Henry James .............................................................................................................................................1

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to

the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or

not some people of course never do the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in

beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements

of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English countryhouse, in what I should call the

perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and

what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of

summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense

turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is

perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on

certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of

pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is

supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn

were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wickerchair near the low

table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front

of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest

of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it

for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their

tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them,

from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of

observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was

a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture

It stood upon a low hill, above the river the river being the Thames at some forty miles from

London. A long gabled front of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather had played all

sorts of pictorial tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented to the lawn its patches of ivy, its

clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers. The house had a name and a history; the old

gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under

Edward the Sixth, had offered a night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended

itself upon a huge, magnificent, and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the

sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the

Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodelled and disfigured in the

eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it

originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain:

bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of

twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points and would

tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various

protuberances which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork were of the right measure. Besides

this, as I have said, he could have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants, several of whom

were known to general fame; doing so, however, with an undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of

its destiny was not the least honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion of the lawn with

which we are concerned was not the entrancefront; this was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned

supreme, and the wide carpet of turf that covered the level hilltop seemed but the extension of a luxurious

interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place

was furnished, like a room, with cushioned seats, with richcoloured rugs, with the books and papers that lay

upon the grass. The river was at some distance; where the ground began to slope, the lawn, properly

The old gentleman at the teatable, who had come from America thirty years before, had brought

with him, at the top of his baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but

he had kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own country with

perfect confidence. At present, obviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his journeys

were over, and he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow, cleanshaven face, with

features evenly distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which the range

of representation was not large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed

to tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his success had not been exclusive and

invidious, but had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly had a great experience of men,

but there was an almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious cheek and

lighted up his humorous eye as he at last slowly and carefully deposited his big teacup upon the table. He

was neatly dressed, in wellbrushed black; but a shawl was folded upon his knees, and his feet were encased

in thick, embroidered slippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching the master's

face almost as tenderly as the master took in the still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little

bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other gentlemen.

One of these was a remarkably wellmade man of fiveandthirty, with a face as English as that

of the old gentleman I have just sketched was something else; a noticeably handsome face, freshcoloured,

fair and frank, with firm, straight features, a lively grey eye and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. This

person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look the air of a happy temperament fertilized by a high

civilization which would have made almost any observer envy him at a venture. He was booted and spurred,

as if he had dismounted from a long ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he held his

two hands behind him, and in one of them a large, white, wellshaped fist was crumpled a pair of soiled

His companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, was a person of quite a different

pattern, who, although he might have excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked you to

wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, sickly,

witty, charming face, furnished, but by no means decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He

looked clever and ill a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried

his hands in his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that showed the habit was inveterate.

His gait had a shambling, wandering quality; he was not very firm on his legs. As I have said, whenever he

passed the old man in the chair he rested his eyes upon him; and at this moment, with their faces brought into

relation, you would easily have seen they were father and son. The father caught his son's eye at last and gave

The old man considered, placidly. "Well, I guess I'll wait and see." He had, in speaking, the

The father slowly rubbed his legs. "Well, I don't know. I can't tell till I feel."

"Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for me, Lord Warburton?"

"Oh yes, immensely," said the gentleman addressed as Lord Warburton, promptly. "I'm bound to

"Well, I suppose I am, in most respects." And the old man looked down at his green shawl and

smoothed it over his knees. "The fact is I've been comfortable so many years that I suppose I've got so used to

"Yes, that's the bore of comfort," said Lord Warburton. "We only know when we're

"Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular," Lord Warburton murmured. And then the three men

remained silent a while; the two younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently asked for

more tea. "I should think you would be very unhappy with that shawl," Lord Warburton resumed while his

"Oh no, he must have the shawl!" cried the gentleman in the velvet coat. "Don't put such ideas as

"Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons" And Lord Warburton made a gesture of apology.

"You'll please to do nothing of the kind. You'll keep it to cover your poor old legs."

"Well, you mustn't abuse my legs," said the old man. "I guess they are as good as yours."

"Ah, there's a great deal of merit," murmured the old man, kindly. "He's a very good nurse, Lord

"Oh no, he's not clumsy considering that he's an invalid himself. He's a very good nurse for a

He's making light of you, daddy," said the other young man. "That's a sort of joke."

"Well, there seem to be so many sorts now," daddy replied, serenely. "You don't look as if you had

"He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully about it," said Lord Warburton's

"If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched fellow to talk to a regular cynic. He

"It's because his health is so poor," his father explained to Lord Warburton. "It affects his mind and

colours his way of looking at things; he seems to feel as if he had never had a chance. But it's almost entirely

theoretical, you know; it doesn't seem to affect his spirits. I've hardly ever seen him when he wasn't cheerful

The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and laughed. "Is it a glowing eulogy or an

"Warburton's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored. I'm not in the least bored; I find life

"I'm never bored when I come here," said Lord Warburton. "One gets such uncommonly good

"Is that another sort of joke?" asked the old man. "You've no excuse for being bored anywhere.

"No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. When I was twenty years old I was very

highly developed indeed. I was working tooth and nail. You wouldn't be bored if you had something to do;

but all you young men are too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You're too fastidious, and too

"Oh, I say," cried Lord Warburton, "you're hardly the person to accuse a fellowcreature of being

"Because of that, if you like; and because you have haven't you? such unlimited means."

"He isn't very rich," the other young man mercifully pleaded. "He has given away an immense deal

"Well, I suppose it was his own," said Lord Warburton; "and in that case could there be a better

proof of wealth? Let not a public benefactor talk of one's being too fond of pleasure."

The old man shook his head. "I don't pretend to have contributed anything to the amusement of my

"You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing left."

"I don't believe it I believe things are getting more serious. You young men will find that out."

"The increasing seriousness of things, then that's the great opportunity of jokes."

"They'll have to be grim jokes," said the old man. "I'm convinced there will be great changes; and

"I quite agree with you, sir," Lord Warburton declared. "I'm very sure there will be great changes,

and that all sorts of queer things will happen. That's why I find so much difficulty in applying your advice;

you know you told me the other day that I ought to 'take hold' of something. One hesitates to take hold of a

"You ought to take hold of a pretty woman," said his companion. "He's trying hard to fall in love,"

"No, no, they'll be firm," the old man rejoined; "they'll not be affected by the social and political

"You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I'll lay my hands on one as soon as possible

"The ladies will save us," said the old man; "that is the best of them will for I make a difference

between them. Make up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much more interesting."

A momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his auditors a sense of the magnanimity of this

speech, for it was a secret neither for his son nor for his visitor that his own experiment in matrimony had not

been a happy one. As he said, however, he made a difference; and these words may have been intended as a

confession of personal error; though of course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark that

"If I marry an interesting woman I shall be interested: is that what you say?" Lord Warburton

asked. "I'm not at all keen about marrying your son misrepresented me; but there's no knowing what an

"My dear fellow, you can't see ideas especially such highly ethereal ones as mine. If I could only

"Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; but you mustn't fall in love with my

His son broke into a laugh. "He'll think you mean that as a provocation! My dear father, you've

lived with the English for thirty years, and you've picked up a good many of the things they say. But you've

"I haven't the honour of knowing your niece," Lord Warburton said. "I think it's the first time I've

Then young Mr. Touchett explained. "My mother, you know, has been spending the winter in

America, and we're expecting her back. She writes that she has discovered a niece and that she has invited her

"We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone into details. She chiefly

communicates with us by means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. They say women

don't know how to write them, but my mother has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. 'Tired

America, hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer decent cabin.' That's the sort of message

we get from her that was the last that came. But there had been another before, which I think contained the

first mention of the niece. 'Changed hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last

year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.' Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling;

"There's one thing very clear in it," said the old man; "she has given the hotelclerk a dressing."

"I'm not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the field. We thought at first that the sister

mentioned might be the sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems to prove that the

allusion is to one of my aunts. There there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are

probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who's 'quite independent,' and in what sense is the term used?

that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more particularly to the young lady my mother has

adopted, or does it characterize her sisters equally? and is it used in a moral or in a financial sense? Does it

mean that they've been left well off, or that they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that

"You'll see for yourself," said Lord Warburton. "When does Mrs. Touchett arrive?"

"We're quite in the dark; as soon as she can find a decent cabin. She may be waiting for it yet; on

"She never telegraphs when you would expect it only when you don't," said the old man. "She

likes to drop in on me suddenly; she thinks she'll find me doing something wrong. She has never done so yet,

"It's her share in the family trait, the independence she speaks of." Her son's appreciation of the

matter was more favourable. "Whatever the high spirit of those young ladies may be, her own is a match for

it. She likes to do everything for herself and has no belief in any one's power to help her. She thinks me of no

more use than a postagestamp without gum, and she would never forgive me if I should presume to go to

"Only on the condition I've mentioned that you don't fall in love with her!" Mr. Touchett replied.

"I think you too good because I shouldn't like her to marry you. She hasn't come here to look for

a husband, I hope; so many young ladies are doing that, as if there were no good ones at home. Then she's

probably engaged; American girls are usually engaged, I believe. Moreover I'm not sure, after all, that you'd

"Very likely she's engaged; I've known a good many American girls, and they always were; but I

could never see that it made any difference, upon my word! As for my being a good husband," Mr. Touchett's

"Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece," smiled the old man, whose opposition to

"Ah, well," said Lord Warburton with a humour broader still, "perhaps after all, she's not worth

While this exchange of pleasantries took place between the two Ralph Touchett wandered away a

little, with his usual slouching gait, his hands in his pockets and his little rowdyish terrier at his heels. His

face was turned toward the house, but his eyes were bent musingly on the lawn; so that he had been an object

of observation to a person who had just made her appearance in the ample doorway for some moments before

he perceived her. His attention was called to her by the conduct of his dog, who had suddenly darted forward

with a little volley of shrill barks, in which the note of welcome, however, was more sensible than that of

defiance. The person in question was a young lady, who seemed immediately to interpret the greeting of the

small beast. He advanced with great rapidity and stood at her feet, looking up and barking hard; whereupon,

without hesitation, she stooped and caught him in her hands, holding him face to face while he continued his

quick chatter. His master now had had time to follow and to see that Bunchie's new friend was a tall girl in a

black dress, who at first sight looked pretty. She was bareheaded, as if she were staying in the house a fact

which conveyed perplexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity from visitors which had for

some time been rendered necessary by the latter's illhealth. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also

"Perhaps it's Mrs. Touchett's niece the independent young lady," Lord Warburton suggested. "I

The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he trotted toward the young lady

"I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere: that's a part of the independence."

The girl spoke to Ralph, smiling, while she still held up the terrier. "Is this your little dog, sir?"

"He was mine a moment ago; but you've suddenly acquired a remarkable air of property in him."

Ralph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. "You may have him altogether," he

The young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, both in herself and in others; but this

abrupt generosity made her blush. "I ought to tell you that I'm probably your cousin," she brought out, putting

"Probably?" the young man exclaimed, laughing. "I supposed it was quite settled! Have you

"No, she went straight to her room, and she told me that, if I should see you, I was to say to you

The young man looked at his watch. "Thank you very much; I shall be punctual." And then he

She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted clear perception at her companion, at the

two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. "I've never seen

anything so lovely as this place. I've been all over the house; it's too enchanting."

"Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I thought it was all right. Is

"Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it's just like a novel!" And then, "Oh you adorable creature!"

She remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or to speak to Mr.

Touchett, and while she lingered so near the threshold, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered if she

expected the old man to come and pay her his respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference,

and it had been intimated that this one had a high spirit. Indeed, Ralph could see that in her face.

"Won't you come and make acquaintance with my father?" he nevertheless ventured to ask. "He's

"Ah, poor man, I'm very sorry!" the girl exclaimed, immediately moving forward. "I got the

"What's his name?" she asked, her attention having again reverted to the terrier.

They had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett was sitting, and he slowly got up from his

The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a moment with extreme

benevolence and then gallantly kissed her. "It's a great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had

"Oh, we were received," said the girl. "There were about a dozen servants in the hall. And there

"We can do better than that if we have notice!" And the old man stood there smiling, rubbing his

hands and slowly shaking his head at her. "But Mrs. Touchett doesn't like receptions."

"Yes and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week." And

"Before that," said Miss Archer. "She's coming down to dinner at eight o'clock. Don't you forget

"Ah, happy boy!" the old man commented. "You must sit down you must have some tea," he

"They gave me some tea in my room the moment I got there," this young lady answered. "I'm sorry

"Oh, I'm an old man, my dear; it's time for me to be old. But I shall be the better for having you

She had been looking all round her again at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames,

the beautiful old house; and while engaged in this survey she had made room in it for her companions; a

comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both

intelligent and excited. She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap,

were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily

this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her

impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. "I've never seen anything so

"It's looking very well," said Mr. Touchett. "I know the way it strikes you. I've been through all

that. But you're very beautiful yourself," he added with a politeness by no means crudely jocular and with the

happy consciousness that his advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things even to young

What degree of alarm this young person took need not be exactly measured; she instantly rose,

however, with a blush which was not a refutation. "Oh yes, of course I'm lovely!" she returned with a quick

She turned toward him, watching his face. "Early Tudor? How very delightful! And I suppose

"Don't say that, my son!" the old man protested. "There's nothing better than this."

"I've got a very good one; I think in some respects it's rather better," said Lord Warburton, who as

yet had not spoken, but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Archer. He slightly inclined himself,

smiling; he had an excellent manner with women. The girl appreciated it in an instant; she had not forgotten

that this was Lord Warburton. "I should like very much to show it to you," he added.

"Don't believe him," cried the old man; "don't look at it! It's a wretched old barrack not to be

In this discussion Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever; he stood with his hands in his pockets,

looking greatly as if he should like to renew his conversation with his newfound cousin. "Are you very fond

of dogs?" he enquired by way of beginning. He seemed to recognize that it was an awkward beginning for a

"I'll settle it with her at a quarter to seven." And Ralph looked at his watch again.

"I shall settle this as I like it," said Ralph. "It's most unaccountable that we should never have

Miss Archer just hesitated. "It was because there had been some disagreement between your

mother and my father, after my mother's death, which took place when I was a child. In consequence of it we

"Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels heaven forbid!" the young man cried. "You've

"Yes, more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she came to see me and

"Adopted me?" The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together with a momentary look of

pain which gave her interlocutor some alarm. He had underestimated the effect of his words. Lord

Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the two

cousins at the moment, and as he did so she rested her wider eyes on him. "Oh no; she has not adopted me.

"I beg a thousand pardons," Ralph murmured. "I meant I meant" He hardly knew what he

"You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up. She has been very kind to me;

but," she added with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, "I'm very fond of my liberty."

"Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett?" the old man called out from his chair. "Come here, my

The girl hesitated again, smiling. "She's really very benevolent," she answered; after which she

Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a moment he said: "You

Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her

husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she

did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions,

rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity. Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she

never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive it was just

unmistakeably distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clearcut that

for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knifelike effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment

during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her

first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which

she deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the more

sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress with a completeness which had the less

reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plainfaced old

woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She

was usually prepared to explain these when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they

proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her. She was virtually separated from her

husband, but she appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear, at an early stage

of their community, that they should never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this appearance

had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it

into a law a much more edifying aspect of it by going to live in Florence, where she bought a house and

established herself; and by leaving her husband to take care of the English branch of his bank. This

arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite. It struck her husband in the same light, in a

foggy square in London, where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned; but he would have

preferred that such unnatural things should have a greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an

effort; he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assent or dissent

should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, and usually came once

a year to spend a month with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains to convince him

that she had adopted the right system. She was not fond of the English style of life, and had three or four

reasons for it to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of that ancient order, but for Mrs.

Touchett they amply justified nonresidence. She detested breadsauce, which, as she said, looked like a

poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by her maidservants; and she affirmed

that the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not a

mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last had been longer than

She had taken up her niece there was little doubt of that. One wet afternoon, some four months

earlier than the occurrence lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was

so occupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing

quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste in her situation

which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to correct. The visitor had not been announced; the girl

heard her at last walking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, a large, square, double

house, with a notice of sale in the windows of one of the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of

which had long been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactly alike large white doors,

with an arched frame and wide sidelights, perched upon little "stoops" of red stone, which descended

sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a single dwelling, the

partywall having been removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, abovestairs, were

extremely numerous, and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow

with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, connecting the two sides of the house, which

Isabel and her sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it was short and

welllighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had

been in the house, at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived there. Then there had

been an absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old

Mrs. Archer, had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality in the early period, and

the little girls often spent weeks under her roof weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The

manner of life was different from that of her own home larger, more plentiful, practically more festal; the

discipline of the nursery was delightfully vague and the opportunity of listening to the conversation of one's

elders (which with Isabel was a highlyvalued pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and

going; her grandmother's sons and daughters and their children appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing

invitations to arrive and remain, so that the house offered to a certain extent the appearance of a bustling

provincial inn kept by a gentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill.

Isabel of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought her grandmother's home

romantic. There was a covered piazza behind it, furnished with a swing which was a source of tremulous

interest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stable and containing peachtrees of barely

credible familiarity. Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but somehow all her visits

had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch

House a peculiar structure dating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted

yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended by a rickety wooden paling and

standing sidewise to the street. It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, kept or rather

let go, by a demonstrative lady of whom Isabel's chief recollection was that her hair was fastened with

strange bedroomy combs at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The little

girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment; but having

spent a single day in it, she had protested against its laws and had been allowed to stay at home, where, in the

September days, when the windows of the Dutch House were open, she used to hear the hum of childish

voices repeating the multiplicationtable an incident in which the elation of liberty and the pain of exclusion

were indistinguishably mingled. The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her

grandmother's house, where, as most of the other inmates were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use

of a library full of books with frontispieces, which she used to climb upon a chair to take down. When she

had found one to her taste she was guided in the selection chiefly by the frontispiece she carried it into a

mysterious apartment which lay beyond the library and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, the

office. Whose office it had been and at what period it had flourished, she never learned; it was enough for her

that it contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell and that it was a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of

furniture whose infirmities were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited and rendered

them victims of injustice) and with which, in the manner of children, she had established relations almost

human, certainly dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa in especial, to which she had confided a hundred

childish sorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was properly entered

from the second door of the house, the door that had been condemned, and that it was secured by bolts which

a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She knew that this silent, motionless portal

opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked out upon

the little brown stoop and the wellworn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would

have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side a place which

became to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight of terror.

