered. Mrs. Touchett had pushed back her chair, and as
+her niece left the table and walked, rather consciously, to one
+of the deep windows, she felt herself followed by her eyes.
+
+"Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Lord Warburton?" Mrs.
+Touchett enquired.
+
+Isabel shook her head slowly, but not heavily. "No, dear aunt."
+
+"Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you
+say."
+
+"Your believing me's an immense temptation," she declared,
+smiling still.
+
+"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when
+I'm misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean
+to crow over you."
+
+"It's my husband who doesn't get on with me," said Isabel.
+
+"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing
+over YOU," Mrs. Touchett added. "Do you still like Serena Merle?"
+she went on.
+
+"Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she's going to
+America."
+
+"To America? She must have done something very bad."
+
+"Yes--very bad."
+
+"May I ask what it is?"
+
+"She made a convenience of me."
+
+"Ah," cried Mrs. Touchett, "so she did of me! She does of every
+one."
+
+"She'll make a convenience of America," said Isabel, smiling
+again and glad that her aunt's questions were over.
+
+It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He
+had been dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious.
+The doctor was there, but after a while went away--the local
+doctor, who had attended his father and whom Ralph liked. He came
+three or four times a day; he was deeply interested in his
+patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope, but he had got tired of
+this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his mother to send word
+he was now dead and was therefore without further need of medical
+advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew that her
+son disliked him. On the day of Isabel's arrival Ralph gave no
+sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he
+raised himself and said he knew that she had come.
+
+How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting
+him no one had offered the information. Isabel came in and sat by
+his bed in the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a
+corner of the room. She told the nurse she might go--she herself
+would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had opened his
+eyes and recognised her, and had moved his hand, which lay
+helpless beside him, so that she might take it. But he was unable
+to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained perfectly still,
+only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a long time--
+till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He might
+have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the
+figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in
+Rome, and this was worse; there was but one change possible now.
+There was a strange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as
+the lid of a box. With this he was a mere lattice of bones; when
+he opened his eyes to greet her it was as if she were looking
+into immeasurable space. It was not till midnight that the nurse
+came back; but the hours, to Isabel, had not seemed long; it was
+exactly what she had come for. If she had come simply to wait she
+found ample occasion, for he lay three days in a kind of grateful
+silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to wish to
+speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as
+if he too were waiting for something--for something that
+certainly would come. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed
+to her what was coming had already arrived; and yet she never
+lost the sense that they were still together. But they were not
+always together; there were other hours that she passed in
+wandering through the empty house and listening for a voice that
+was not poor Ralph's. She had a constant fear; she thought it
+possible her husband would write to her. But he remained silent,
+and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Countess
+Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the
+third day.
+
+"I feel better to-night," he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless
+dimness of her vigil; "I think I can say something." She sank
+upon her knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own;
+begged him not to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face
+was of necessity serious--it was incapable of the muscular play
+of a smile; but its owner apparently had not lost a perception of
+incongruities. "What does it matter if I'm tired when I've all
+eternity to rest? There's no harm in making an effort when it's
+the very last of all. Don't people always feel better just before
+the end? I've often heard of that; it's what I was waiting for.
+Ever since you've been here I thought it would come. I tried two
+or three times; I was afraid you'd get tired of sitting there."
+He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice
+seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his
+face turned to Isabel and his large unwinking eyes open into her
+own. "It was very good of you to come," he went on. "I thought
+you would; but I wasn't sure."
+
+"I was not sure either till I came," said Isabel.
+
+"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk
+about the angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You've
+been like that; as if you were waiting for me."
+
+"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this.
+This is not death, dear Ralph."
+
+"Not for you--no. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as
+to see others die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that
+we remain. I've had it--even I. But now I'm of no use but to give
+it to others. With me it's all over." And then he paused. Isabel
+bowed her head further, till it rested on the two hands that were
+clasped upon his own. She couldn't see him now; but his far-away
+voice was close to her ear. "Isabel," he went on suddenly, "I
+wish it were over for you." She answered nothing; she had burst
+into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay silent,
+listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. "Ah, what is
+it you have done for me?"
+
+"What is it you did for me?" she cried, her now extreme agitation
+half smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all
+wish to hide things. Now he must know; she wished him to know,
+for it brought them supremely together, and he was beyond the
+reach of pain. "You did something once--you know it. O Ralph,
+you've been everything! What have I done for you--what can I do
+to-day? I would die if you could live. But I don't wish you to
+live; I would die myself, not to lose you." Her voice was as
+broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.
+
+"You won't lose me--you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I
+shall be nearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Isabel, life is
+better; for in life there's love. Death is good--but there's no
+love."
+
+"I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should
+be!" Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and
+accuse herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles,
+for the moment, became single and melted together into this
+present pain. "What must you have thought of me? Yet how could I
+know? I never knew, and I only know to-day because there are
+people less stupid than I."
+
+"Don't mind people," said Ralph. "I think I'm glad to leave
+people."
+
+She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a
+moment to pray to him. "Is it true--is it true?" she asked.
+
+"True that you've been stupid? Oh no," said Ralph with a sensible
+intention of wit.
+
+"That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?"
+
+He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at
+last: "Ah, don't speak of that--that was not happy." Slowly he
+moved his face toward her again, and they once more saw each
+other. "But for that--but for that--!" And he paused. "I believe
+I ruined you," he wailed.
+
+She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain;
+he seemed already so little of this world. But even if she had
+not had it she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now
+but the only knowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge
+that they were looking at the truth together.
+
+"He married me for the money," she said. She wished to say
+everything; she was afraid he might die before she had done so.
+He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes
+lowered their lids. But he raised them in a moment, and then, "He
+was greatly in love with you," he answered.
+
+"Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn't have married me if
+I had been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I
+only want you to understand. I always tried to keep you from
+understanding; but that's all over."
+
+"I always understood," said Ralph.
+
+"I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it."
+
+"You don't hurt me--you make me very happy." And as Ralph said
+this there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent
+her head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. "I
+always understood," he continued, "though it was so strange--so
+pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were
+not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in
+the very mill of the conventional!"
+
+"Oh yes, I've been punished," Isabel sobbed.
+
+He listened to her a little, and then continued: "Was he very bad
+about your coming?"
+
+"He made it very hard for me. But I don't care."
+
+"It is all over then between you?"
+
+"Oh no; I don't think anything's over."
+
+"Are you going back to him ?" Ralph gasped.
+
+"I don't know--I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may.
+I don't want to think--I needn't think. I don't care for anything
+but you, and that's enough for the present. It will last a little
+yet. Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier
+than I have been for a long time. And I want you to be happy--
+not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and
+I love you. Why should there be pain--? In such hours as this
+what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing;
+there's something deeper."
+
+Ralph evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in
+speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he
+appeared to make no response to these last words; he let a long
+time elapse. Then he murmured simply: "You must stay here."
+
+"I should like to stay--as long as seems right."
+
+"As seems right-- as seems right?" He repeated her words. "Yes,
+you think a great deal about that."
+
+"Of course one must. You're very tired," said Isabel.
+
+"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest
+thing. No--no. But it's very deep. If I could stay--"
+
+"For me you'll always be here," she softly interrupted. It was
+easy to interrupt him.
+
+But he went on, after a moment: "It passes, after all; it's
+passing now. But love remains. I don't know why we should suffer
+so much. Perhaps I shall find out. There are many things in life.
+You're very young."
+
+"I feel very old," said Isabel.
+
+"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe--
+I don't believe--" But he stopped again; his strength failed him.
+
+She begged him to be quiet now. "We needn't speak to understand
+each other," she said.
+
+"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt
+you for more than a little."
+
+"Oh Ralph, I'm very happy now," she cried through her tears.
+
+"And remember this," he continued, "that if you've been hated
+you've also been loved. Ah but, Isabel--ADORED!" he just audibly
+and lingeringly breathed.
+
+"Oh my brother!" she cried with a movement of still deeper
+prostration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt,
+that if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see
+the ghost with which the old house was duly provided. She
+apparently had fulfilled the necessary condition; for the next
+morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she knew that a spirit was
+standing by her bed. She had lain down without undressing, it
+being her belief that Ralph would not outlast the night. She had
+no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such waiting was
+wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the night
+wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock,
+but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she
+started up from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a
+summons. It seemed to her for an instant that he was standing
+there--a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness of the room. She
+stared a moment; she saw his white face--his kind eyes; then she
+saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only sure. She
+quitted the place and in her certainty passed through dark
+corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the
+vague light of a hall-window. Outside Ralph's door she stopped a
+moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that
+filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she
+were lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs.