It was in the "office" still that Isabel was sitting on that melancholy afternoon of early spring

which I have just mentioned. At this time she might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room

she had selected was the most depressed of its scenes. She had never opened the bolted door nor removed the

green paper (renewed by other hands) from its sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street

lay beyond. A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the springtime was indeed an appeal and it seemed a cynical,

insincere appeal to patience. Isabel, however, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kept

her eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred to her that her mind was a good deal of a

vagabond, and she had spent much ingenuity in training it to a military step and teaching it to advance, to

halt, to retreat, to perform even more complicated manoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now she had

given it marching orders and it had been trudging over the sandy plains of a history of German Thought.

Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from her own intellectual pace; she listened a little and

perceived that some one was moving in the library, which communicated with the office. It struck her first as

the step of a person from whom she was looking for a visit, then almost immediately announced itself as the

tread of a woman and a stranger her possible visitor being neither. It had an inquisitive, experimental quality

which suggested that it would not stop short of the threshold of the office; and in fact the doorway of this

apartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there and looked very hard at our heroine. She was a

plain, elderly woman, dressed in a comprehensive waterproof mantle; she had a face with a good deal of

"Oh," she began, "is that where you usually sit?" She looked about at the heterogeneous chairs and

She directed their course back to the library while the visitor continued to look about her. "You

seem to have plenty of other rooms; they're in rather better condition. But everything's immensely worn."

"Have you come to look at the house?" Isabel asked. "The servant will show it to you."

"Send her away; I don't want to buy it. She has probably gone to look for you and is wandering

about upstairs; she didn't seem at all intelligent. You had better tell her it's no matter." And then, since the girl

stood there hesitating and wondering, this unexpected critic said to her abruptly: "I suppose you're one of the

Isabel thought she had very strange manners. "It depends upon whose daughters you mean."

"Is that what your father told you to call me? I'm your Aunt Lydia, but I'm not at all crazy: I

"I think you must be." And in this way the aunt and the niece made friends. The aunt had

quarrelled years before with her brotherinlaw, after the death of her sister, taking him to task for the

manner in which he brought up his three girls. Being a hightempered man he had requested her to mind her

own business, and she had taken him at his word. For many years she held no communication with him and

after his death had addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred in that disrespectful view of her

which we have just seen Isabel betray. Mrs. Touchett's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly deliberate. She

intended to go to America to look after her investments (with which her husband, in spite of his great

financial position, had nothing to do) and would take advantage of this opportunity to enquire into the

condition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, for she should attach no importance to any account of

them she should elicit by letter; she believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Isabel found, however, that she

knew a good deal about them, and knew about the marriage of the two elder girls; knew that their poor father

had left very little money, but that the house in Albany, which had passed into his hands, was to be sold for

their benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow, Lilian's husband, had taken upon himself to attend to this

matter, in consideration of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during Mr. Archer's illness,

were remaining there for the present and, as well as Isabel herself, occupying the old place.

"How much money do you expect for it?" Mrs. Touchett asked of her companion, who had brought

"That's the second time you have said that to me," her aunt rejoined. "And yet you don't look at all

"Yes, that's the way you were brought up as if you were to inherit a million. What have you in

"I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they'll be back in half an hour."

"In Florence we should call it a very bad house," said Mrs. Touchett; "but here, I dare say, it will

bring a high price. It ought to make a considerable sum for each of you. In addition to that you must have

something else; it's most extraordinary your not knowing. The position's of value, and they'll probably pull it

down and make a row of shops. I wonder you don't do that yourself; you might let the shops to great

Isabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. "I hope they won't pull it down," she said;

"Yes, but I don't dislike it for that," the girl rather strangely returned. "I like places in which things

have happened even if they're sad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been full of

"I mean full of experience of people's feelings and sorrows. And not of their sorrows only, for

"You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things have happened especially deaths. I

live in an old palace in which three people have been murdered; three that were known and I don't know how

Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of her grandmother's house. But the

emotion was of a kind which led her to say: "I should like very much to go to Florence."

"Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll take you there," Mrs. Touchett

Our young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and smiled at her aunt in silence. "Do

"No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of your own way; but it's not for me to

"And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment, "I'd promise almost anything!"

Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett had an hour's uninterrupted talk with

her niece, who found her a strange and interesting figure: a figure essentially almost the first she had ever

met. She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people

described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to

her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy,

and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No

one certainly had on any occasion so held her as this little thinlipped, brighteyed, foreignlooking woman,

who retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in a wellworn

waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts of Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs.

Touchett, but she recognized no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth in a way that spoke

of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first

had answered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. Touchett derived a

high opinion of her intelligence. But after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, whatever

turn they took, struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Touchett waited for the return of her other niece as

long as she thought reasonable, but as at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow bad not come in she prepared to take her

"Your sister must be a great gossip. Is she accustomed to staying out so many hours?"

"You've been out almost as long as she," Isabel replied; "she can have left the house but a short

Mrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared to enjoy a bold retort and to be

disposed to be gracious. "Perhaps she hasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she must

come and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring her husband if she likes, but she needn't

Mrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thought the most sensible; the

classification being in general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty and Isabel the "intellectual"

superior. Mrs. Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of an officer of the United States Engineers, and

as our history is not further concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed very pretty and that she

formed the ornament of those various military stations, chiefly in the unfashionable West, to which, to her

deep chagrin, her husband was successively relegated. Lilian had married a New York lawyer, a young man

with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for his profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than Edith's, but

Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might be thankful to marry at all she was so

much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little

boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driven into Fiftythird Street, seemed to exult in

her condition as in a bold escape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned, but she

was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, as people said, improved since her marriage,

and the two things in life of which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband's force in argument

and her sister Isabel's originality. "I've never kept up with Isabel it would have taken all my time," she had

often remarked; in spite of which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight; watching her as a motherly

spaniel might watch a free greyhound. "I want to see her safely married that's what I want to see," she

"Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her," Edmund Ludlow was

"I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground. I don't see what you've

"Well, I don't like originals; I like translations," Mr. Ludlow had more than once replied. "Isabel's

written in a foreign tongue. I can't make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese."

"That's just what I'm afraid she'll do!" cried Lilian, who thought Isabel capable of anything.

She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs. Touchett's appearance and in the

evening prepared to comply with their aunt's commands. Of what Isabel then said no report has remained, but

her sister's words had doubtless prompted a word spoken to her husband as the two were making ready for

their visit. "I do hope immensely she'll do something handsome for Isabel; she has evidently taken a great

"No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her sympathize with her. She's evidently

just the sort of person to appreciate her. She has lived so much in foreign society; she told Isabel all about it.

"You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don't you think she gets enough at home?"

"Well, she ought to go abroad," said Mrs. Ludlow. "She's just the person to go abroad."

"She has offered to take her she's dying to have Isabel go. But what I want her to do when she

gets her there is to give her all the advantages. I'm sure all we've got to do," said Mrs. Ludlow, "is to give her

"Oh, Moses!" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. "I hope she isn't going to develop any more!"

"If I were not sure you only said that for argument I should feel very badly," his wife replied. "But

"Do you know I love you?" the young man said, jocosely, to Isabel a little later, while he brushed

"I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not!" exclaimed the girl; whose voice and smile, however,

But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of seriousness. "You must not say that, Lily. I

Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt different, felt as if something had happened to her.

Left to herself for the evening she sat a while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations

unheeded. Then she rose and moved about the room, and from one room to another, preferring the places

where the vague lamplight expired. She was restless and even agitated; at moments she trembled a little. The

importance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance; there had really been a change in

her life. What it would bring with it was as yet extremely indefinite; but Isabel was in a situation that gave a

value to any change. She had a desire to leave the past behind her and, as she said to herself, to begin afresh.

This desire indeed was not a birth of the present occasion; it was as familiar as the sound of the rain upon the

window and it had led to her beginning afresh a great many times. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the

dusky corners of the quiet parlour; but it was not with a desire for dozing forgetfulness. It was on the contrary

because she felt too wideeyed and wished to check the sense of seeing too many things at once. Her

imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out of the window. She

was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts; and at important moments, when she would have been

thankful to make use of her judgement alone, she paid the penalty of having given undue encouragement to

the faculty of seeing without judging. At present, with her sense that the note of change had been struck,

came gradually a host of images of the things she was leaving behind her. The years and hours of her life

came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken only by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she

passed them in review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very fortunate person this was the

truth that seemed to emerge most vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world in which the

circumstances of so many people made them unenviable it was an advantage never to have known anything

particularly unpleasant. It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her

knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest

and even of instruction. Her father had kept it away from her her handsome, muchloved father, who

always had such an aversion to it. It was a great felicity to have been his daughter; Isabel rose even to pride in

her parentage. Since his death she had seemed to see him as turning his braver side to his children and as not

having managed to ignore the ugly quite so much in practice as in aspiration. But this only made her

tenderness for him greater; it was scarcely even painful to have to suppose him too generous, too

goodnatured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many persons had held that he carried this

indifference too far, especially the large number of those to whom he owed money. Of their opinions Isabel

was never very definitely informed; but it may interest the reader to know that, while they had recognized in

the late Mr. Archer a remarkably handsome head and a very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said,

he was always taking something), they had declared that he was making a very poor use of his life. He had

squandered a substantial fortune, he had been deplorably convivial, he was known to have gambled freely. A

few very harsh critics went so far as to say that he had not even brought up his daughters. They had had no

regular education and no permanent home; they had been at once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with

nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) or had been sent to superficial schools, kept by the

French, from which, at the end of a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the matter would

have excited Isabel's indignation, for to her own sense her opportunities had been large. Even when her father

had left his daughters for three months at Neufchatel with a French bonne who had eloped with a Russian

nobleman staying at the same hotel even in this irregular situation (an incident of the girl's eleventh year)

she had been neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a romantic episode in a liberal education. Her

father had a large way of looking at life, of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency of

conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even as children, to see as much of the world as

possible; and it was for this purpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had transported them three times

across the Atlantic, giving them on each occasion, however, but a few months' view of the subject proposed:

a course which had whetted our heroine's curiosity without enabling her to satisfy it. She ought to have been a

partisan of her father, for she was the member of his trio who most "made up" to him for the disagreeables he

didn't mention. In his last days his general willingness to take leave of a world in which the difficulty of

doing as one liked appeared to increase as one grew older had been sensibly modified by the pain of

separation from his clever, his superior, his remarkable girl. Later, when the journeys to Europe ceased, he

still had shown his children all sorts of indulgence, and if he had been troubled about moneymatters nothing

ever disturbed their irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though she danced very well, had

not the recollection of having been in New York a successful member of the choregraphic circle; her sister

Edith was, as every one said, so very much more fetching. Edith was so striking an example of success that

Isabel could have no illusions as to what constituted this advantage, or as to the limits of her own power to

frisk and jump and shriek above all with rightness of effect. Nineteen persons out of twenty (including the

younger sister herself pronounced Edith infinitely the prettier of the two; but the twentieth, besides reversing

this judgement, had the entertainment of thinking all the others aesthetic vulgarians. Isabel had in the depths

of her nature an even more unquenchable desire to please than Edith; but the depths of this young lady's

nature were a very outoftheway place, between which and the surface communication was interrupted by

a dozen capricious forces. She saw the young men who came in large numbers to see her sister; but as a

general thing they were afraid of her; they had a belief that some special preparation was required for talking

with her. Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an

epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The

poor girl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in secret and,

though her memory was excellent, to abstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge,

but she really preferred almost any source of information to the printed page; she had an immense curiosity

about life and was constantly staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her

deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own soul and the agitations of

the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading

about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures a class of efforts as to which she had often

committed the conscious solecism of forgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the

Civil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed months of this long period in a state of

almost passionate excitement, in which she felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred almost

indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course the circumspection of suspicious swains had never

gone the length of making her a social proscript; for the number of those whose hearts, as they approached

her, beat only just fast enough to remind them they had heads as well, had kept her unacquainted with the

supreme discipline of her sex and age. She had had everything a girl could have: kindness, admiration,

bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant

opportunity for dancing, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, the latest publications, the music of

These things now, as memory played over them, resolved themselves into a multitude of scenes

and figures. Forgotten things came back to her; many others, which she had lately thought of great moment,

dropped out of sight. The result was kaleidoscopic, but the movement of the instrument was checked at last

by the servant's coming in with the name of a gentleman. The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood;

he was a straight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for the last twelvemonth and who,

thinking her the most beautiful young woman of her time, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I

have hinted at, a foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to her and had within a week or two written

from New York. She had thought it very possible he would come in had indeed all the rainy day been

vaguely expecting him. Now that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagerness to receive him.

He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was indeed quite a splendid young man; he inspired her with

a sentiment of high, of rare respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by any other person. He was

supposed by the world in general to wish to marry her, but this of course was between themselves. It at least

may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the

former city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the

State capital. Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved about the room with a new sense of

complications. But at last she presented herself and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong and

somewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not romantically, he was much rather obscurely,

handsome; but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the

charm you found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion other than his own, and a

jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it

bespoke resolution tonight; in spite of which, in half an hour, Caspar Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful

as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, it may be

Ralph Touchett was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his mother's door (at a quarter to

seven) with a good deal of eagerness. Even philosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted that

of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial dependence. His father, as

he had often said to himself, was the more motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was paternal, and even,

according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. She was nevertheless very fond of her only child and had

always insisted on his spending three months of the year with her. Ralph rendered perfect justice to her

affection and knew that in her thoughts and her thoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn always came

after the other nearest subjects of her solicitude, the various punctualities of performance of the workers of

her will. He found her completely dressed for dinner, but she embraced her boy with her gloved hands and

made him sit on the sofa beside her. She enquired scrupulously about her husband's health and about the

young man's own, and, receiving no very brilliant account of either, remarked that she was more than ever

convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English climate. In this case she also might have

given way. Ralph smiled at the idea of his mother's giving way, but made no point of reminding her that his

own infirmity was not the result of the English climate, from which he absented himself for a considerable

He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett, a native of Rutland, in the

State of Vermont, came to England as subordinate partner in a bankinghouse where some ten years later he

gained preponderant control. Daniel Touchett saw before him a lifelong residence in his adopted country, of

which, from the first, he took a simple, sane and accommodating view. But, as he said to himself, he had no

intention of disamericanizing, nor had he a desire to teach his only son any such subtle art. It had been for

himself so very soluble a problem to live in England assimilated yet unconverted that it seemed to him

equally simple his lawful heir should after his death carry on the grey old bank in the white American light.

He was at pains to intensify this light, however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph spent

several terms at an American school and took a degree at an American university, after which, as he struck

his father on his return as even redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in residence at Oxford.

Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and Ralph became at last English enough. His outward conformity to the

manners that surrounded him was none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed its independence, on

which nothing long imposed itself, and which, naturally inclined to adventure and irony, indulged in a

boundless liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of promise; at Oxford he distinguished

himself, to his father's ineffable satisfaction, and the people about him said it was a thousand pities so clever

a fellow should be shut out from a career. He might have had a career by returning to his own country

(though this point is shrouded in uncertainty) and even if Mr. Touchett had been willing to part with him

(which was not the case) it would have gone hard with him to put a watery waste permanently between

himself and the old man whom he regarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only fond of his father, he

admired him he enjoyed the opportunity of observing him. Daniel Touchett, to his perception, was a man of

genius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning enough of

it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, however, he mainly relished; it was the

fine ivory surface, polished as by the English air, that the old man had opposed to possibilities of penetration.

Daniel Touchett had been neither at Harvard nor at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had placed in his

son's hands the key to modern criticism. Ralph, whose head was full of ideas which his father had never

guessed, had a high esteem for the latter's originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for the

ease with which they adapt themselves to foreign conditions; but Mr. Touchett had made of the very limits of

his pliancy half the ground of his general success. He had retained in their freshness most of his marks of

primary pressure; his tone, as his son always noted with pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts of New

England. At the end of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he was rich; he combined

consummate shrewdness with the disposition superficially to fraternize, and his "social position," on which

he had never wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbed fruit. It was perhaps his want of

imagination and of what is called the historic consciousness; but to many of the impressions usually made by

English life upon the cultivated stranger his sense was completely closed. There were certain differences he

had never perceived, certain habits he had never formed, certain obscurities he had never sounded. As regards

these latter, on the day he had sounded them his son would have thought less well of him.

Ralph, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling; after which he had found

himself perched on a high stool in his father's bank. The responsibility and honour of such positions is not, I

believe, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon other considerations: Ralph, indeed, who

had very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walking about, at his work. To this exercise, however,

he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for at the end of some eighteen months he had become aware

of his being seriously out of health. He had caught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs and threw

them into dire confusion. He had to give up work and apply, to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of

himself. At first he slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of,

but an uninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common. This person, however,

improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance, even an

undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he

had something at stake in the matter it usually struck him as his reputation for ordinary wit devoted to his

graceless charge an amount of attention of which note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of

keeping the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, the other promised to follow its example, and

he was assured he might outweather a dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which

consumptives chiefly congregate. As he had grown extremely fond of London, he cursed the flatness of exile:

but at the same time that he cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ grateful

even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand. He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in

the sun, stopped at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when it had

A secret hoard of indifference like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his first

school outfit came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for

aught but that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was really nothing he had wanted very much to do,

so that he had at least not renounced the field of valour. At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit

seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action. Living

as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation a meagre entertainment for a young man

who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good winters and poor winters, and while the

former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled some

three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this history opens: he had on that occasion

remained later than usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He

arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between life and death. His convalescence was a

miracle, but the first use he made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He said to

himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to

him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of

losing them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of

contemplation had never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard that he should be

obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing himself; an idea none the less importunate for being vague and

none the less delightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts of inspiring selfcriticism.

His friends at present judged him more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their

heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His serenity was but the array of wild flowers niched in

It was very probably this sweettasting property of the observed thing in itself that was mainly

concerned in Ralph's quicklystirred interest in the advent of a young lady who was evidently not insipid. If

he was consideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough for a succession of days. It

may be added, in summary fashion, that the imagination of loving as distinguished from that of being

loved had still a place in his reduced sketch. He had only forbidden himself the riot of expression. However,

he shouldn't inspire his cousin with a passion, nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one.

"And now tell me about the young lady," he said to his mother. "What do you mean to do with her?"

Mrs. Touchett was prompt. "I mean to ask your father to invite her to stay three or four weeks at

"You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that," said Ralph. "My father will ask her as a matter

"Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property! That's all the more reason for his asking her.

But after that I mean after three months (for it's absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four

"You don't rise above detail, dear mother," said Ralph. "I should like to know what you mean to do

"My duty!" Mrs. Touchett declared. "I suppose you pity her very much," she added.

"No, I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as inviting compassion. I think I envy her.

"In showing her four European countries I shall leave her the choice of two of them and in

giving her the opportunity of perfecting herself in French, which she already knows very well."

Ralph frowned a little. "That sounds rather dry even allowing her the choice of two of the

"If it's dry," said his mother with a laugh, "you can leave Isabel alone to water it! She is as good as

"I don't know whether she's a gifted being, but she's a clever girl with a strong will and a high

"I can imagine that," said Ralph; and then he added abruptly: "How do you two get on?"

"Do you mean by that that I'm a bore? I don't think she finds me one. Some girls might, I know;

but Isabel's too clever for that. I think I greatly amuse her. We get on because I understand her; I know the

sort of girl she is. She's very frank, and I'm very frank: we know just what to expect of each other."

"Ah, dear mother," Ralph exclaimed, "one always knows what to expect of you! You've never

surprised me but once, and that's today in presenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence I had never

"Very pretty indeed; but I don't insist upon that. It's her general air of being some one in particular

that strikes me. Who is this rare creature, and what is she? Where did you find her, and how did you make her

"I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a rainy day, reading a heavy

book and boring herself to death. She didn't know she was bored, but when I left her no doubt of it she

seemed very grateful for the service. You may say I shouldn't have enlightened her I should have let her

alone. There's a good deal in that, but I acted conscientiously; I thought she was meant for something better.

It occurred to me that it would be a kindness to take her about and introduce her to the world. She thinks she

knows a great deal of it like most American girls; but like most American girls she's ridiculously mistaken.

If you want to know, I thought she would do me credit. I like to be well thought of, and for a woman of my

age there's no greater convenience, in some ways, than an attractive niece. You know I had seen nothing of

my sister's children for years; I disapproved entirely of the father. But I always meant to do something for

them when he should have gone to his reward. I ascertained where they were to be found and, without any

preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There are two others of them, both of whom are married; but I

saw only the elder, who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose name is Lily, jumped at the

idea of my taking an interest in Isabel; she said it was just what her sister needed that some one should take

an interest in her. She spoke of her as you might speak of some young person of genius in want of

encouragement and patronage. It may be that Isabel's a genius; but in that case I've not yet learned her special

line. Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe; they all regard Europe over there as a

land of emigration, of rescue, a refuge for their superfluous population. Isabel herself seemed very glad to

come, and the thing was easily arranged. There was a little difficulty about the moneyquestion, as she

seemed averse to being under pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income and she supposes herself to

Ralph had listened attentively to this judicious report, by which his interest in the subject of it was

not impaired. "Ah, if she's a genius," he said, "we must find out her special line. Is it by chance for flirting?"

"I don't think so. You may suspect that at first, but you'll be wrong. You won't, I think, in any way,

"Warburton's wrong then!" Ralph rejoicingly exclaimed. "He flatters himself he has made that

His mother shook her head. "Lord Warburton won't understand her. He needn't try."

"He's very intelligent," said Ralph; "but it's right he should be puzzled once in a while."

Ralph greeted these words with a laugh and looked out of the window. Then, "Are you not going

Her son looked at his watch. "You've another quarter of an hour then. Tell me some more about

Isabel." After which, as Mrs. Touchett declined his invitation, declaring that he must find out for himself,

"Well," he pursued, "she'll certainly do you credit. But won't she also give you trouble?"

"No," said Ralph; "you yourself are a proof of that. You're extremely natural, and I'm sure you

have never troubled any one. It takes trouble to do that. But tell me this; it just occurs to me. Is Isabel capable

"Ah," cried his mother, "you ask too many questions! Find that out for yourself."

His questions, however, were not exhausted. "All this time," he said, "you've not told me what you

"Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do absolutely nothing with her, and

"I never know what I mean in my telegrams especially those I send from America. Clearness is

Ralph knew what to think of his father's impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he offered his

mother his arm. This put it in his power, as they descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle

landing of the staircase the broad, low, widearmed staircase of timeblackened oak which was one of the

most striking features of Gardencourt. "You've no plan of marrying her?" he smiled.

"Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart from that, she's perfectly able

Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston. "As my father says,

His mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the source, and it soon became evident

he should not want for occasion. He had a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the two had

been left together in the drawingroom. Lord Warburton, who had ridden over from his own house, some ten

miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner; and an hour after this meal was ended Mr. and

Mrs. Touchett, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure of their forms, withdrew, under the valid

pretext of fatigue, to their respective apartments. The young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she

had been travelling half the day she appeared in no degree spent. She was really tired; she knew it, and knew

she should pay for it on the morrow; but it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furtherest

point and confess to it only when dissimulation broke down. A fine hypocrisy was for the present possible;

she was interested; she was, as she said to herself, floated. She asked Ralph to show her the pictures; there

were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing. The best were arranged in an oaken

gallery, of charming proportions, which had a sittingroom at either end of it and which in the evening was

usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to advantage, and the visit might have stood

over to the morrow. This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make; but Isabel looked disappointed smiling

still, however and said: "If you please I should like to see them just a little." She was eager, she knew she

was eager and now seemed so; she couldn't help it. "She doesn't take suggestions," Ralph said to himself; but

he said it without irritation; her pressure amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at

intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the

faded gilding of heavy frames; it made a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick

and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to one picture after another, indulged in

little exclamations and murmurs. She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with that.

She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so he found

himself pausing in the middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures than on her

presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances, for she was better worth looking at than most

works of art. She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when people had wished to

distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which

was dark even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eyes, a little too firm

perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of

"Ah, some of them would but the way they're talked to!" murmured Isabel, who preferred not to

dilate just yet on herself. Then in a moment, to change the subject, "Please tell me isn't there a ghost?" she

"It's not a romantic old house," said Ralph. "You'll be disappointed if you count on that. It's a

dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here but what you may have brought with you."

"I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the right place."

"To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here, between my father and me."

Isabel looked at him a moment. "Is there never any one here but your father and you?"

"Now you're making fun of me," the girl answered rather gravely. "Who was the gentleman on the

"I don't think I am; I've been told I'm not; I'm said to have too many theories. But you haven't told

Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. "You like my father and you like Lord

"I like your mother very much, because because" And Isabel found herself attempting to assign

"I always know why," the girl answered. "It's because she doesn't expect one to like her. She

"So you adore her out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my mother," said Ralph.

"I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try to make them do it."

"Good heavens, how you see through one!" he cried with a dismay that was not altogether jocular.

"But I like you all the same," his cousin went on. "The way to clinch the matter will be to show me

Ralph shook his head sadly. "I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't

given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You

must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes

"Yes, of happy knowledge of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't suffered, and you're not made

She had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with a certain gravity in her eyes.

Charming as he found her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous indeed it was a part of her charm; and

he wondered what she would say. "I'm not afraid, you know," she said: which seemed quite presumptuous

"Yes, I'm afraid of suffering. But I'm not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily," she

"I don't believe you do," said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.

"I don't think that's a fault," she answered. "It's not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not

They passed out of the smaller drawingroom, into which they had returned from the gallery, and

paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bedroom candle,

which he had taken from a niche. "Never mind what they call you. When you do suffer they call you an idiot.

She looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot on the oaken stair. "Well,"

she said, "that's what I came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible. Goodnight."

"Goodnight! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to contribute to it!"

She turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with his hands always in his

Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had

been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a

larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. It is true

that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent

people never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they themselves were not conscious,

and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors in

translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book Mrs.

Varian having a reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Varian

thought highly of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation.

Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, was unfurnished

with a library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper on a

shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs. Varian's acquaintance with literature was

confined to The New York Interviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read the Interviewer you had

lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of her

daughters; she was determined to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her impression with

regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire

for the laurels of authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of the consciousness of genius;

she only had a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior.

Whether or no she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thought her so; for it seemed to

her often that her mind moved more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that might easily

be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that Isabel was probably very liable to the

sin of selfesteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of

taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; she treated herself to occasions of homage.

Meanwhile her errors and delusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity

of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines which had never

been corrected by the judgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her

own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. At moments she discovered she was

grotesquely wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head

higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had

a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should

be conscious of a fine organization (she couldn't help knowing her organization was fine), should move in a

realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as

unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be

one's own best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain

nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She

spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to

regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be

detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. She

had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her

tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered her) that the chance of

inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to

hold her breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happen to her. On the whole,

reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but

when she fixed them hard she recognized them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be

cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt

each other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed indecent not to scorn them. Of course

the danger of a high spirit was the danger of inconsistency the danger of keeping up the flag after the place

has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost a dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew

little of the sorts of artillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that such contradictions

would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should always be in harmony with the most pleasing

impression she should produce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she was.

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she

should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre

knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting

and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look

very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the

delicate, desultory, flamelike spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy

victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender

It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate in being independent, and that she

ought to make some very enlightened use of that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less of

singleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister Lily constantly urged her to come and

abide. She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offered so

high an example of useful activity that Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the

advantage of an admired ability; she was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the

Interviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and other places, were universally quoted.

Isabel pronounced them with confidence "ephemeral," but she esteemed the courage, energy and

goodhumour of the writer, who, without parents and without property, had adopted three of the children of

an infirm and widowed sister and was paying their schoolbills out of the proceeds of her literary labour.

Henrietta was in the van of progress and had clearcut views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long

been to come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view an

enterprise the less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be and to how many

objections most European institutions lay open. When she heard that Isabel was coming she wished to start at

once; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two should travel together. She had been obliged,

however, to postpone this enterprise. She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly in

some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not have taken pleasure in

it and was not a regular student of the Interviewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman

might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the

journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to want, one was

not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to

being frivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If one should wait with the right

patience one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was

not without a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first on the list was a conviction of the

vulgarity of thinking too much of it. From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might

be delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional

flimsiness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarseminded

person of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there

was in her something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called it

had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible husbands. Few of the men

she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present

himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul it was the deepest thing there

lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole,

was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after

a little it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have

made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her

development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain

gardenlike quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening

vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the

recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she was often

reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of her remarkable soul, and that there were

moreover a great many places which were not gardens at all only dusky pestiferous tracts, planted thick with

ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid episode on curiosity on which she had lately been floating,

which had conveyed her to this beautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she often

checked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who were less happy than herself a thought

which for the moment made her fine, full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do

with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It must be confessed that this

question never held her long. She was too young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She

always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin by

getting a general impression of life. This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should be

secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special attention.

England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime. In her

infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris,

not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not

entered. The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote, and the oldworld quality in

everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed a picture made real;

no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a

world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep

embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that

seemed always peeping in, the sense of wellordered privacy in the centre of a "property" a place where

sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffled by the earth itself and in the thick mild air

all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk these things were much to the taste of our

young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with her

uncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the open air,

sitting with folded hands like a placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his work and

received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and months made up only of offdays. Isabel

amused him more than she suspected the effect she produced upon people was often different from what she

supposed and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making her chatter. It was by this term that he

qualified her conversation, which had much of the "point" observable in that of the young ladies of her

country, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. Like the

mass of American girls Isabel had been encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended to; she

had been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value,

many of her emotions passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habit of

seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to her words when she was really moved that

prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think that

she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and

quick to understand, to speak so many characteristics of her niece that he had fallen in love with Mrs.

Touchett. He never expressed this analogy to the girl herself, however; for if Mrs. Touchett had once been

like Isabel, Isabel was not at all like Mrs. Touchett. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was a long

time, as he said, since they had had any young life in the house; and our rustling, quicklymoving,

clearvoiced heroine was as agreeable to his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do something

for her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but questions; it is true that of these she

asked a quantity. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes came in forms that

puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about the British constitution, the English

character, the state of politics, the manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of the

aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and in begging to be enlightened on these

points she usually enquired whether they corresponded with the descriptions in the books. The old man

always looked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he smoothed down the shawl spread across his legs.

"The books?" he once said; "well, I don't know much about the books. You must ask Ralph about

that. I've always ascertained for myself got my information in the natural form. I never asked many

questions even; I just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very good opportunities better than what

a young lady would naturally have. I'm of an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it if you were

to watch me: however much you might watch me I should be watching you more. I've been watching these

people for upwards of thirtyfive years, and I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable

information. It's a very fine country on the whole finer perhaps than what we give it credit for on the other

side. There are several improvements I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem

to be generally felt as yet. When the necessity of a thing is generally felt they usually manage to accomplish

it; but they seem to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home among them

than I expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's because I've had a considerable degree of success.

"I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful. They like American young

ladies very much over here; they show them a great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too much at home,

"Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me," Isabel judicially emphasized. "I like the place very

"I've no doubt they're good," Isabel rejoined; "but are they pleasant in society? They won't rob me

nor beat me; but will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate

to say so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're very nice to girls; they're not nice to them in

"I don't know about the novels," said Mr. Touchett. "I believe the novels have a great deal of

ability, but I don't suppose they're very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was

a friend of Ralph's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up to everything; but she was not the

sort of person you could depend on for evidence. Too free a fancy I suppose that was it. She afterwards

published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have given a representation something in the

nature of a caricature, as you might say of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Ralph just handed me the

book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to be a description of my conversation; American

peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn't have

listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving a report of my conversation, if she liked; but I didn't

like the idea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course I talk like an American I can't talk like

a Hottentot. However I talk, I've made them understand me pretty well over here. But I don't talk like the old

gentleman in that lady's novel. He wasn't an American; we wouldn't have him over there at any price. I just

mention that fact to show you that they're not always accurate. Of course, as I've no daughters, and as Mrs.

Touchett resides in Florence, I haven't had much chance to notice about the young ladies. It sometimes

appears as if the young women in the lower class were not very well treated; but I guess their position is

"Gracious," Isabel exclaimed; "how many classes have they? About fifty, I suppose."

"Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never took much notice of the classes. That's the

"Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable especially towards the top. But for me there

are only two classes: the people I trust and the people I don't. Of those two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the

"I'm much obliged to you," said the girl quickly. Her way of taking compliments seemed

sometimes rather dry; she got rid of them as rapidly as possible. But as regards this she was sometimes

misjudged, she was thought insensible to them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to show how

infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much. "I'm sure the English are very conventional,"

"They've got everything pretty well fixed," Mr. Touchett admitted. "It's all settled beforehand

"I don't like to have everything settled beforehand," said the girl. "I like more unexpectedness."

Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. "Well, it's settled beforehand that you'll

"I shall not have success if they're too stupidly conventional. I'm not in the least stupidly

"No, no, you're all wrong," said the old man. "You can't tell what they'll like. They're very

"Ah well," said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her hands clasped about the belt of her black

The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the attitude of the British public as if

the young lady had been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the British public remained for the present

profoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel Archer, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into the

dullest house in England. Her gouty uncle received very little company, and Mrs. Touchett, not having

cultivated relations with her husband's neighbours, was not warranted in expecting visits from them. She had,

however, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards. For what is usually called social intercourse she had very

little relish; but nothing pleased her more than to find her halltable whitened with oblong morsels of

symbolic pasteboard. She flattered herself that she was a very just woman, and had mastered the sovereign

truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing. She had played no social part as mistress of Gardencourt,

and it was not to be supposed that, in the surrounding country, a minute account should be kept of her

comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was

taken of them and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make herself important in the neighbourhood

had, not much to do with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband's adopted country. Isabel presently

found herself in the singular situation of defending the British constitution against her aunt; Mrs. Touchett

having formed the habit of sticking pins into this venerable instrument. Isabel always felt an impulse to pull

out the pins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old parchment, but because it

seemed to her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. She was very critical herself it was incidental to

her age, her sex and her nationality; but she was very sentimental as well, and there was something in Mrs.

"Now what's your point of view?" she asked of her aunt. "When you criticize everything here you

should have a point of view. Yours doesn't seem to be American you thought everything over there so

"My dear young lady," said Mrs. Touchett, "there are as many points of view in the world as there

are people of sense to take them. You may say that doesn't make them very numerous! American? Never in

Isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted; it was a tolerable description of her own

manner of judging, but it would not have sounded well for her to say so. On the lips of a person less advanced

in life and less enlightened by experience than Mrs. Touchett such a declaration would savour of immodesty,

even of arrogance. She risked it nevertheless in talking with Ralph, with whom she talked a great deal and

with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large license to extravagance. Her cousin used, as the

phrase is, to chaff her; he very soon established with her a reputation for treating everything as a joke, and he

was not a man to neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. She accused him of an odious want of

seriousness, of laughing at all things, beginning with himself. Such slender faculty of reverence as he

possessed centred wholly upon his father; for the rest, he exercised his wit indifferently upon his father's son,

this gentleman's weak lungs, his useless life, his fantastic mother, his friends (Lord Warburton in especial),

his adopted, and his native country, his charming newfound cousin. "I keep a band of music in my

anteroom," he said once to her. "It has orders to play without stopping; it renders me two excellent services.

It keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that

dancing's going on within." It was dancemusic indeed that you usually heard when you came within

earshot of Ralph's band; the liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air. Isabel often found herself irritated

by this perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the anteroom, as her cousin called it, and

enter the private apartments. It mattered little that he had assured her they were a very dismal place; she

would have been glad to undertake to sweep them and set them in order. It was but halfhospitality to let her

remain outside; to punish him for which Isabel administered innumerable taps with the ferule of her straight

young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised to a large extent in selfdefence, for her cousin amused

himself with calling her "Columbia" and accusing her of a patriotism so heated that it scorched. He drew a

caricature of her in which she was represented as a very pretty young woman dressed, on the lines of the

prevailing fashion, in the folds of the national banner. Isabel's chief dread in life at this period of her

development was that she should appear narrowminded; what she feared next afterwards was that she

should really be so. But she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding in her cousin's sense and pretending

to sigh for the charms of her native land. She would be as American as it pleased him to regard her, and if he

chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of occupation. She defended England against his mother, but

when Ralph sang its praises on purpose, as she said, to work her up, she found herself able to differ from him

on a variety of points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an

October pear; and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which enabled her to take her cousin's

chaff and return it in kind. If her goodhumour flagged at moments it was not because she thought herself

illused, but because she suddenly felt sorry for Ralph. It seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had

"I don't know what's the matter with you," she observed to him once; "but I suspect you're a great

"That's your privilege," Ralph answered, who had not been used to being so crudely addressed.

"I don't know what you care for; I don't think you care for anything. You don't really care for

England when you praise it; you don't care for America even when you pretend to abuse it."