+Touchett sitting motionless and upright beside the couch of her
+son, with one of his hands in her own. The doctor was on the
+other side, with poor Ralph's further wrist resting in his
+professional fingers. The two nurses were at the foot between
+them. Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but the doctor
+looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Ralph's hand in a
+proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very
+hard too, and no one said a word; but Isabel only looked at what
+she had come to see. It was fairer than Ralph had ever been in
+life, and there was a strange resemblance to the face of his
+father, which, six years before, she had seen lying on the same
+pillow. She went to her aunt and put her arm around her; and Mrs.
+Touchett, who as a general thing neither invited nor enjoyed
+caresses, submitted for a moment to this one, rising, as might
+be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed; her acute white
+face was terrible.
+
+"Dear Aunt Lydia," Isabel murmured.
+
+"Go and thank God you've no child," said Mrs. Touchett,
+disengaging herself.
+
+Three days after this a considerable number of people found time,
+at the height of the London "season," to take a morning train
+down to a quiet station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a
+small grey church which stood within an easy walk. It was in the
+green burial-place of this edifice that Mrs. Touchett consigned
+her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge of the grave, and
+Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself had not a more
+practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Touchett. It was a
+solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a
+certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had
+changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous
+May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness
+of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor
+Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no
+violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything
+had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's
+eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She looked through
+them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of nature, the
+sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed heads of good
+friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group of gentlemen all
+unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards learned, were
+connected with the bank; and there were others whom she knew.
+Miss Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr. Bantling
+beside her; and Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the
+rest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Isabel was
+conscious of Mr. Goodwood's gaze; he looked at her somewhat
+harder than he usually looked in public, while the others had
+fixed their eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let him
+see that she saw him; she thought of him only to wonder that he
+was still in England. She found she had taken for granted that
+after accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt he had gone away; she
+remembered how little it was a country that pleased him. He was
+there, however, very distinctly there; and something in his
+attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex intention.
+She wouldn't meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy
+in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the
+little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to
+speak to her--though several spoke to Mrs. Touchett--was
+Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta had been crying.
+
+Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at
+Gardencourt, and she made no immediate motion to leave the place.
+She said to herself that it was but common charity to stay a
+little with her aunt. It was fortunate she had so good a formula;
+otherwise she might have been greatly in want of one. Her errand
+was over; she had done what she had left her husband to do. She
+had a husband in a foreign city, counting the hours of her
+absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive. He was
+not one of the best husbands, but that didn't alter the case.
+Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage,
+and were quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted
+from it. Isabel thought of her husband as little as might be; but
+now that she was at a distance, beyond its spell, she thought
+with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. There was a penetrating
+chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade of
+Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her
+eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must decide, but she
+decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a decision. On
+that occasion she had simply started. Osmond gave no sound and
+now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From
+Pansy she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had
+told her not to write.
+
+Mrs. Touchett accepted Isabel's company, but offered her no
+assistance; she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without
+enthusiasm but with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her
+own situation. Mrs. Touchett was not an optimist, but even from
+painful occurrences she managed to extract a certain utility.
+This consisted in the reflexion that, after all, such things
+happened to other people and not to herself. Death was
+disagreeable, but in this case it was her son's death, not her
+own; she had never flattered herself that her own would be
+disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Touchett. She was better off
+than poor Ralph, who had left all the commodities of life behind
+him, and indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was,
+to Mrs. Touchett's mind, that it exposed one to be taken
+advantage of. For herself she was on the spot; there was nothing
+so good as that. She made known to Isabel very punctually--it was
+the evening her son was buried--several of Ralph's testamentary
+arrangements. He had told her everything, had consulted her about
+everything. He left her no money; of course she had no need of
+money. He left her the furniture of Gardencourt, exclusive of the
+pictures and books and the use of the place for a year; after
+which it was to be sold. The money produced by the sale was to
+constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons suffering
+from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the will
+Lord Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property,
+which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in
+various bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to
+whom his father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a
+number of small legacies.
+
+"Some of them are extremely peculiar," said Mrs. Touchett; "he
+has left considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave
+me a list, and I asked then who some of them were, and he told me
+they were people who at various times had seemed to like him.
+Apparently he thought you didn't like him, for he hasn't left you
+a penny. It was his opinion that you had been handsomely treated
+by his father, which I'm bound to say I think you were--though I
+don't mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The pictures are
+to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one by one, as
+little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to
+Lord Warburton. And what do you think he has done with his
+library? It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your
+friend Miss Stackpole--'in recognition of her services to
+literature.' Does he mean her following him up from Rome? Was
+that a service to literature? It contains a great many rare and
+valuable books, and as she can't carry it about the world in her
+trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it
+of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she'll set up a
+newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?"