Isabel might have believed it and not have been far from the truth. He thought a great deal about

her; she was constantly present to his mind. At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to

him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an openhanded gift of fate, had refreshed and

quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for. Poor Ralph had been for many weeks steeped in

melancholy; his outlook, habitually sombre, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud. He had grown anxious

about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to his legs, had begun to ascend into regions more vital. The

old man had been gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered to Ralph that another attack would

be less easy to deal with. Just now he appeared disburdened of pain, but Ralph could not rid himself of a

suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard. If the

manoeuvre should succeed there would be little hope of any great resistance. Ralph had always taken for

granted that his father would survive him that his own name would be the first grimly called. The father and

son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his

hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in

making the best of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph lost indeed his one

inspiration. If they might die at the same time it would be all very well; but without the encouragement of his

father's society he should barely have patience to await his own turn. He had not the incentive of feeling that

he was indispensable to his mother; it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets. He bethought himself of

course that it had been a small kindness to his father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the passive

party should know the felt wound; he remembered that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an

early end as a clever fallacy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first. But

of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being

which, with all abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr.

These were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to his puzzling over them. It even

suggested there might be a compensation for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial sire. He wondered

whether he were harbouring "love" for this spontaneous young woman from Albany; but he judged that on

the whole he was not. After he had known her for a week he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he

felt a little more sure. Lord Warburton had been right about her; she was a really interesting little figure.

Ralph wondered how their neighbour had found it out so soon; and then he said it was only another proof of

his friend's high abilities, which he had always greatly admired. If his cousin were to be nothing more than an

entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious she was an entertainment of a high order. "A character like that,"

he said to himself, "a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature." It's finer than the

finest work of art than a Greek basrelief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic cathedral. It's very pleasant to

be so well treated where one had least looked for it. I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week

before she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen. Suddenly I receive a Titian,

by the post, to hang on my wall a Greek basrelief to stick over my chimneypiece. The key of a beautiful

edifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told to walk in and admire. My poor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful,

and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again." The sentiment of these reflexions was

very just; but it was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put into his hand. His cousin was a

very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his

attitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the edifice

from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of

proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the

roof. The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them

would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with

herself? This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most women did

with themselves nothing at all; they waited, attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that

way and furnish them with a destiny. Isabel's originality was that she gave one an impression of having

intentions of her own. "Whenever she executes them," said Ralph, "may I be there to see!"

It devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place. Mr. Touchett was confined to his

chair, and his wife's position was that of rather a grim visitor; so that in the line of conduct that opened itself

to Ralph duty and inclination were harmoniously mixed. He was not a great walker, but he strolled about the

grounds with his cousin a pastime for which the weather remained favourable with a persistency not

allowed for in Isabel's somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate; and in the long afternoons, of which the

length was but the measure of her gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear little river, as

Isabel called it, where the opposite shore seemed still a part of the foreground of the landscape; or drove over

the country in a phaeton a low, capacious, thickwheeled phaeton formerly much used by Mr. Touchett, but

which he had now ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it largely and, handling the reins in a manner which

approved itself to the groom as "knowing," was never weary of driving her uncle's capital horses through

winding lanes and byways full of the rural incidents she had confidently expected to find; past cottages

thatched and timbered, past alehouses latticed and sanded, past patches of ancient common and glimpses of

empty parks, between hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When they reached home they usually found

tea had been served on the lawn and that Mrs. Touchett had not shrunk from the extremity of handing her

husband his cup. But the two for the most part sat silent; the old man with his head back and his eyes closed,

his wife occupied with her knitting and wearing that appearance of rare profundity with which some ladies

One day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young persons, after spending an hour on the

river, strolled back to the house and perceived Lord Warburton sitting under the trees and engaged in

conversation, of which even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Touchett. He

had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau and had asked, as the father and son often invited him

to do, for a dinner and a lodging. Isabel, seeing him for half an hour on the day of her arrival, had discovered

in this brief space that she liked him; he had indeed rather sharply registered himself on her fine sense and

she had thought of him several times. She had hoped she should see him again hoped too that she should see

a few others. Gardencourt was not dull; the place itself was sovereign, her uncle was more and more a sort of

golden grandfather, and Ralph was unlike any cousin she had ever encountered her idea of cousins having

tended to gloom. Then her impressions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was as yet hardly

a hint of vacancy in the view. But Isabel had need to remind herself that she was interested in human nature

and that her foremost hope in coming abroad had been that she should see a great many people. When Ralph

said to her, as he had done several times, "I wonder you find this endurable; you ought to see some of the

neighbours and some of our friends, because we have really got a few, though you would never suppose it"

when he offered to invite what he called a "lot of people" and make her acquainted with English society, she

encouraged the hospitable impulse and promised in advance to hurl herself into the fray. Little, however, for

the present, had come of his offers, and it may be confided to the reader that if the young man delayed to

carry them out it was because he found the labour of providing for his companion by no means so severe as to

require extraneous help. Isabel had spoken to him very often about "specimens"; it was a word that played a

considerable part in her vocabulary; she had given him to understand that she wished to see English society

"Well now, there's a specimen," he said to her as they walked up from the riverside and he

The fortunate Lord Warburton exchanged a handshake with our heroine and hoped she was very

"Oh, I know he doesn't row; he's too lazy," said his lordship, indicating Ralph Touchett with a

"He has a good excuse for his laziness," Isabel rejoined, lowering her voice a little.

"Ah, he has a good excuse for everything!" cried Lord Warburton, still with his sonorous mirth.

"My excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well," said Ralph. "She does everything well.

"Be touched in the right sense and you'll never look the worse for it," said Isabel, who, if it pleased

her to hear it said that her accomplishments were numerous, was happily able to reflect that such

complacency was not the indication of a feeble mind, inasmuch as there were several things in which she

excelled. Her desire to think well of herself had at least the element of humility that it always needed to be

Lord Warburton not only spent the night at Gardencourt, but he was persuaded to remain over the

second day; and when the second day was ended he determined to postpone his departure till the morrow.

During this period he addressed many of his remarks to Isabel, who accepted this evidence of his esteem with

a very good grace. She found herself liking him extremely; the first impression he had made on her had had

weight, but at the end of an evening spent in his society she scarce fell short of seeing him though quite

without luridity as a hero of romance. She retired to rest with a sense of good fortune, with a quickened

consciousness of possible felicities. "It's very nice to know two such charming people as those," she said,

meaning by "those" her cousin and her cousin's friend. It must be added moreover that an incident had

occurred which might have seemed to put her goodhumour to the test. Mr. Touchett went to bed at halfpast

nine o'clock, but his wife remained in the drawingroom with the other members of the party. She prolonged

her vigil for something less than an hour, and then, rising, observed to Isabel that it was time they should bid

the gentlemen goodnight. Isabel had as yet no desire to go to bed; the occasion wore, to her sense, a festive

character, and feasts were not in the habit of terminating so early. So, without further thought, she replied,

"I'll light your candle; do let me light your candle, Miss Archer!" Lord Warburton exclaimed.

Mrs. Touchett fixed her bright little eyes upon him a moment and transferred them coldly to her

niece. "You can't stay alone with the gentlemen. You're not you're not at your blest Albany, my dear."

"I didn't make your country, my lord," Mrs. Touchett said majestically. "I must take it as I find it."

"Perhaps I had better go to bed!" the visitor suggested. "That will arrange it."

Mrs. Touchett gave a little look of despair and sat down again. "Oh, if it's necessary I'll stay up till

Ralph meanwhile handed Isabel her candlestick. He had been watching her; it had seemed to him

her temper was involved an accident that might be interesting. But if he had expected anything of a flare he

was disappointed, for the girl simply laughed a little, nodded goodnight and withdrew accompanied by her

aunt. For himself he was annoyed at his mother, though he thought she was right. Abovestairs the two ladies

Isabel considered. "I'm not vexed, but I'm surprised and a good deal mystified. Wasn't it proper I

"Not in the least. Young girls here in decent houses don't sit alone with the gentlemen late at

"You were very right to tell me then," said Isabel. "I don't understand it, but I'm very glad to know

"I shall always tell you," her aunt answered, "whenever I see you taking what seems to me too

"Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."

As she was devoted to romantic effects Lord Warburton ventured to express a hope that she would

come some day and see his house, a very curious old place. He extracted from Mrs. Touchett a promise that

she bring her niece to Lockleigh, and Ralph signified his willingness to attend the ladies if his father should

be able to spare him. Lord Warburton assured our heroine that in the mean time his sisters, would come and

see her. She knew something about his sisters, having sounded him, during the hours they spent together

while he was at Gardencourt, on many points connected with his family. When Isabel was interested she

asked a great many questions, and as her companion was a copious talker she urged him on this occasion by

no means in vain. He told her he had four sisters and two brothers and had lost both his parents. The brothers

and sisters were very good people "not particularly clever, you know," he said, "but very decent and

pleasant"; and he was so good as to hope Miss Archer might know them well. One of the brothers was in the

Church, settled in the family living, that of Lockleigh, which was a heavy, sprawling parish, and was an

excellent fellow in spite of his thinking differently from himself on every conceivable topic. And then Lord

Warburton mentioned some of the opinions held by his brother, which were opinions Isabel had often heard

expressed and that she supposed to be entertained by a considerable portion of the human family. Many of

them indeed she supposed she had held herself, till he assured her she was quite mistaken, that it was really

impossible, that she had doubtless imagined she entertained them, but that she might depend that, if she

thought them over a little, she would find there was nothing in them. When she answered that she had already

thought several of the questions involved over very attentively he declared that she was only another example

of what he had often been struck with the fact that, of all the people in the world, the Americans were the

most grossly superstitious. They were rank Tories and bigots, every one of them; there were no conservatives

like American conservatives. Her uncle and her cousin were there to prove it; nothing could be more

mediaeval than many of their views; they had ideas that people in England nowadays were ashamed to

confess to; and they had the impudence moreover, said his lordship, laughing, to pretend they knew more

about the needs and dangers of this poor dear stupid old England than he who was born in it and owned a

considerable slice of it the more shame to him! From all of which Isabel gathered that Lord Warburton was

a nobleman of the newest pattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways. His other brother, who

was in the army in India, was rather wild and pigheaded and had not been of much use as yet but to make

debts for Warburton to pay one of the most precious privileges of an elder brother. "I don't think I shall pay

any more," said her friend; "he lives a monstrous deal better than I do, enjoys unheardof luxuries and thinks

himself a much finer gentleman than I. As I'm a consistent radical I go in only for equality; I don't go in for

the superiority of the younger brothers." Two of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were married, one of

them having done very well, as they said, the other only soso. The husband of the elder, Lord Haycock, was

a very good fellow, but unfortunately a horrid Tory; and his wife, like all good English wives, was worse than

her husband. The other had espoused a smallish squire in Norfolk and, though married but the other day, had

already five children. This information and much more Lord Warburton imparted to his young American

listener, taking pains to make many things clear and to lay bare to her apprehension the peculiarities of

English life. Isabel was often amused at his explicitness and at the small allowance he seemed to make either

for her own experience or for her imagination. "He thinks I'm a barbarian," she said, "and that I've never seen

forks and spoons"; and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of hearing him answer seriously.

Then when he had fallen into the trap, "It's a pity you can't see me in my warpaint and feathers," she

remarked; "if I had known how kind you are to the poor savages I would have brought over my native

costume!" Lord Warburton had travelled through the United States and knew much more about them than

Isabel; he was so good as to say that America was the most charming country in the world, but his

recollections of it appeared to encourage the idea that Americans in England would need to have a great

many things explained to them. "If I had only had you to explain things to me in America!" he said. "I was

rather puzzled in your country; in fact I was quite bewildered, and the trouble was that the explanations only

puzzled me more. You know I think they often gave me the wrong ones on purpose; they're rather clever

about that over there. But when I explain you can trust me; about what I tell you there's no mistake." There

was no mistake at least about his being very intelligent and cultivated and knowing almost everything in the

world. Although he gave the most interesting and thrilling glimpses Isabel felt he never did it to exhibit

himself, and though he had had rare chances and had tumbled in, as she put it, for high prizes, he was as far

as possible from making a merit of it. He had enjoyed the best things of life, but they had not spoiled his

sense of proportion. His quality was a mixture of the effect of rich experienced, so easily come by! with a

modesty at times almost boyish; the sweet and wholesome savour of which it was as agreeable as something

"I like your specimen English gentleman very much," Isabel said to Ralph after Lord Warburton

Isabel looked at him askance. "Why, that seems to me his only fault that one can't pity him a

"No, as to that he's detestably sound. What I mean is that he's a man with a great position who's

"Perhaps he is though on the whole I don't think so. But in that case what's more pitiable than a

sentient, selfconscious abuse planted by other hands, deeply rooted but aching with a sense of its injustice?

For me, in his place, I could be as solemn as a statue of Buddha. He occupies a position that appeals to my

imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great wealth, great power, a

natural share in the public affairs of a great country. But he's all in a muddle about himself, his position, his

power, and indeed about everything in the world. He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in

himself and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very

well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful

Philistine; he says I don't understand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish

"Possibly not; though, being a man of a good deal of charming taste, I think he often has

uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a being of his opportunities that he's not miserable? Besides, I

In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with

his shawl over his legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands. In the course of conversation he asked her

"He's a nice person," said Mr. Touchett, "but I don't recommend you to fall in love with him."

"I shall not do it then; I shall never fall in love but on your recommendation. Moreover," Isabel

"Oh, indeed? I don't know what there may be to say, but you must remember that Ralph must talk."

"He thinks your friend's too subversive or not subversive enough! I don't quite understand

The old man shook his head slowly, smiled and put down his cup. "I don't know which either. He

goes very far, but it's quite possible he doesn't go far enough. He seems to want to do away with a good many

things, but he seems to want to remain himself. I suppose that's natural, but rather inconsistent."

"Oh, I hope he'll remain himself," said Isabel. "If he were to be done away with his friends would

"Well," said the old man, "I guess he'll stay and amuse his friends. I should certainly miss him very

much here at Gardencourt. He always amuses me when he comes over, and I think he amuses himself as well.

There's a considerable number like him, round in society; they're very fashionable just now. I don't know

what they're trying to do whether they're trying to get up a revolution. I hope at any rate they'll put it off till

after I'm gone. You see they want to disestablish everything; but I'm a pretty big landowner here, and I don't

want to be disestablished. I wouldn't have come over if I had thought they were going to behave like that,"

Mr. Touchett went on with expanding hilarity. "I came over because I thought England was a safe country. I

call it a regular fraud if they are going to introduce any considerable changes; there'll be a large number

"Oh, I do hope they'll make a revolution!" Isabel exclaimed "I should delight in seeing a

"Let me see," said her uncle, with a humorous intention; "I forget whether you're on the side of the

"I'm on the side of both. I guess I'm a little on the side of everything. In a revolution after it was

well begun I think I should be a high, proud loyalist. One sympathizes more with them, and they've a chance

"I don't know that I understand what you mean by behaving picturesquely, but it seems to me that

"I'm afraid, after all, you won't have the pleasure of going gracefully to the guillotine here just

now," Mr. Touchett went on. "If you want to see a big outbreak you must pay us a long visit. You see, when

"Well, I mean Lord Warburton and his friends the radicals of the upper class. Of course I only

know the way it strikes me. They talk about the changes, but I don't think they quite realize. You and I, you

know, we know what it is to have lived under democratic institutions: I always thought them very

comfortable, but I was used to them from the first. And then I ain't a lord; you're a lady, my dear, but I ain't a

lord. Now over here I don't think it quite comes home to them. It's a matter of every day and every hour, and I

don't think many of them would find it as pleasant as what they've got. Of course if they want to try, it's their

"Well, they want to feel earnest," Mr. Touchett allowed; "but it seems as if they took it out in

theories mostly. Their radical views are a kind of amusement; they've got to have some amusement, and they

might have coarser tastes than that. You see they're very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are about their

biggest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don't damage their position. They think a great deal of

their position; don't let one of them ever persuade you he doesn't, for if you were to proceed on that basis

Isabel followed her uncle's argument, which he unfolded with his quaint distinctness, most

attentively, and though she wag unacquainted with the British aristocracy she found it in harmony with her

general impressions of human nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord Warburton's behalf. "I

don't believe Lord Warburton's a humbug; I don't care what the others are. I should like to see Lord

"Heaven deliver me from my friends!" Mr. Touchett answered. "Lord Warburton's a very amiable

young man a very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He owns fifty thousand acres of the

soil of this little island and ever so many other things besides. He has half a dozen houses to live in. He has a

seat in Parliament as I have one at my own dinnertable. He has elegant tastes cares for literature, for art,

for science, for charming young ladies. The most elegant is his taste for the new views. It affords him a great

deal of pleasure more perhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old house over there what

does he call it, Lockleigh? is very attractive; but I don't think it's as pleasant as this. That doesn't matter,

however he has so many others. His views don't hurt any one as far as I can see; they certainly don't hurt

himself. And if there were to be a revolution he would come off very easily. They wouldn't touch him, they'd

"Ah, he couldn't be a martyr even if he wished!" Isabel sighed. "That's a very poor position."

Isabel shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the fact that she did it with a

The two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman's sisters, came presently to call upon her, and Isabel

took a fancy to the young ladies, who appeared to her to show a most original stamp. It is true that when she

described them to her cousin by that term he declared that no epithet could be less applicable than this to the

two Misses Molyneux, since there were fifty thousand young women in England who exactly resembled

them. Deprived of this advantage, however, Isabel's visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and

shyness of demeanour, and of having, as she thought, eyes like the balanced basins, the circles of "ornamental

"They're not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are," our heroine said to herself; and she deemed

this a great charm, for two or three of the friends of her girlhood had been regrettably open to the charge

(they would have been so nice without it), to say nothing of Isabel's having occasionally suspected it as a

tendency of her own. The Misses Molyneux were not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh

complexions and something of the smile of childhood. Yes, their eyes, which Isabel admired, were round,

quiet and contented, and their figures, also of a generous roundness, were encased in sealskin jackets. Their

friendliness was great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show it; they seemed somewhat afraid

of the young lady from the other side of the world and rather looked than spoke their good wishes. But they

made it clear to her that they hoped she would come to luncheon at Lockleigh, where they lived with their

brother, and then they might see her very, very often. They wondered if she wouldn't come over some day

and sleep: they were expecting some people on the twentyninth, so perhaps she would come while the

"I'm afraid it isn't any one very remarkable," said the elder sister; "but I dare say you'll take us as

"I shall find you delightful; I think you're enchanting just as you are," replied Isabel, who often

Her visitors flushed, and her cousin told her, after they were gone, that if she said such things to

those poor girls they would think she was in some wild, free manner practising on them: he was sure it was

"I can't help it," Isabel answered. "I think it's lovely to be so quiet and reasonable and satisfied. I

"I mean to try and imitate them," said Isabel. "I want very much to see them at home."