+
+This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little
+interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on
+her arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in
+literature than to-day, as she found when she occasionally took
+down from the shelf one of the rare and valuable volumes of which
+Mrs. Touchett had spoken. She was quite unable to read; her
+attention had never been so little at her command. One afternoon,
+in the library, about a week after the ceremony in the
+churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes
+often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window,
+which looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she
+saw a modest vehicle approach the door and perceived Lord
+Warburton sitting, in rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a
+corner of it. He had always had a high standard of courtesy, and
+it was therefore not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he
+should have taken the trouble to come down from London to call on
+Mrs. Touchett. It was of course Mrs. Touchett he had come to see,
+and not Mrs. Osmond; and to prove to herself the validity of this
+thesis Isabel presently stepped out of the house and wandered
+away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she had been
+but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for
+visiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at
+first it struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The
+theory I have just mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought
+her little rest, and if you had seen her pacing about you would
+have said she had a bad conscience. She was not pacified when at
+the end of a quarter of an hour, finding herself in view of the
+house, she saw Mrs. Touchett emerge from the portico accompanied
+by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently proposed to Lord Warburton
+that they should come in search of her. She was in no humour for
+visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have drawn back
+behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen and
+that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at
+Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which
+she observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Lord
+Warburton kept his hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes
+upon the ground. Both persons apparently were silent; but Mrs.
+Touchett's thin little glance, as she directed it toward Isabel,
+had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say with
+cutting sharpness: "Here's the eminently amenable nobleman you
+might have married!" When Lord Warburton lifted his own eyes,
+however, that was not what they said. They only said "This is
+rather awkward, you know, and I depend upon you to help me." He
+was very grave, very proper and, for the first time since Isabel
+had known him, greeted her without a smile. Even in his days of
+distress he had always begun with a smile. He looked extremely
+selfconscious.
+
+"Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me," said
+Mrs. Touchett. "He tells me he didn't know you were still here. I
+know he's an old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not
+in the house I brought him out to see for himself."
+
+"Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back
+in time for dinner," Mrs. Touchett's companion rather
+irrelevantly explained. "I'm so glad to find you've not gone."
+
+"I'm not here for long, you know," Isabel said with a certain
+eagerness.
+
+"I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to
+England sooner than--a--than you thought?"
+
+"Yes, I came very suddenly."
+
+Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she were looking at the condition
+of the grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while
+Lord Warburton hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on
+the point of asking about her husband--rather confusedly--and
+then had checked himself. He continued immitigably grave,
+either because he thought it becoming in a place over which death
+had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If he was
+conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had
+the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that.
+Isabel thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for
+that was another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.
+
+"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you
+were still here--if they had thought you would see them," Lord
+Warburton went on. "Do kindly let them see you before you leave
+England."
+
+"It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly
+recollection of them."
+
+"I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or
+two? You know there's always that old promise." And his lordship
+coloured a little as he made this suggestion, which gave his face
+a somewhat more familiar air. "Perhaps I'm not right in saying
+that just now; of course you're not thinking of visiting. But I
+meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters are to be at
+Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days; and if you could come
+then--as you say you're not to be very long in England--I would
+see that there should be literally no one else."
+
+Isabel wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would
+be there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.
+
+"Thank you extremely," she contented herself with saying; "I'm
+afraid I hardly know about Whitsuntide."
+
+"But I have your promise--haven't I?--for some other time."
+
+There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She
+looked at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her
+observation was that--as had happened before--she felt sorry for
+him. "Take care you don't miss your train," she said. And then
+she added: "I wish you every happiness."
+
+He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch.
+"Ah yes, 6.40; I haven't much time, but I've a fly at the door.
+Thank you very much." It was not apparent whether the thanks
+applied to her having reminded him of his train or to the more
+sentimental remark. "Good-bye, Mrs. Osmond; good-bye." He shook
+hands with her, without meeting her eyes, and then he turned to
+Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to them. With her his
+parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him
+move with long steps across the lawn.
+
+"Are you very sure he's to be married?" Isabel asked of her aunt.
+
+"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated
+him, and he accepted it."
+
+"Ah," said Isabel, "I give it up!"--while her aunt returned to
+the house and to those avocations which the visitor had
+interrupted.