She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Ralph and his mother, she drove over to

Lockleigh. She found the Misses Molyneux sitting in a vast drawingroom (she perceived afterwards it was

one of several) in a wilderness of faded chintz; they were dressed on this occasion in black velveteen. Isabel

liked them even better at home than she had done at Gardencourt, and was more than ever struck with the fact

that they were not morbid. It had seemed to her before that if they had a fault it was a want of play of mind;

but she presently saw they were capable of deep emotion. Before luncheon she was alone with them for some

time, on one side of the room, while Lord Warburton, at a distance, talked to Mrs. Touchett.

"Is it true your brother's such a great radical?" Isabel asked. She knew it was true, but we have seen

that her interest in human nature was keen, and she had a desire to draw the Misses Molyneux out.

Isabel watched him a moment at the other side of the room; he was clearly trying hard to make

himself agreeable to Mrs. Touchett. Ralph had met the frank advances of one of the dogs before the fire that

the temperature of an English August, in the ancient expanses, had not made an impertinence. "Do you

"Oh, he must be, you know!" Mildred exclaimed quickly, while the elder sister gazed at our

The two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. "Do you mean do you mean on account

"Ah, I'm afraid he is an impostor!" Isabel returned. "Don't you think it's a false position?"

Her companions, evidently, had lost themselves. "My brother position?" Miss Molyneux enquired.

"It's thought a very good position," said the younger sister. "It's the first position in this part of the

"I dare say you think me very irreverent," Isabel took occasion to remark. "I suppose you revere

"If you do that he must be very good because you, evidently, are beautifully good."

"Oh, I can see that," said Isabel. "But if I were he I should wish to fight to the death: I mean for the

"I think one ought to be liberal," Mildred argued gently. "We've always been so, even from the

"Ah well," said Isabel, "you've made a great success of it; I don't wonder you like it. I see you're

When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after luncheon, seemed to her a matter of course that

it should be a noble picture. Within, it had been a good deal modernized some of its best points had lost

their purity; but as they saw it from the gardens, a stout grey pile, of the softest, deepest, most

weatherfretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it affected the young visitor as a castle in a legend. The

day was cool and rather lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck, and the watery sunshine rested on

the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, washing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache

of antiquity was keenest. Her host's brother, the Vicar, had come to luncheon, and Isabel had had five

minutes' talk with him time enough to institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism and give it up as vain. The

marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural countenance, a capacious

appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laughter. Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin that before

taking orders he had been a mighty wrestler and that he was still, on occasion in the privacy of the family

circle as it were quite capable of flooring his man. Isabel liked him she was in the mood for liking

everything; but her imagination was a good deal taxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid. The whole

party, on leaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds; but Lord Warburton exercised some ingenuity in

"I wish you to see the place properly, seriously," he said. "You can't do so if your attention is

distracted by irrelevant gossip." His own conversation (though he told Isabel a good deal about the house,

which had a very curious history) was not purely archaeological; he reverted at intervals to matters more

personal matters personal to the young lady as well as to himself. But at last, after a pause of some duration,

returning for a moment to their ostensible theme, "Ah, well," he said, "I'm very glad indeed you like the old

barrack. I wish you could see more of it that you could stay here a while. My sisters have taken an immense

"There's no want of inducements," Isabel answered; "but I'm afraid I can't make engagements. I'm

"Ah, pardon me if I say I don't exactly believe that. I'm pretty sure you can do whatever you want."

"I'm sorry if I make that impression on you; I don't think it's a nice impression to make."

"It has the merit of permitting me to hope." And Lord Warburton paused a moment.

"Ah," said Isabel, "to enjoy that pleasure I needn't be so terribly emancipated."

"I'm glad you have talked about me," said Lord Warburton. "But, I nevertheless don't think he'd

"I can't answer for my uncle's tastes," the girl rejoined, "though I ought as far as possible to take

"No, I'm not easily charmed!" And then he stopped a moment. "But you've charmed me, Miss

These words were uttered with an indefinable sound which startled the girl; it struck her as the

prelude to something grave: she had heard the sound before and she recognized it. She had no wish, however,

that for the moment such a prelude should have a sequel, and she said as gaily as possible and as quickly as

an appreciable degree of agitation would allow her: "I'm afraid there's no prospect of my being able to come

"Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I've a sort of sense that you're always summing

"It's very kind of you to say so; but, even if I gain, stern justice is not what I most love. Is Mrs.

"That's a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn't deserve an answer. I want to see as many countries

"Yes, that's what you enjoy most; I can't make out what you're up to," said Lord Warburton. "You

"You're so good as to have a theory about me which I don't at all fill out. Is there anything

mysterious in a purpose entertained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by fifty thousand of

"You can't improve your mind, Miss Archer," her companion declared. "It's already a most

"Well, you think us 'quaint' that's the same thing. I won't be thought 'quaint,' to begin with; I'm

"That protest is one of the quaintest things I've ever heard," Isabel answered with a smile.

Lord Warburton was briefly silent. "You judge only from the outside you don't care," he said

presently. "You only care to amuse yourself." The note she had heard in his voice a moment before

reappeared, and mixed with it now was an audible strain of bitterness a bitterness so abrupt and

inconsequent that the girl was afraid she had hurt him. She had often heard that the English are a highly

eccentric people, and she had even read in some ingenious author that they are at bottom the most romantic of

races. Was Lord Warburton suddenly turning romantic was he going to make her a scene, in his own house,

only the third time they had met? She was reassured quickly enough by her sense of his great good manners,

which was not impaired by the fact that he had already touched the furthest limit of good taste in expressing

his admiration of a young lady who had confided in his hospitality. She was right in trusting to his good

manners, for he presently went on, laughing a little and without a trace of the accent that had discomposed

her: "I don't mean of course that you amuse yourself with trifles. You select great materials; the foibles, the

"As regards that," said Isabel, "I should find in my own nation entertainment for a lifetime. But

we've a long drive, and my aunt will soon wish to start." She turned back toward the others and Lord

Warburton walked beside her in silence. But before they reached the others, "I shall come and see you next

She had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away she felt that she couldn't pretend to

herself that it was altogether a painful one. Nevertheless she made answer to his declaration, coldly enough,

"Just as you please." And her coldness was not the calculation of her effect a game she played in a much

smaller degree than would have seemed probable to many critics. It came from a certain fear.

The day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from her friend Miss Stackpole a note of

which the envelope, exhibiting in conjunction the postmark of Liverpool and the neat calligraphy of the

quickfingered Henrietta, caused her some liveliness of emotion. "Here I am, my lovely friend," Miss

Stackpole wrote; "I managed to get off at last. I decided only the night before I left New York the

Interviewer having come round to my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran journalist, and came

down to the steamer in a streetcar. Where are you and where can we meet? I suppose you're visiting at some

castle or other and have already acquired the correct accent. Perhaps even you have married a lord; I almost

hope you have, for I want some introductions to the first people and shall count on you for a few. The

Interviewer wants some light on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) are not

rosecoloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know that, whatever I am, at least I'm not

superficial. I've also something very particular to tell you. Do appoint a meeting as quickly as you can; come

to London (I should like so much to visit the sights with you) or else let me come to you, wherever you are. I

will do so with pleasure; for you know everything interests me and I wish to see as much as possible of the

Isabel judged best not to show this letter to her uncle; but she acquainted him with its purport, and,

as she expected, he begged her instantly to assure Miss Stackpole, in his name, that he should be delighted to

receive her at Gardencourt. "Though she's a literary lady," he said, "I suppose that, being an American, she

"She has seen no other so delightful!" Isabel answered; but she was not altogether at ease about

Henrietta's reproductive instincts, which belonged to that side of her friend's character which she regarded

with least complacency. She wrote to Miss Stackpole, however, that she would be very welcome under Mr.

Touchett's roof; and this alert young woman lost no time in announcing her prompt approach. She had gone

up to London, and it was from that centre that she took the train for the station nearest to Gardencourt, where

"Shall I love her or shall I hate her?" Ralph asked while they moved along the platform.

"Whichever you do will matter very little to her," said Isabel. "She doesn't care a straw what men

"As a man I'm bound to dislike her then. She must be a kind of monster. Is she very ugly?"

"A female interviewer a reporter in petticoats? I'm very curious to see her," Ralph conceded.

"I should think not; crimes of violence and attacks on the person require more or less pluck. Do

"You'll see," said Ralph. "She'll send a description of us all, including Bunchie, to her newspaper."

"And have my loveletters published in the Interviewer? Never!" cried the young man.

The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly descending, proved, as Isabel had

promised, quite delicately, even though rather provincially, fair. She was a neat, plump person, of medium

stature, with a round face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of light brown ringlets at the back

of her head and a peculiarly open, surprisedlooking eye. The most striking point in her appearance was the

remarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested without impudence or defiance, but as if in conscientious

exercise of a natural right, upon every object it happened to encounter. It rested in this manner upon Ralph

himself, a little arrested by Miss Stackpole's gracious and comfortable aspect, which hinted that it wouldn't be

so easy as he had assumed to disapprove of her. She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh, dovecoloured

draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that she was as crisp and new and comprehensive as a first issue before

the folding. From top to toe she had probably no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice a voice not rich

but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her companions in Mr. Touchett's carriage she struck him as

not all in the large type, the type of horrid "headings," that he had expected. She answered the enquiries made

of her by Isabel, however, and in which the young man ventured to join, with copious lucidity; and later, in

the library at Gardencourt, when she had made the acquaintance of Mr. Touchett (his wife not having thought

it necessary to appear) did more to give the measure of her confidence in her powers.

"Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American or English," she broke

She fixed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character that reminded him of large

polished buttons buttons that might have fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see

the reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a button is not usually deemed human,

but there was something in Miss Stackpole's gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely

embarrassed less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This sensation, it must be added, after he had

spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. "I don't suppose that

"Well, if you can change about that way you're very welcome," Miss Stackpole returned.

"I'm sure you understand everything and that differences of nationality are no barrier to you,"

"I'm not sure that I understand you," said the correspondent of the Interviewer; "but I expect I shall

"That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. I must say I think patriotism is like

"I don't know where it begins, but I know where it ends. It ended a long time before I got here."

"Don't you like it over here?" asked Mr. Touchett with his aged, innocent voice.

"Well, sir, I haven't quite made up my mind what ground I shall take. I feel a good deal cramped. I

"Yes, but it was crowded with friends a party of Americans whose acquaintance I had made upon

the steamer; a lovely group from Little Rock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt cramped I felt something

pressing upon me; I couldn't tell what it was. I felt at the very commencement as if I were not going to accord

with the atmosphere. But I suppose I shall make my own atmosphere. That's the true way then you can

Miss Stackpole showed every disposition to wait and evidently was prepared to make a

considerable stay at Gardencourt. She occupied herself in the mornings with literary labour; but in spite of

this Isabel spent many hours with her friend, who, once her daily task performed, deprecated, in fact defied,

isolation. Isabel speedily found occasion to desire her to desist from celebrating the charms of their common

sojourn in print, having discovered, on the second morning of Miss Stackpole's visit, that she was engaged on

a letter to the Interviewer, of which the title, in her exquisitely neat and legible hand (exactly that of the

copybooks which our heroine remembered at school) was "Americans and Tudors Glimpses of

Gardencourt." Miss Stackpole, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read her letter to Isabel, who

"I don't think you ought to do that. I don't think you ought to describe the place."

Henrietta gazed at her as usual. "Why, it's just what the people want, and it's a lovely place."

"It's too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it's not what my uncle wants."

"Don't you believe that!" cried Henrietta. "They're always delighted afterwards."

"My uncle won't be delighted nor my cousin either. They'll consider it a breach of hospitality."

Miss Stackpole showed no sense of confusion; she simply wiped her pen, very neatly, upon an

elegant little implement which she kept for the purpose, and put away her manuscript. "Of course if you don't

"There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all round you. We'll take some drives; I'll

"Scenery's not my department; I always need a human interest. You know I'm deeply human,

Isabel; I always was," Miss Stackpole rejoined. "I was going to bring in your cousin the alienated American.

There's a great demand just now for the alienated American, and your cousin's a beautiful specimen. I should

"He would have died of it!" Isabel exclaimed. "Not of the severity, but of the publicity."

"Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should have delighted to do your uncle, who

seems to me a much nobler type the American faithful still. He's a grand old man; I don't see how he can

Isabel looked at her companion in much wonderment; it struck her as strange that a nature in which

she found so much to esteem should break down so in spots. "My poor Henrietta," she said, "you've no sense

Henrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes were suffused, while Isabel found

her more than ever inconsequent. "You do me great injustice," said Miss Stackpole with dignity. "I've never

"I'm very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be modest for others also!"

"Ah, that's very good!" cried Henrietta, seizing her pen again. "Just let me make a note of it and I'll

put it in somewhere." She was a thoroughly goodnatured woman, and half an hour later she was in as

cheerful a mood as should have been looked for in a newspaperlady in want of matter. "I've promised to do

the social side," she said to Isabel; "and how can I do it unless I get ideas? If I can't describe this place don't

you know some place I can describe?" Isabel promised she would bethink herself, and the next day, in

conversation with her friend, she happened to mention her visit to Lord Warburton's ancient house. "Ah, you

must take me there that's just the place for me!" Miss Stackpole cried. "I must get a glimpse of the nobility."

"I can't take you," said Isabel; "but Lord Warburton's coming here, and you'll have a chance to see

him and observe him. Only if you intend to repeat his conversation I shall certainly give him warning."

"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue," Isabel declared.

It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that her cousin had, according to her prophecy, lost

his heart to their visitor, though he had spent a good deal of time in her society. They strolled about the park

together and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when it was delightful to float along the Thames, Miss

Stackpole occupied a place in the boat in which hitherto Ralph had had but a single companion. Her presence

proved somehow less irreducible to soft particles than Ralph had expected in the natural perturbation of his

sense of the perfect solubility of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the Interviewer prompted mirth in

him, and he had long since decided that the crescendo of mirth should be the flower of his declining days.

Henrietta, on her side, failed a little to justify Isabel's declaration with regard to her indifference to masculine

opinion; for poor Ralph appeared to have presented himself to her as an irritating problem, which it would be

"What does he do for a living?" she asked of Isabel the evening of her arrival. "Does he go round

"Well, I call that a shame when I have to work like a carconductor," Miss Stackpole replied. "I

"Pshaw! don't you believe it. I work when I'm sick," cried her friend. Later, when she stepped into

the boat on joining the waterparty, she remarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her and would like to

"Ah no," said Ralph, "I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you'd be such an interesting

"Well, you do torture me; I may say that. But I shock all your prejudices; that's one comfort."

"My prejudices? I haven't a prejudice to bless myself with. There's intellectual poverty for you."

"The more shame to you; I've some delicious ones. Of course I spoil your flirtation, or whatever it

is you call it, with your cousin; but I don't care for that, as I render her the service of drawing you out. She'll

Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no effort; resorting largely, whenever

the opportunity offered, to the natural expedient of interrogation. On the following day the weather was bad,

and in the afternoon the young man, by way of providing indoor amusement, offered to show her the pictures.

Henrietta strolled through the long gallery in his society, while he pointed out its principal ornaments and

mentioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked at the pictures in perfect silence, committing

herself to no opinion, and Ralph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none of the little

readymade ejaculations of delight of which the visitors to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This

young lady indeed, to do her justice, was but little addicted to the use of conventional terms; there was

something earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times, in its strained deliberation, suggested a person of

high culture speaking a foreign language. Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time

officiated as artcritic to a journal of the other world; but she appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her

pocket none of the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had called her attention to a charming

Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph bespoke her attention for a

small Lancret hanging near it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and a ruff, leaning

against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a garden and playing the guitar to two ladies seated on the

Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and, though her eyes had rested upon the picture, he saw she

had missed the subject. She was thinking of something much more serious. "I don't see how you can

"Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You'll need it the next time you go to America."

Ralph meditated with a mild smile. "I suppose that if one has no conscience one has no shame."

"Well, you've got plenty of assurance," Henrietta declared. "Do you consider it right to give up

"Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives up one's grandmother. They're

both antecedent to choice elements of one's composition that are not to be eliminated."

"I suppose that means that you've tried and been worsted. What do they think of you over here?"

"I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you've got any charm it's quite unnatural. It's

wholly acquired or at least you've tried hard to acquire it, living over here. I don't say you've succeeded. It's

a charm that I don't appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some way, and then we'll talk about it."

"You're not serious," Miss Stackpole remarked; "that's what's the matter with you." But for all this,

in a day or two, she again permitted him to fix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different

"I know what's the matter with you, Mr. Touchett," she said. "You think you're too good to get

"I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole," Ralph answered; "and then I suddenly changed my

"Of course it is did you never know that before? It's every one's duty to get married."

Ralph meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There was something in Miss Stackpole he had

begun to like; it seemed to him that if she was not a charming woman she was at least a very good "sort." She

was wanting in distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes,

like a spangled liontamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck

him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man

"There may be, but that's the principal thing. I must say I think it looks very exclusive, going round

all alone, as if you thought no woman was good enough for you. Do you think you're better than any one else

Miss Stackpole's ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun. "Have you the fond hope of finding a

"Well then," said Ralph, "I won't say it vexes me to see you single. It delights me rather."

"Shall you not believe me to be so on the day I tell you I desire to give up the practice of going

Miss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner which seemed to announce a reply that

might technically be called encouraging. But to his great surprise this expression suddenly resolved itself into

an appearance of alarm and even of resentment. "No, not even then," she answered dryly. After which she

"I've not conceived a passion for your friend," Ralph said that evening to Isabel, "though we talked

"She told me she thinks there's something very low in the tone of Europeans towards women."

"One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an American never would have

Ralph treated himself to a luxury of laughter. "She's an extraordinary combination. Did she think I

"No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you mistook the intention of

"I thought she was proposing marriage to me and I accepted her. Was that unkind?"

"My dear cousin, what's one to do among you all?" Ralph demanded. "Miss Stackpole tells me it's

"She has a great sense of duty," said Isabel gravely. "She has indeed, and it's the motive of

everything she says. That's what I like her for. She thinks it's unworthy of you to keep so many things to

yourself. That's what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to to attract you, you were very

"It's true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract me. Forgive my depravity."

"You're very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed you would think she

"One must be very modest then to talk with such women," Ralph said humbly. "But it's a very

strange type. She's too personal considering that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without

"Yes," Isabel admitted, "she doesn't sufficiently recognize the existence of knockers; and indeed

I'm not sure that she doesn't think them rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand ajar.

"I persist in thinking her too familiar," Ralph rejoined, naturally somewhat uncomfortable under

"Well," said Isabel, smiling, "I'm afraid it's because she's rather vulgar that I like her."

"If I should tell her I wouldn't express it in that way. I should say it's because there's something of

"She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she's a kind of emanation of the great

democracy of the continent, the country, the nation. I don't say that she sums it all up, that would be too

"You like her then for patriotic reasons. I'm afraid it is on those very grounds I object to her."

"Ah," said Isabel with a kind of joyous sigh, "I like so many things! If a thing strikes me with a

certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to swagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be

totally different from Henrietta in the style of Lord Warburton's sisters for instance. So long as I look at the

Misses Molyneux they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I'm

straightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to herself as in respect to what masses behind her."

"What she says is true," his cousin answered; "you'll never be serious. I like the great country

stretching away beyond the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling, and spreading till it stops at

the green Pacific! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta pardon my simile has

Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the blush, together with the momentary

ardour she had thrown into it, was so becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a moment after she

had ceased speaking. "I'm not sure the Pacific's so green as that," he said; "but you're a young woman of

imagination. Henrietta, however, does smell of the Future it almost knocks one down!"

He took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words even when Miss Stackpole appeared to

strike the personal note most strongly. He bethought himself that persons, in her view, were simple and

homogeneous organisms, and that he, for his own part, was too perverted a representative of the nature of

man to have a right to deal with her in strict reciprocity. He carried out his resolve with a great deal of tact,

and the young lady found in renewed contact with him no obstacle to the exercise of her genius for

unshrinking enquiry, the general application of her confidence. Her situation at Gardencourt therefore,

appreciated as we have seen her to be by Isabel and full of appreciation herself of that free play of

intelligence which, to her sense, rendered Isabel's character a sisterspirit, and of the easy venerableness of

Mr. Touchett, whose noble tone, as she said, met with her full approval her situation at Gardencourt would

have been perfectly comfortable had she not conceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady for whom she

had at first supposed herself obliged to "allow" as mistress of the house. She presently discovered, in truth,

that this obligation was of the lightest and that Mrs. Touchett cared very little how Miss Stackpole behaved.

Mrs. Touchett had defined her to Isabel as both an adventuress and a bore adventuresses usually giving one

more of a thrill; she had expressed some surprise at her niece's having selected such a friend, yet had

immediately added that she knew Isabel's friends were her own affair and that she had never undertaken to

"If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you'd have a very small society," Mrs.

Touchett frankly admitted; "and I don't think I like any man or woman well enough to recommend them to

you. When it comes to recommending it's a serious affair. I don't like Miss Stackpole everything about her

displeases me; she talks so much too loud and looks at one as if one wanted to look at her which one

doesn't. I'm sure she has lived all her life in a boardinghouse, and I detest the manners and the liberties of

such places. If you ask me if I prefer my own manners, which you doubtless think very bad, I'll tell you that I

prefer them immensely. Miss Stackpole knows I detest boardinghouse civilization, and she detests me for

detesting it, because she thinks it the highest in the world. She'd like Gardencourt a great deal better if it were

a boardinghouse. For me, I find it almost too much of one! We shall never get on together therefore, and

Mrs. Touchett was right in guessing that Henrietta disapproved of her, but she had not quite put her

finger on the reason. A day or two after Miss Stackpole's arrival she had made some invidious reflexions on

American hotels, which excited a vein of counterargument on the part of the correspondent of the

Interviewer, who in the exercise of her profession had acquainted herself, in the western world, with every

form of caravansary. Henrietta expressed the opinion that American hotels were the best in the world, and

Mrs. Touchett, fresh from a renewed struggle with them, recorded a conviction that they were the worst.

Ralph, with his experimental geniality, suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay between the

two extremes and that the establishments in question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribution

to the discussion, however, Miss Stackpole rejected with scorn. Middling indeed! If they were not the best in

the world they were the worst, but there was nothing middling about an American hotel.

"We judge from different points of view, evidently," said Mrs. Touchett. "I like to be treated as an

"I don't know what you mean," Henrietta replied. "I like to be treated as an American lady."

"Poor American ladies!" cried Mrs. Touchett with a laugh. "They're the slaves of slaves."

"They're the companions of their servants the Irish chambermaid and the negro waiter. They

"Do you call the domestics in an American household 'slaves'?" Miss Stackpole enquired. "If that's

"If you've not good servants you're miserable," Mrs. Touchett serenely said. "They're very bad in

"I don't see what you want with five," Henrietta couldn't help observing. "I don't think I should like

"I like them in that position better than in some others," proclaimed Mrs. Touchett with much

"The companions of freemen I like that, Miss Stackpole," said Ralph. "It's a beautiful

And this was the only reward that Ralph got for his compliment. Miss Stackpole was baffled; she

evidently thought there was something treasonable in Mrs. Touchett's appreciation of a class which she

privately judged to be a mysterious survival of feudalism. It was perhaps because her mind was oppressed

with this image that she suffered some days to elapse before she took occasion to say to Isabel: "My dear

"Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you from Liverpool I said I had something

particular to tell you. You've never asked me what it is. Is it because you've suspected?"

"Suspected what? As a rule I don't think I suspect," said Isabel. "I remember now that phrase in

Henrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it. "You don't ask that right as if you

"I've not much control of my thoughts, but I'll do my best," said Isabel. Henrietta gazed at her, in

silence, for a period which tried Isabel's patience, so that our heroine added at last: "Do you mean that you're

"Not till I've seen Europe!" said Miss Stackpole. "What are you laughing at?" she went on. "What I

"You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with him; he has come after you."

"No, he told me nothing; that's how I knew it," said Henrietta cleverly. "He said very little about

Isabel waited. At the mention of Mr. Goodwood's name she had turned a little pale. "I'm very sorry

"It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. I could have talked a long time to such a

"I'm very sorry for that. He thinks too well of me already; he oughtn't to be encouraged."

"He's dying for a little encouragement. I see his face now, and his earnest absorbed look while I

Isabel gave rather a cold smile. "I shall say it better to Mr. Goodwood himself."

"He'll soon give you a chance," said Henrietta. Isabel offered no answer to this assertion, which her

companion made with an air of great confidence. "He'll find you changed," the latter pursued. "You've been

"By everything but Mr. Goodwood!" Miss Stackpole exclaimed with a slightly harsh hilarity.

Isabel failed even to smile back and in a moment she said: "Did he ask you to speak to me?"

"Not in so many words. But his eyes asked it and his handshake, when he bade me goodbye."

"Yes; but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones when the old ones have been the right ones."

Isabel turned about again. "If you mean that I had any idea with regard to Mr. Goodwood!" But

Isabel made for the moment as if to deny this charge; instead of which, however, she presently

answered: "It's very true. I did encourage him." And then she asked if her companion had learned from Mr.

Goodwood what he intended to do. It was a concession to her curiosity, for she disliked discussing the subject

"I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing," Miss Stackpole answered. "But I don't believe

that; he's not a man to do nothing. He is a man of high, bold action. Whatever happens to him he'll always do

"I quite believe that." Henrietta might be wanting in delicacy, but it touched the girl, all the same,

"Whatever he does will always be right," Isabel repeated. "When a man's of that infallible mould

"Ah, what it matters to me that's not what we're discussing," said Isabel with a cold smile.

This time her companion was grave. "Well, I don't care; you have changed. You're not the girl you

were a few short weeks ago, and Mr. Goodwood will see it. I expect him here any day."

To this observation our heroine made no return; she was absorbed in the alarm given her by

Henrietta's intimation that Caspar Goodwood would present himself at Gardencourt. She pretended to herself,

however, that she thought the event impossible, and, later, she communicated her disbelief to her friend. For

the next fortyeight hours, nevertheless, she stood prepared to hear the young man's name announced. The

feeling pressed upon her; it made the air sultry, as if there were to be a change of weather; and the weather,

socially speaking, had been so agreeable during Isabel's stay at Gardencourt that any change would be for the

worse. Her suspense indeed was dissipated the second day. She had walked into the park in company with the

sociable Bunchie, and after strolling about for some time, in a manner at once listless and restless, had seated

herself on a garden bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading beech, where, in a white dress

ornamented with black ribbons, she formed among the flickering shadows a graceful and harmonious image.

She entertained herself for some moments with talking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an

ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as possible impartially as Bunchie's own

somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow. But she was notified for the first time, on this

occasion, of the finite character of Bunchie's intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with its extent. It

seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavyhearted, she had been

able, with the help of some wellchosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure

reason. Of late, it was not to be denied, literature had seemed a fading light, and even after she had reminded

herself that her uncle's library was provided with a complete set of those authors which no gentleman's

collection should be without, she sat motionless and emptyhanded, her eyes bent on the cool green turf of

the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by the arrival of a servant who handed her a letter. The

letter bore the London postmark and was addressed in a hand she knew that came into her vision, already so

held by him, with the vividness of the writer's voice or his face. This document proved short and may be

MY DEAR MISS ARCHER I don't know whether you will have heard of my coming to England,

but even if you have not it will scarcely be a surprise to you. You will remember that when you gave me my

dismissal at Albany, three months ago, I did not accept it. I protested against it. You in fact appeared to

accept my protest and to admit that I had the right on my side. I had come to see you with the hope that you

would let me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for entertaining this hope had been of the best. But

you disappointed it; I found you changed, and you were able to give me no reason for the change. You

admitted that you were unreasonable, and it was the only concession you would make; but it was a very

cheap one, because that's not your character. No, you are not, and you never will be, arbitrary or capricious.

Therefore it is that I believe you will let me see you again. You told me that I'm not disagreeable to you, and I

believe it; for I don't see why that should be. I shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one else. I

came to England simply because you are here; I couldn't stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country

because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you. I have been to

England before, but have never enjoyed it much. May I not come and see you for half an hour? This at

Isabel read this missive with such deep attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread

on the soft grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded it she saw Lord Warburton standing

She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of

"They told me you were out here," said Lord Warburton; "and as there was no one in the

drawingroom and it's really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado."

Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. "I was

"Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from Lockleigh; it's a lovely day." His

smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of

goodfeeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It surrounded

"We'll walk about a little then," said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an

intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity

about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a

certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had

indeed spent some days in analyzing them and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of the idea of

Lord Warburton's "making up" to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was

both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to

exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial

magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from

such a source carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong

impression of his being a "personage," and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At

the risk of adding to the evidence of her selfsufficiency it must be said that there had been moments when

this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an

affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no

personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had

thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit of what one might

like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a character she couldn't help being aware of that;

and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had connected themselves largely with moral images

things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up

before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by

this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation an appreciation that the girl, with her

habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her

something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a

social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived

and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist murmured to her that virtually

she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides things which both contradicted and

confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be

very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however,

there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that

even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was

a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of which it was

useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried

in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this

simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had

offered himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of

great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have

the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly

Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Isabel should propose,

and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But

he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence,

looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected

laughter. Yes, assuredly as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again the

English are the most romantic people in the world and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it.

He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and

which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come

from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were

very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and

unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude,

and he calculated that he had spent about twentysix hours in her company. He had summed up all this the

perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and

the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quicklyjudging half of it: he had looked

these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than

for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has

abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a

"I hope you had a pleasant ride," said Isabel, who observed her companion's hesitancy.

"Are you so fond of Gardencourt?" the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some

appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he

proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have

deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English countryhouse, with the foreground embellished by a

"great" (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection,

should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation

"You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can't believe you're serious."

These words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself

was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered

would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she

had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone

"One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it's measured by the feeling

itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean

than I am today. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we

met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a

fancyphrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don't

know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid mentally speaking I mean the greatest possible

attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the

other day or rather when you went away I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it

over and to question myself narrowly. I've done so; all these days I've done nothing else. I don't make

mistakes about such things; I'm a very judicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for

life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life," Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest

voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted

itself clear of the baser parts of emotion the heat, the violence, the unreason and that burned as steadily as

By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and

he took her hand. "Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!" Isabel said very gently. Gently too she

"Don't taunt me with that, that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all

my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall

know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's from ignorance."

"You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very

possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do

"I like you very much, Lord Warburton," she answered; and at this moment she liked him

"I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a stranger. I really believe I've filled

all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one in which I offer

myself to you seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I've friends

"Completely," Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she

The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. "If

She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure

that he didn't. He was sinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the

memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel had prayed that she

might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it

was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself?

Her foremost wish was to say something if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had

carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. "I thank you more

than I can say for your offer," she returned at last. "It does me great honour."

"Ah, don't say that!" he broke out. "I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what

you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me it's I who ought to thank you for

listening to me: a man you know so little coming down to you with such a thumper! Of course it's a great

question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you've listened or at

"Oh, Miss Archer!" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a

warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation.

"Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?" Isabel asked.

"Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that; it would be a feeling very

Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. "I'm very sure that, highly as I already

think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means sure that

you wouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it's perfectly

"I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I

can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends

"Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one today."

"But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to give you one that you'd

"It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit you; I really don't think I

"You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better royalist than the king."

"Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that way," said his lordship, who,

be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. "But they're

Her suitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence. "I'm afraid it's my being

an Englishman that makes you hesitate," he said presently. "I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in

Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett

was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. "Has he told you that?"

"He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England." Isabel spoke in a manner

that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's

outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view.

It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: "Ah, my dear Miss Archer,

old England's a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we've furbished it up a

"Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose."

"You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you afraid afraid of the climate? We can

easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over."

These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms that

was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange

gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply

the impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, it's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think,

than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty." But though she was lost in admiration of her

opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a

vast cage. The "splendid" security so offered her was not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally

bethought herself of saying was something very different something that deferred the need of really facing

her crisis. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this today."

"Certainly, certainly!" her companion cried. "I wouldn't bore you for the world."

"You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice."

"That's all I ask of you, of course and that you'll remember how absolutely my happiness is in

Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: "I must tell you

that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible letting you

"There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not

"Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton very gravely. "That's fair to neither of us."

"If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I can say," he went on with the

His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the

subject for the present. "I'll speak to you myself very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you."

"At your convenience, yes," he replied. "Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I

He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving

short nervous shakes to his huntingcrop. "Do you know I'm very much afraid of it of that remarkable mind

Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a

conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might

almost have appealed to his compassion, "So am I, my lord!" she oddly exclaimed.

His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at

"Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you know." And then he stood

reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all

that had been said and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots

of an ancient oak. "There's one thing more," he went on. "You know, if you don't like Lockleigh if you think

it's damp or anything of that sort you need never go within fifty miles of it. It's not damp, by the way; I've

had the house thoroughly examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't

dream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I'd just

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment a moment long enough for him to bend his

handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase,

Isabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would have imagined. What she felt

was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the

question. She couldn't marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour

of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining. She must

write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in

the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent

"chance." With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the

situation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing elements, might prove

really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of

twenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then upon her also should it not

irresistibly impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of

life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than these

large, these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she

must do something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be

too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the

isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that

interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a betise was singularly misplaced; and she was so

conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence,

of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a

fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition as he saw it even though she mightn't put her

very finest fingerpoint on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to

criticize would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and

when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in

meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering

if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to

It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice she had no desire whatever for that that led her

to speak to her uncle of what had taken place. She wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural,

more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt

or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do herself

violence to air this special secret to Ralph. So the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her

uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressingroom.

Isabel had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man's son, his

physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the list, and this

was an obstacle the less to Isabel's finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the

open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled

up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent

She approached her point directly. "I think I ought to let you know that Lord Warburton has asked

me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first."

The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him.

"I've not answered him definitely yet; I've taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more

Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that, whatever interest he

might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. "Well, I told you

"Very highly indeed," said Isabel. "But at the cost of seeming both tasteless and ungrateful, I don't

"Well," her uncle went on, "of course an old man can't judge for a young lady. I'm glad you didn't

ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you," he added slowly, but as it were not of

"About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about

"Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I'm glad he wrote to you; it was right that he

"Ah well, I guess you do like him!" Mr. Touchett declared. "You needn't pretend you don't."

"I like him extremely; I'm very free to admit that. But I don't wish to marry any one just now."

"You think some one may come along whom you may like better. Well, that's very likely," said

Mr. Touchett, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were,

"I don't care if I don't meet any one else. I like Lord Warburton quite well enough." She fell into

that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased

Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions. "He's a very fine man," he

resumed in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. "His letter was one of the pleasantest

I've received for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I like it was that it was all about you; that is all

She was silent a little. "I suppose it was that," she presently admitted. "But I don't know why."

"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons," said her uncle. "There's a great deal that's

attractive about such an idea; but I don't see why the English should want to entice us away from our native

land. I know that we try to attract them over there, but that's because our population is insufficient. Here, you

know, they're rather crowded. However, I presume there's room for charming young ladies everywhere."

"There seems to have been room here for you," said Isabel, whose eyes had been wandering over

Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. "There's room everywhere, my dear, if you'll pay for

it. I sometimes think I've paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much."

That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she had found in her own

thoughts, and the fact of this association of her uncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that

she was concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual

eagerness and vague ambitions ambitions reaching beyond Lord Warburton's beautiful appeal, reaching to

something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so far as the indefinable had an influence upon

Isabel's behaviour at this juncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with Caspar

Goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her English suitor's large quiet hands she was at

least as far removed from the disposition to let the young man from Boston take positive possession of her.

The sentiment in which she sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of his having come

abroad; for it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom.

There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. She had

been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and had wondered a consideration

she had never paid in equal degree to any one else whether he would like what she did. The difficulty was

that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his

lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood expressed for her an energy and she had already felt

it as a power that was of his very nature. It was in no degree a matter of his "advantages" it was a matter of

the spirit that sat in his clearburning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. She might like it or not,

but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force: even in one's usual contact with him one had to reckon

with that. The idea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to her at present, since she had just

given a sort of personal accent to her independence by looking so straight at Lord Warburton's big bribe and

yet turning away from it. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range himself on the side of her

destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for

a time, but that she must make terms with him at last terms which would be certain to be favourable to

himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and

this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt's invitation, which had come to her

at an hour when she expected from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood and when she was glad to have an

answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the

evening of Mrs. Touchett's visit, that she couldn't then discuss difficult questions, dazzled as she was by the

great immediate opening of her aunt's offer of "Europe," he declared that this was no answer at all; and it was

now to obtain a better one that he was following her across the sea. To say to herself that he was a kind of

grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was able to take much for granted in him; but the

He was the son of a proprietor of wellknown cottonmills in Massachusetts a gentleman who

had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar at present managed the works,

and with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their

prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his education at Harvard College, where,

however, he had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of more dispersed

knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer intelligence too could vault and pull and strain might

even, breaking the record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in himself a sharp eye for the

mystery of mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cottonspinning process which was now

largely used and was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this

fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New

York Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole,

friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he

rejoiced in; he liked to organize, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in

him, march before him and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men which rested, in

him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those who knew him well that he might do greater

things than carry on a cottonfactory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends

took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if

something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in

harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was

ubiquitous advertisement. It pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the

whirlwind of a great war a war like the Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his

She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a mover of men liked it much

better than some other points in his nature and aspect. She cared nothing for his cottonmill the Goodwood

patent left her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him no ounce less of his manhood, but she sometimes

thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and set

and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy consonance with the deeper

rhythms of life. Then she viewed with reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was

not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of

looking rather too new. But they all seemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual. She

had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a person of his importance; and

then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she were in love

with him. She was not in love with him and therefore might criticize his small defects as well as his great

which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of his being so, since

one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so. He showed his appetites and designs too simply and

artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people

were present he talked too little about anything. And yet he was of supremely strong, clean make which was

so much: she saw the different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different

fitted parts of armoured warriors in plates of steel handsomely inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where,

ever, was any tangible link between her impression and her act? Caspar Goodwood had never corresponded

to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed that this was why he left her so harshly critical. When,

however, Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed

The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr. Goodwood's letter, and Isabel

determined to leave it a while unhonoured. If he had determined to persecute her he must take the

consequences; foremost among which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her that he should

come down to Gardencourt. She was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, and though it

might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in entertaining two

such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where the entertainment should consist of dismissing them.