+
+She gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while
+she strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long
+upon the acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found
+herself near a rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked
+at it, struck her as an object recognised. It was not simply that
+she had seen it before, nor even that she had sat upon it; it was
+that on this spot something important had happened to her--that
+the place had an air of association. Then she remembered that she
+had been sitting there, six years before, when a servant brought
+her from the house the letter in which Caspar Goodwood informed
+her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had
+read the letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing
+that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an
+interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might
+have something to say to her. She wouldn't sit down on it now--
+she felt rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while
+she stood the past came back to her in one of those rushing waves
+of emotion by which persons of sensibility are visited at odd
+hours. The effect of this agitation was a sudden sense of being
+very tired, under the influence of which she overcame her
+scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was
+restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you
+had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the
+former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this
+moment she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude
+had a singular absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her
+sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her eyes
+gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her to the
+house; the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early and had
+tea at an indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position
+she could not have told you; but the twilight had grown thick
+when she became aware that she was not alone. She quickly
+straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had
+become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood,
+who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on
+the unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It
+occurred to her in the midst of this that it was just so Lord
+Warburton had surprised her of old.
+
+She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw he was seen he
+started forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a
+motion that looked like violence, but felt like--she knew not
+what, he grasped her by the wrist and made her sink again into
+the seat. She closed her eyes; he had not hurt her; it was only a
+touch, which she had obeyed. But there was something in his face
+that she wished not to see. That was the way he had looked at her
+the other day in the churchyard; only at present it was worse. He
+said nothing at first; she only felt him close to her--beside her
+on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to
+her that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this,
+however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had
+disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. "You've
+frightened me," she said.
+
+"I didn't mean to," he answered, "but if I did a little, no
+matter. I came from London a while ago by the train, but I
+couldn't come here directly. There was a man at the station who
+got ahead of me. He took a fly that was there, and I heard him
+give the order to drive here. I don't know who he was, but I
+didn't want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So I've
+been waiting and walking about. I've walked all over, and I was
+just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was a keeper,
+or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I had
+made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that
+gentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you."
+Goodwood spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had
+parted in Rome. Isabel had hoped that condition would subside;
+and she shrank into herself as she perceived that, on the
+contrary, he had only let out sail. She had a new sensation; he
+had never produced it before; it was a feeling of danger. There
+was indeed something really formidable in his resolution. She
+gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee, leaned
+forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed to
+darken round them. "I want to speak to you," he repeated; "I've
+something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you--as I
+did the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed
+you. I couldn't help it; I knew I was wrong. But I'm not wrong
+now; please don't think I am," he went on with his hard, deep
+voice melting a moment into entreaty. "I came here to-day for a
+purpose. It's very different. It was vain for me to speak to you
+then; but now I can help you."
+
+She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid,
+or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a
+boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before;
+his words dropped deep into her soul. They produced a sort of
+stillness in all her being; and it was with an effort, in a
+moment, that she answered him. "How can you help me?" she asked
+in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had said seriously
+enough to make the enquiry in confidence.
+
+"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you
+remember what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark.
+But to-day I know on good authority; everything's clear to me
+to-day. It was a good thing when you made me come away with your
+cousin. He was a good man, a fine man, one of the best; he told
+me how the case stands for you. He explained everything; he
+guessed my sentiments. He was a member of your family and he left
+you--so long as you should be in England--to my care," said
+Goodwood as if he were making a great point. "Do you know what he
+said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he
+died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything
+she'll let you.'"
+
+Isabel suddenly got up. "You had no business to talk about me!"
+
+"Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded,
+following her fast. "And he was dying--when a man's dying it's
+different." She checked the movement she had made to leave him;
+she was listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the
+same as that last time. That had been aimless, fruitless passion,
+but at present he had an idea, which she scented in all her
+being. "But it doesn't matter!" he exclaimed, pressing her still
+harder, though now without touching a hem of her garment. "If
+Touchett had never opened his mouth I should have known all the
+same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral to see
+what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for
+God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you. You're
+the most unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of
+fiends."
+
+She turned on him as if he had struck her. "Are you mad?" she
+cried.
+
+"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's
+necessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against
+him; I'll speak only of you," Goodwood added quickly. "How can
+you pretend you're not heart-broken? You don't know what to do--
+you don't know where to turn. It's too late to play a part;
+didn't you leave all that behind you in Rome? Touchett knew all
+about it, and I knew it too--what it would cost you to come here.