She made no reply to Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she wrote to Lord Warburton, and the letter

DEAR LORD WARBURTON A great deal of earnest thought has not led me to change my mind

about the suggestion you were so kind as to make me the other day. I am not, I am really and truly not, able to

regard you in the light of a companion for life; or to think of your home your various homes as settled seat

of my existence. These things cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat you not to return to the

subject we discussed so exhaustively. We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the

weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this

suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given your proposal the deeply respectful

consideration it deserves. It is with this very great regard that I remain sincerely yours,

While the author of this missive was making up her mind to despatch it Henrietta Stackpole

formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur. She invited Ralph Touchett to take a walk with her in

the garden, and when he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high

expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of him. It may be admitted that at this

information the young man flinched; for we know that Miss Stackpole had struck him as apt to push an

advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as

advised of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of

her and presently told her so. "When you look at me in a certain way my knees knock together, my faculties

desert me; I'm filled with trepidation and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. You've an

"Well," Henrietta replied goodhumouredly, "if I had not known before that you were trying

somehow to abash me I should know it now. Of course I'm easy game I was brought up with such different

customs and ideas. I'm not used to your arbitrary standards, and I've never been spoken to in America as you

have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me over there were to speak to me like that I shouldn't

know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we're a great deal more

simple. I admit that; I'm very simple myself. Of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you're very

welcome; but I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I'm quite content to be myself; I don't

want to change. There are plenty of people that appreciate me just as I am. It's true they're nice fresh

freeborn Americans!" Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large concession. "I

want you to assist me a little," she went on. "I don't care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or,

rather, I'm perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. I want you to help me about Isabel."

"If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What I'm afraid of is that she'll injure

His companion stopped in the gardenwalk, fixing on him perhaps the very gaze that unnerved

him. "That too would amuse you, I suppose. The way you do things! I never heard any one so indifferent."

"You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!" Miss Stackpole declared. "Much good may it do

you! But if you wish to be serious once in your life here's a chance; and if you really care for your cousin

here's an opportunity to prove it. I don't expect you to understand her; that's too much to ask. But you needn't

"I shall enjoy that immensely!" Ralph exclaimed. "I'll be Caliban and you shall be Ariel."

"You're not at all like Caliban, because you're sophisticated, and Caliban was not. But I'm not

talking about imaginary characters; I'm talking about Isabel. Isabel's intensely real. What I wish to tell you is

"Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once so beautifully was."

"Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can't help it, but she does."

"You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You've acted on Isabel Archer

"I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted on me yes; she acts on

"You're too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be careful. Isabel's changing every day;

she's drifting away right out to sea. I've watched her and I can see it. She's not the bright American girl she

was. She's taking different views, a different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save

"Well, I hope not," Henrietta replied promptly. "I've got a fear in my heart that she's going to marry

"Ah, I see," cried Ralph; "and to prevent it you want me to step in and marry her?"

"Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you're the typical, the fell European

from whom I wish to rescue her. No; I wish you to take an interest in another person a young man to whom

she once gave great encouragement and whom she now doesn't seem to think good enough. He's a thoroughly

grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here."

Ralph was puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he

failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was

not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stackpole's

appeared. That a young woman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend

should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another young woman, a young woman

whose attention had wandered and whose charms were greater this was an anomaly which for the moment

challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text, and

to suppose that Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her own account was the sign

not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, however, Ralph

was saved, and saved by a force that I can only speak of as inspiration. With no more outward light on the

subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice

to the correspondent of the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers. This conviction

passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady's

imperturbable gaze. He returned this challenge a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown as

one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. "Who's the gentleman you speak of?"

"Mr. Caspar Goodwood of Boston. He has been extremely attentive to Isabel just as devoted to

her as he can live. He has followed her out here and he's at present in London. I don't know his address, but I

"Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't believe he has ever heard of you; but that's

Ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. "What a rage you have for marrying people! Do you

"I've got over that. You don't know how to take such ideas. Mr. Goodwood does, however; and

that's what I like about him. He's a splendid man and a perfect gentleman, and Isabel knows it."

"I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and I should say the same. He's

In a moment his companion understood it. "I believe you are; now you're too serious."

"I don't know," said Ralph. "I'm capable of strange things. Tell me a little about Mr. Goodwood.

"He's just the opposite of you. He's at the head of a cottonfactory; a very fine one."

"I don't think he'd care much about our little circle. He'd concentrate on Isabel."

"Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will call back her thoughts."

"From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three months ago she gave Mr. Goodwood every

reason to suppose he was acceptable to her, and it's not worthy of Isabel to go back on a real friend simply

because she has changed the scene. I've changed the scene too, and the effect of it has been to make me care

more for my old associations than ever. It's my belief that the sooner Isabel changes it back again the better. I

know her well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over here, and I wish her to form some

"Aren't you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?" Ralph enquired. "Don't you think you ought to

"A chance to ruin her bright young life? One's never too much in a hurry to save a precious human

"As I understand it then," said Ralph, "you wish me to push Mr. Goodwood overboard after her.

Henrietta gave a brilliant smile. "I'm delighted to hear that; it proves how much she thinks of him."

Ralph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and he surrendered to thought while his

companion watched him askance. "If I should invite Mr. Goodwood," he finally said, "it would be to quarrel

"You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really don't think I can ask him. I

"It's just as you please," Henrietta returned. "I had no idea you were in love with her yourself."

"That's the most natural speech I've ever heard you make! Of course I believe it," Miss Stackpole

"Well," Ralph concluded, "to prove to you that you're wrong I'll invite him. It must be of course as

"It will not be as a friend of mine that he'll come; and it will not be to prove to me that I'm wrong

These last words of Miss Stackpole's (on which the two presently separated) contained an amount

of truth which Ralph Touchett was obliged to recognize; but it so far took the edge from too sharp a

recognition that, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet to keep than to break his

promise, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six lines, expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Touchett the

elder that he should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss Stackpole was a valued member. Having

sent his letter (to the care of a banker whom Henrietta suggested) he waited in some suspense. He had heard

this fresh formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother had mentioned on her arrival that

there was a story about the girl's having an "admirer" at home, the idea had seemed deficient in reality and he

had taken no pains to ask questions the answers to which would involve only the vague or the disagreeable.

Now, however, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object had become more concrete; it took

the form of a young man who had followed her to London, who was interested in a cottonmill and had

manners in the most splendid of the American styles. Ralph had two theories about this intervener. Either his

passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among

women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which

case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the

invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. The latter

clause of Ralph's argument might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that if Mr.

Goodwood were interested in Isabel in the serious manner described by Miss Stackpole he would not care to

present himself at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. "On this supposition," said Ralph, "he

must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in tact."

Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very short note from Caspar Goodwood,

thanking him for it, regretting that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impossible and presenting

many compliments to Miss Stackpole. Ralph handed the note to Henrietta, who, when she had read it,

"I'm afraid he doesn't care so much about my cousin as you suppose," Ralph observed.

"No, it's not that; it's some subtler motive. His nature's very deep. But I'm determined to fathom it,

His refusal of Ralph's overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from the moment he declined to come

to Gardencourt our friend began to think him of importance. He asked himself what it signified to him

whether Isabel's admirers should be desperadoes or laggards; they were not rivals of his and were perfectly

welcome to act out their genius. Nevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the result of Miss Stackpole's

promised enquiry into the causes of Mr. Goodwood's stiffness a curiosity for the present ungratified,

inasmuch as when he asked her three days later if she had written to London she was obliged to confess she

"I suppose he's thinking it over," she said; "he thinks everything over; he's not really at all

impetuous. But I'm accustomed to having my letters answered the same day." She presently proposed to

Isabel, at all events, that they should make an excursion to London together. "If I must tell the truth," she

observed, "I'm not seeing much at this place, and I shouldn't think you were either. I've not even seen that

aristocrat what's his name? Lord Washburton. He seems to let you severely alone."

"Lord Warburton's coming tomorrow, I happen to know," replied her friend, who had received a

note from the master of Lockleigh in answer to her own letter. "You'll have every opportunity of turning him

"Well, he may do for one letter, but what's one letter when you want to write fifty? I've described

all the scenery in this vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You may say what you please,

scenery doesn't make a vital letter. I must go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I was

there but three days before I came away, and that's hardly time to get in touch."

As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had seen even less of the British capital

than this, it appeared a happy suggestion of Henrietta's that the two should go thither on a visit of pleasure.

The idea struck Isabel as charming; she was curious of the thick detail of London, which had always loomed

large and rich to her. They turned over their schemes together and indulged in visions of romantic hours.

They would stay at some picturesque old inn one of the inns described by Dickens and drive over the town

in those delightful hansoms. Henrietta was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary

woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything. They would dine at a coffeehouse and go

afterwards to the play; they would frequent the Abbey and the British Museum and find out where Doctor

Johnson had lived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to

Ralph, who burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired.

"It's a delightful plan," he said. "I advise you to go to the Duke's Head in Covent Garden, an easy,

"Do you mean it's improper?" Isabel asked. "Dear me, isn't anything proper here? With Henrietta

surely I may go anywhere; she isn't hampered in that way. She has travelled over the whole American

"Ah then," said Ralph, "let me take advantage of her protection to go up to town as well. I may

Miss Stackpole would have prepared to start immediately; but Isabel, as we have seen, had been

notified that Lord Warburton would come again to Gardencourt, and she believed it her duty to remain there

and see him. For four or five days he had made no response to her letter; then he had written, very briefly, to

say he would come to luncheon two days later. There was something in these delays and postponements that

touched the girl and renewed her sense of his desire to be considerate and patient, not to appear to urge her

too grossly; a consideration the more studied that she was so sure he "really liked" her. Isabel told her uncle

she had written to him, mentioning also his intention of coming; and the old man, in consequence, left his

room earlier than usual and made his appearance at the two o'clock repast. This was by no means an act of

vigilance on his part, but the fruit of a benevolent belief that his being of the company might help to cover

any conjoined straying away in case Isabel should give their noble visitor another hearing. That personage

drove over from Lockleigh and brought the elder of his sisters with him, a measure presumably dictated by

reflexions of the same order as Mr. Touchett's. The two visitors were introduced to Miss Stackpole, who, at

luncheon, occupied a seat adjoining Lord Warburton's. Isabel, who was nervous and had no relish for the

prospect of again arguing the question he had so prematurely opened, could not help admiring his

goodhumoured selfpossession, which quite disguised the symptoms of that preoccupation with her

presence it was natural she should suppose him to feel. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only

sign of his emotion was that he avoided meeting her eyes. He had plenty of talk for the others, however, and

he appeared to eat his luncheon with discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, who had a smooth,

nunlike forehead and wore a large silver cross suspended from her neck, was evidently preoccupied with

Henrietta Stackpole, upon whom her eyes constantly rested in a manner suggesting a conflict between deep

alienation and yearning wonder. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh she was the one Isabel had liked best; there

was such a world of hereditary quiet in her. Isabel was sure moreover that her mild forehead and silver cross

referred to some weird Anglican mystery some delightful reinstitution perhaps of the quaint office of the

canoness. She wondered what Miss Molyneux would think of her if she knew Miss Archer had refused her

brother; and then she felt sure that Miss Molyneux would never know that Lord Warburton never told her

such things. He was fond of her and kind to her, but on the whole he told her little. Such, at least, was Isabel's

theory; when, at table, she was not occupied in conversation she was usually occupied in forming theories

about her neighbours. According to Isabel, if Miss Molyneux should ever learn what had passed between

Miss Archer and Lord Warburton she would probably be shocked at such a girl's failure to rise; or no, rather

(this was our heroine's last position) she would impute to the young American but a due consciousness of

Whatever Isabel might have made of her opportunities, at all events, Henrietta Stackpole was by

no means disposed to neglect those in which she now found herself immersed. "Do you know you're the first

lord I've ever seen?" she said very promptly to her neighbour. "I suppose you think I'm awfully benighted."

"You've escaped seeing some very ugly men," Lord Warburton answered, looking a trifle absently

"Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in America that they're all handsome and

"Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion," said Lord Warburton, "like your tomahawks

"I'm sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be splendid," Henrietta declared. "If it's not that,

"Oh, you know, it isn't much, at the best," her neighbour allowed. "Won't you have a potato?"

"I don't care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn't know you from an ordinary American

"Do talk to me as if I were one," said Lord Warburton. "I don't see how you manage to get on

Henrietta was silent a little; there was a chance he was not sincere. "I've had hardly any appetite

since I've been here," she went on at last; "so it doesn't much matter. I don't approve of you, you know; I feel

"Yes; I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you before, did they? I don't approve of

"Oh, so do I. I don't approve of myself in the least. Sometimes it comes over me how I should

object to myself if I were not myself, don't you know? But that's rather good, by the way not to be

"Give up a?" asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh inflexion with a very mellow one.

"Oh, I'm so little of one! One would really forget all about it if you wretched Americans were not

constantly reminding one. However, I do think of giving it up, the little there is left of it, one of these days."

"Well," said Miss Stackpole, "I like to see all sides. I don't approve of a privileged class, but I like

"I should like to draw you out a little more," Henrietta continued. "But you're always looking

"Please explain about that young lady your sister then. I don't understand about her. Is she a

"I don't like the way you say that as if you wanted to change the subject. Is her position inferior to

"We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she's better off than I, because she has none of

"Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I had as little bother as that. You do

"Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole," said Lord Warburton. "And then you know we're

"I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't know what to talk to your sister about; she

Lord Warburton's glance had wandered a good deal, but at this it met the gaze of his neighbour.

"Oh yes," he answered in a moment; "the women go in for those things. The silver cross is worn by the eldest

daughters of Viscounts." Which was his harmless revenge for having occasionally had his credulity too easily

engaged in America. After luncheon he proposed to Isabel to come into the gallery and look at the pictures;

and though she knew he had seen the pictures twenty times she complied without criticizing this pretext. Her

conscience now was very easy; ever since she sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of spirit. He

walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at its contents and saying nothing; and then he suddenly broke

"It was the only way, Lord Warburton," said the girl. "Do try and believe that."

"If I could believe it of course I should let you alone. But we can't believe by willing it; and I

confess I don't understand. I could understand your disliking me; that I could understand well. But that you

"That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?" She said nothing, and he went on: "You don't seem

"I have a reason, Lord Warburton." She said it in a tone that made his heart contract.

"I'm not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will you kindly answer me a

question?" Isabel made no audible assent, but he apparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage

He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in trouble; leaning his elbows on

his knees and staring at the floor. "I can't even be glad of that," he said at last, throwing himself back against

He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into his head. "Is it my

Isabel walked to the other side of the gallery and stood there showing him her charming back, her

light slim figure, the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and the density of her dark braids. She

stopped in front of a small picture as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was something so young

and free in her movement that her very pliancy seemed to mock at him. Her eyes, however, saw nothing; they

had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he followed her, and by this time she had brushed her

tears away; but when she turned round her face was pale and the expression of her eyes strange. "That reason

that I wouldn't tell you I'll tell it you after all. It's that I can't escape my fate."

"I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as anything else?"

"Because it's not," said Isabel femininely. "I know it's not. It's not my fate to give up I know it

Poor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye. "Do you call marrying me giving

"Not in the usual sense. It's getting getting getting a great deal. But it's giving up other chances."

"I don't mean chances to marry," said Isabel, her colour quickly coming back to her. And then she

stopped, looking down with a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning clear.

"I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain more than you'll lose," her

"I can't escape unhappiness," said Isabel. "In marrying you I shall be trying to."

"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that I must in candour admit!" he

"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make me so. Whatever charms

"I'm not bent on a life of misery," said Isabel. "I've always been intensely determined to be happy,

and I've often believed I should be. I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every now

and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself."

"From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer."

Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. "Why, my dear Miss Archer," he

began to explain with the most considerate eagerness, "I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from

any chances or dangers whatever. I wish I could; depend upon it I would! For what do you take me, pray?

Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor of China! All I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in a

comfortable sort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the common lot! Strike an alliance with me,

and I promise you that you shall have plenty of it. You shall separate from nothing whatever not even from

"She'd never approve of it," said Isabel, trying to smile and take advantage of this sideissue;

"Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?" his lordship asked impatiently. "I never saw a person judge

"Now I suppose you're speaking of me," said Isabel with humility; and she turned away again, for

Lord Warburton's sister addressed him with a certain timidity and reminded him she ought to

return home in time for tea, as she was expecting company to partake of it. He made no answer apparently

not having heard her; he was preoccupied, and with good reason. Miss Molyneux as if he had been

"Well, I never, Miss Molyneux!" said Henrietta Stackpole. "If I wanted to go he'd have to go. If I

"Oh, Warburton does everything one wants," Miss Molyneux answered with a quick, shy laugh.

"They look a good many, because they're all put together," said Ralph. "But it's really a bad way."

"Oh, I think it's so nice. I wish we had a gallery at Lockleigh. I'm so very fond of pictures," Miss

Molyneux went on, persistently, to Ralph, as if she were afraid Miss Stackpole would address her again.

"Ah yes, pictures are very convenient," said Ralph, who appeared to know better what style of

"They're so very pleasant when it rains," the young lady continued. "It has rained of late so very

"I'm sorry you're going away, Lord Warburton," said Henrietta. "I wanted to get a great deal more

"I'm afraid we have some people to tea," said Miss Molyneux, looking at her brother.

"I hoped you would resist!" Henrietta exclaimed. "I wanted to see what Miss Molyneux would do."