+It will have cost you your life? Say it will"--and he flared
+almost into anger: "give me one word of truth! When I know such a
+horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you?
+What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you go
+back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for
+it!'--that's what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that,
+mayn't I? He was such a near relation!" cried Goodwood, making
+his queer grim point again. "I'd sooner have been shot than let
+another man say those things to me; but he was different; he
+seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got home--when he
+saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I understand all about
+it: you're afraid to go back. You're perfectly alone; you don't
+know where to turn. You can't turn anywhere; you know that
+perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of ME."
+
+"To think of 'you'?" Isabel said, standing before him in the
+dusk. The idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments
+before now loomed large. She threw back her head a little; she
+stared at it as if it had been a comet in the sky.
+
+"You don't know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to
+persuade you to trust me," Goodwood repeated. And then he paused
+with his shining eyes. "Why should you go back--why should you go
+through that ghastly form?"
+
+"To get away from you!" she answered. But this expressed only a
+little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been
+loved before. She had believed it, but this was different; this
+was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the
+others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden. It
+wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the very
+taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced
+open her set teeth.
+
+At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her
+that he would break out into greater violence. But after an
+instant he was perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane,
+that he had reasoned it all out. "I want to prevent that, and I
+think I may, if you'll only for once listen to me. It's too
+monstrous of you to think of sinking back into that misery, of
+going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It's you that are
+out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why
+shouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so
+easy? I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as
+firm as a rock. What have you to care about? You've no children;
+that perhaps would be an obstacle. As it is you've nothing to
+consider. You must save what you can of your life; you mustn't
+lose it all simply because you've lost a part. It would be an
+insult to you to assume that you care for the look of the thing,
+for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the world.
+We've nothing to do with all that; we're quite out of it; we look
+at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away;
+the next is nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand
+here, that a woman deliberately made to suffer is justified in
+anything in life--in going down into the streets if that will
+help her! I know how you suffer, and that's why I'm here. We can
+do absolutely as we please; to whom under the sun do we owe
+anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that has the
+smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a
+question is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it!
+Were we born to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I
+never knew YOU afraid! If you'll only trust me, how little you
+will be disappointed! The world's all before us--and the world's
+very big. I know something about that."
+
+Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if
+he were pressing something that hurt her.
+
+"The world's very small," she said at random; she had an immense
+desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear
+herself say something; but it was not what she meant. The world,
+in truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all
+round her, to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated in
+fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here was help; it had
+come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she believed
+everything he said; but she believed just then that to let him
+take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying.
+This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she
+felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat
+with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to
+rest on.
+
+"Ah, be mine as I'm yours!" she heard her companion cry. He had
+suddenly given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh
+and terrible, through a confusion of vaguer sounds.
+
+This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the
+metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the
+rest of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she
+became aware of this. "Do me the greatest kindness of all," she
+panted. "I beseech you to go away!"
+
+"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!" he cried.
+
+She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. "As
+you love me, as you pity me, leave me alone!"
+
+He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant
+she felt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His
+kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread
+again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she
+took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least
+pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his
+presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with
+this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and
+under water following a train of images before they sink. But
+when darkness returned she was free. She never looked about her;
+she only darted from the spot. There were lights in the windows
+of the house; they shone far across the lawn. In an
+extraordinarily short time--for the distance was considerable--
+she had moved through the darkness (for she saw nothing) and
+reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about her;
+she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She
+had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very
+straight path.
+
+Two days afterwards Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the
+house in Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied
+furnished lodgings. He had hardly removed his hand from the
+knocker when the door was opened and Miss Stackpole herself stood
+before him. She had on her hat and jacket; she was on the point
+of going out. "Oh, good-morning," he said, "I was in hopes I
+should find Mrs. Osmond."
+
+Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was
+a good deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was
+silent. "Pray what led you to suppose she was here?"
+
+"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me
+she had come to London. He believed she was to come to you."
+
+Again Miss Stackpole held him--with an intention of perfect
+kindness--in suspense. "She came here yesterday, and spent the
+night. But this morning she started for Rome."
+
+Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on
+the doorstep. "Oh, she started--?" he stammered. And without
+finishing his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself.
+But he couldn't otherwise move.
+
+Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she
+put out her hand and grasped his arm. "Look here, Mr. Goodwood,"
+she said; "just you wait!"
+
+On which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face,
+with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood
+shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot,
+thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however,
+as if she had given him now the key to patience.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
+
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