"I suppose in your position it's sufficient for you to exist!" Miss Stackpole returned. "I should like

"You must come to Lockleigh again," said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to Isabel, ignoring this

Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that moment seemed to see in their grey depths

the reflexion of everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord Warburton the peace, the kindness, the

honour, the possessions, a deep security and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux and then she said:

"Oh, I'm so very sorry," said Miss Molyneux. "I think that's so very wrong of you."

Lord Warburton watched this little passage; then he turned away and stared at a picture. Ralph,

leaning against the rail before the picture with his hands in his pockets, had for the moment been watching

"I should like to see you at home," said Henrietta, whom Lord Warburton found beside him. "I

should like an hour's talk with you; there are a great many questions I wish to ask you."

"I shall be delighted to see you," the proprietor of Lockleigh answered; "but I'm certain not to be

"Whenever Miss Archer will take me. We're thinking of going to London, but we'll go and see you

"If it depends upon Miss Archer I'm afraid you won't get much. She won't come to Lockleigh; she

Lord Warburton hesitated. "She won't come, all the same. You had better come alone," he added.

Henrietta straightened herself, and her large eyes expanded. "Would you make that remark to an

"You'd be careful not to like her enough. If Miss Archer won't visit your place again it's because

she doesn't want to take me. I know what she thinks of me, and I suppose you think the same that I oughtn't

to bring in individuals." Lord Warburton was at a loss; he had not been made acquainted with Miss

Stackpole's professional character and failed to catch her allusion. "Miss Archer has been warning you!" she

"Oh dear, no," said Lord Warburton brazenly; "our talk had no such solemn character as that."

"Well, you've been on your guard intensely. I suppose it's natural to you; that's just what I wanted

to observe. And so, too, Miss Molyneux she wouldn't commit herself. You have been warned, anyway,"

Henrietta continued, addressing this young lady; "but for you it wasn't necessary."

"Miss Stackpole takes notes," Ralph soothingly explained. "She's a great satirist; she sees through

"Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of had material!" Henrietta declared, looking

from Isabel to Lord Warburton and from this nobleman to his sister and to Ralph. "There's something the

"You do see through us, Miss Stackpole," said Ralph in a low tone, giving her a little intelligent

nod as he led the party out of the gallery. "There's something the matter with us all."

Isabel came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly liked her immensely, had taken her

arm, to walk beside her over the polished floor. Lord Warburton strolled on the other side with his hands

behind him and his eyes lowered. For some moments he said nothing; and then, "Is it true you're going to

"In a few days; but probably for a very short time. I'm going to Paris with my aunt."

He went a few steps in silence; then he stopped and put out his hand. "Goodbye."

Miss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart. After it, without rejoining Henrietta

and Ralph, she retreated to her own room; in which apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs.

Touchett, who had stopped on her way to the saloon. "I may as well tell you," said that lady, "that your uncle

Isabel considered. "Relations? They're hardly relations. That's the strange part of it: he has seen me

"Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?" Mrs. Touchett dispassionately asked.

"Neither am I, after all; especially when you give me that rather conceited look. One would think

you were awfully pleased with yourself and had carried off a prize! I suppose that when you refuse an offer

It had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London under Ralph's escort,

though Mrs. Touchett looked with little favour on the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss

Stackpole would be sure to suggest, and she enquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the

"I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there's local colour," said Isabel. "That's what

"I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything," her aunt rejoined.

"Is that your idea of marriage?" And Isabel ventured to add that her aunt appeared to her to have

"Your uncle's not an English nobleman," said Mrs. Touchett, "though even if he had been I should

"Do you think Lord Warburton could make me any better than I am?" the girl asked with some

animation. "I don't mean I'm too good to improve. I mean I mean that I don't love Lord Warburton enough

"You did right to refuse him then," said Mrs. Touchett in her smallest, sparest voice. "Only, the

"We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I hope very much I may have no

"You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the Bohemian manner of life.

"I'll do whatever Ralph says is right," Isabel returned. "I've unbounded confidence in Ralph."

Ralph had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in their paying a visit the little

party of three to the sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Touchett took a different view. Like many ladies of

her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely lost her native tact on such points, and

in her reaction, not in itself deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the seas, had

fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Ralph accompanied their visitors to town and established

them at a quiet inn in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had been to take them to his

father's house in Winchester Square, a large, dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in

silence and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one in

the house to get them their meals, and Pratt's Hotel accordingly became their restingplace. Ralph, on his

side, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a "den" there of which he was very fond and being familiar

with deeper fears than that of a cold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of Pratt's

Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow travellers, who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large

bulging white waistcoat, to remove their dishcovers. Ralph turned up, as he said, after breakfast, and the little

party made out a scheme of entertainment for the day. As London wears in the month of September a face

blank but for its smears of prior service, the young man, who occasionally took an apologetic tone, was

obliged to remind his companion, to Miss Stackpole's high derision, that there wasn't a creature in town.

"I suppose you mean the aristocracy are absent," Henrietta answered; "but I don't think you could

have a better proof that if they were absent altogether they wouldn't be missed. It seems to me the place is

about as full as it can be. There's no one here, of course, but three or four millions of people. What is it you

call them the lowermiddle class? They're only the population of London, and that's of no consequence."

Ralph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that Miss Stackpole herself didn't fill, and

that a more contented man was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he spoke the truth, for the stale

September days, in the huge halfempty town, had a charm wrapped in them as a coloured gem might be

wrapped in a dusty cloth. When he went home at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, after a chain

of hours with his comparatively ardent friends, he wandered into the big dusky diningroom, where the

candle he took from the halltable, after letting himself in, constituted the only illumination. The square was

still, the house was still; when he raised one of the windows of the diningroom to let in the air he heard the

slow creak of the boots of a lone constable. His own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous;

some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in

one of the armchairs; the big dark dining table twinkled here and there in the small candlelight; the pictures

on the wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly presence as of dinners

long since digested, of tabletalk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural perhaps had

something to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and that he remained in his chair a long time

beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed; doing nothing, not even reading the evening paper. I

say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the fact that he thought at these moments of

Isabel. To think of Isabel could only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting little to any

one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming as during these days spent in sounding,

touristfashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element. Isabel was full of premises, conclusions,

emotions; if she had come in search of local colour she found it everywhere. She asked more questions than

he could answer, and launched brave theories, as to historic cause and social effect, that he was equally

unable to accept or to refute. The party went more than once to the British Museum and to that brighter

palace of art which reclaims for antique variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent a

morning in the Abbey and went on a pennysteamer to the Tower; they looked at pictures both in public and

private collections and sat on various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens. Henrietta

proved an indestructible sightseer and a more lenient judge than Ralph had ventured to hope. She had

indeed many disappointments, and London at large suffered from her vivid remembrance of the strong points

of the American civic idea; but she made the best of its dingy dignities and only heaved an occasional sigh

and uttered a desultory "Well!" which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. The truth was that, as she

said herself, she was not in her element. "I've not a sympathy with inanimate objects," she remarked to Isabel

at the National Gallery; and she continued to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet been

vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the

literary dinnerparties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of Great Britain.

"Where are your public men, where are your men and women of intellect?" she enquired of Ralph,

standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square as if she had supposed this to be a place where she would naturally

meet a few. "That's one of them on the top of the column, you say Lord Nelson? Was he a lord too? Wasn't

he high enough, that they had to stick him a hundred feet in the air? That's the past I don't care about the

past; I want to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won't say of the future, because I don't believe

much in your future." Poor Ralph had few leading minds among his acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the

pleasure of buttonholing a celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss Stackpole to indicate a

deplorable want of enterprise. "If I were on the other side I should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman,

whoever he might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see for myself. But I gather

from what you say that this is not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but

none of those that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up the social

side altogether"; and Henrietta, though she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the

Interviewer about the Tower (in which she described the execution of Lady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of

The incident that had preceded Isabel's departure from Gardencourt left a painful trace in our

young woman's mind: when she felt again in her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last

suitor's surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could not have done less than what

she did; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in

a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her conduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride,

nevertheless, was a feeling of freedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the

great city with her illmatched companions, occasionally throbbed into odd demonstrations. When she

walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on

the grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when they were pretty, kissed them.

Ralph noticed these quaint charities; he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might

pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in order as much as

possible for their visit. There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Ralph's

who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither

difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally

informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups

of tea, examined in her society the bricabrac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and

afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fetechampetre,

walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded

responsive as with a positive passion for argument to her remarks upon the inner life.

"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there's not much going on

there when there's such a lot of illness about. Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his

being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The old man, I believe, has half

a dozen things the matter with him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic disease so

developed that you may depend upon it he'll go, some day soon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing

makes a dreadfully dull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for them. Then I believe

Mr. Touchett's always squabbling with his wife; she lives away from her husband, you know, in that

extraordinary American way of yours. If you want a house where there's always something going on, I

recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I'll write to her tomorrow

and I'm sure she'll be delighted to ask you. I know just what you want you want a house where they go in

for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister's just that sort of woman; she's always getting up

something or other and she's always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I'm sure she'll ask you

down by return of post: she's tremendously fond of distinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you

know; but I haven't read everything she has written. It's usually poetry, and I don't go in much for poetry

unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a great deal of Byron in America," Mr. Bantling continued, expanding

in the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole's attention, bringing up his sequences promptly and changing his

topic with an easy turn of hand. Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to

Henrietta, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. "I understand what you want; you want to

see some genuine English sport. The Touchetts aren't English at all, you know; they have their own habits,

their own language, their own food some odd religion even, I believe, of their own. The old man thinks it's

wicked to hunt, I'm told. You must get down to my sister's in time for the theatricals, and I'm sure she'll be

glad to give you a part. I'm sure you act well; I know you're very clever. My sister's forty years old and has

seven children, but she's going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up awfully well I will say

In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over the grass in Winchester

Square, which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta

thought her blooming, easyvoiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine merit and his splendid range

of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he offered her. "I don't know but I would

go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you call her name?"

"Oh, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You're fine enough and you're not too fine."

"I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in

"She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country, but I dare say you won't mind

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate from

Lady Pensil's obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends

whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had been

travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to reembark. Henrietta had had a long interview with

them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their

store. It had been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn

Street at six o'clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start

for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in another

part of the enclosure, were occupied if the term may be used with an exchange of amenities less pointed

than the practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled between Isabel and

her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt's Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter

"I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone!" Henrietta exclaimed. "Merciful powers,

"There's not the slightest need of your walking alone," Mr. Bantling gaily interposed. "I should be

"I simply meant that you'd be late for dinner," Ralph returned. "Those poor ladies may easily

"I'll get you a hansom if you'll trust me," Mr. Bantling went on. "We might walk a little till we

"I don't see what Mr. Bantling could do to you," Isabel obligingly answered; "but, if you like, we'll

"Never mind; we'll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care you get me a good one."

Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure, leaving the girl and her

cousin together in the square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was

perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters

and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a

neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, poked their faces

between the rusty rails of the enclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red pillarpost on the

"Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn Street," Ralph observed. He

"Or rather, no, she won't," he went on. "But Bantling will ask leave to get in."

"She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go far," said Ralph.

Isabel was briefly silent. "I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman, but I don't think it will go far.

They would never really know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just

"There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so

difficult to understand Bob Bantling," Ralph added. "He is a very simple organism."

"Yes, but Henrietta's a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?" Isabel asked, looking about

her through the fading light, in which the limited landscapegardening of the square took on a large and

effective appearance. "I don't imagine that you'll propose that you and I, for our amusement, shall drive about

"There's no reason we shouldn't stay here if you don't dislike it. It's very warm; there will be half

"You may do what you please," said Isabel, "if you'll amuse me till seven o'clock. I propose at that

hour to go back and partake of a simple and solitary repast two poached eggs and a muffin at Pratt's

They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square again, and Ralph had lighted his

cigarette. It would have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest little feast she had

sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked immensely

being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to

depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could exert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to

accept her decisions submissively which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. "Why won't you let

"Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile," said Ralph. But he said nothing more, and as she made no

rejoinder they sat sometime in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise of entertainment. It seemed

to him she was preoccupied, and he wondered what she was thinking about; there were two or three very

possible subjects. At last he spoke again. "Is your objection to my society this evening caused by your

She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. "Another visitor? What visitor should I

He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as well as brutal. "You've a

great many friends that I don't know. You've a whole past from which I was perversely excluded."

"You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over there across the water.

"Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing to have your future so

handy." And Ralph lighted another cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably meant she had received news

that Mr. Caspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette he puffed it a while, and

then he resumed. "I promised just now to be very amusing; but you see I don't come up to the mark, and the

fact is there's a good deal of temerity in one's undertaking to amuse a person like you. What do you care for

my feeble attempts? You've grand ideas you've a high standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a

"One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in another ten minutes I shall

"You accept nothing," said Ralph. She coloured, and now suddenly it seemed to her that she

guessed his meaning. But why should he speak to her of such things? He hesitated a little and then he

continued: "There's something I should like very much to say to you. It's a question I wish to ask. It seems to

"Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Warburton has told me of something that has

Isabel suppressed a start; he sat looking at her open fan. "Very good; I suppose it was natural he

"I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope still," said Ralph.

"No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. We're old friends, and he was greatly

disappointed. He sent me a line asking me to come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh the day before

he and his sister lunched with us. He was very heavyhearted; he had just got a letter from you."

"By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very sorry for him," Ralph repeated.

For some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, "Do you know how often he had seen me?"

"What then do you say it for? Not to prove that poor Warburton's state of mind's superficial,

Isabel certainly was unable to say she thought it but presently she said something else. "If you've

not been requested by Lord Warburton to argue with me, then you're doing it disinterestedly or for the love

"I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone. I'm simply greatly interested

"Of course you mean that I'm meddling in what doesn't concern me. But why shouldn't I speak to

you of this matter without annoying you or embarrassing myself? What's the use of being your cousin if I

can't have a few privileges? What's the use of adoring you without hope of a reward if I can't have a few

compensations? What's the use of being ill and disabled and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game of

life if I really can't see the show when I've paid so much for my ticket? Tell me this," Ralph went on while

she listened to him with quickened attention. "What had you in mind when you refused Lord Warburton?"

"What was the logic the view of your situation that dictated so remarkable an act?"

"No, that's not logic and I knew that before. It's really nothing, you know. What was it you said to

Isabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own. "Why do you call it a

"Warburton's such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he has hardly a fault. And then he's

what they call here no end of a swell. He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought a superior

Isabel watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. "I refused him because he was too perfect

then. I'm not perfect myself, and he's too good for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me."

"That's ingenious rather than candid," said Ralph. "As a fact you think nothing in the world too

"No, but you're exacting, all the same, without the excuse of thinking yourself good. Nineteen

women out of twenty, however, even of the most exacting sort, would have managed to do with Warburton.

"I don't wish to know. But it seems to me," said Isabel, "that one day when we talked of him you

Ralph smokingly considered. "I hope that what I said then had no weight with you; for they were

not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to

marry you I'd never have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It

"I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I'm not conscious of any mission of that sort. You're

evidently disappointed," Isabel added, looking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. "You'd have liked me to

"Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don't pretend to advise you, and I

She gave rather a conscious sigh. "I wish I could be as interesting to myself as I am to you!"

"There you're not candid again; you're extremely interesting to yourself. Do you know, however,"

said Ralph, "that if you've really given Warburton his final answer I'm rather glad it has been what it was. I

don't mean I'm glad for you, and still less of course for him. I'm glad for myself."

"By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that

supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane

illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who won't marry Lord

"Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of your career. I shall not see all

of it, but I shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend you'd still

have a career a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking it would be a little prosaic. It

would be definitely marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know I'm extremely

fond of the unexpected, and now that you've kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving us some

"I don't understand you very well," said Isabel, "but I do so well enough to be able to say that if

To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it that would bear consideration.

At last she said abruptly: "I don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don't want to begin

"You're the most charming of polygons!" her companion broke out. At a glance from his

companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it went on: "You want to see life you'll be hanged if

"I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I do want to look about me."

"No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink! I only want to see for

"I don't think that if one's a sentient being one can make the distinction. I'm a good deal like

Henrietta. The other day when I asked her if she wished to marry she said: 'Not till I've seen Europe!' I too

"No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it's getting very dark," Isabel

continued, "and I must go home." She rose from her place, but Ralph only sat still and looked at her. As he

remained there she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but especially on Ralph's,

"You've answered my question," he said at last. "You've told me what I wanted. I'm greatly

"You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that you want to throw yourself

"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the least an adventurous spirit.

Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the square. "No," he said;

Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it. "We'll find your cab," he

said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring street in which this quest might avail he asked her again if he

"By no means," she answered; "you're very tired; you must go home and go to bed."

The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the door. "When people forget

I'm a poor creature I'm often incommoded," he said. "But it's worse when they remember it!"

She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it simply struck her that for

some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the

American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding "affected" had made

her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a great fondness for

intervals of solitude, which since her arrival in England had been but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could

always command at home and she had wittingly missed it. That evening, however, an incident occurred

which had there been a critic to note it would have taken all colour from the theory that the wish to be

quite by herself had caused her to dispense with her cousin's attendance. Seated toward nine o'clock in the

dim illumination of Pratt's Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had

brought from Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the

page words that Ralph had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly the wellmuffled knuckle of the waiter

was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the card of

a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr. Caspar Goodwood she let the

"Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am?" he asked with a slightly encouraging inflexion.

Isabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror. "He may come in," she said at

Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her, but saying nothing

till the servant had left the room. "Why didn't you answer my letter?" he then asked in a quick, full, slightly

peremptory tone the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who was capable of much

"Miss Stackpole let me know," said Caspar Goodwood. "She told me you would probably be at

"She didn't see me; she wrote to me." Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with

an air of defiance, or at least of contention. "Henrietta never told me she was writing to you," she said at last.

"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a place as London it seemed very

Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's treachery, as she momentarily qualified it,

was strong within her. "Henrietta's certainly not a model of all the delicacies!" she exclaimed with bitterness:

"I suppose I'm not a model either of those virtues or of any others. The fault's mine as much as

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been more square. This might have

displeased her, but she took a different turn. "No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What you've done was

"It was indeed!" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh. "And now that I've come, at any

She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place that offered, in the manner

of a man accustomed to pay little thought to that sort of furtherance. "I've been hoping every day for an

"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily have written you four pages as

one. But my silence was an intention," Isabel said. "I thought it the best thing."

He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them and attached them to a

spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man

in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would only

throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over

a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his face she could enjoy being able to say

"You know you oughtn't to have written to me yourself!" and to say it with an air of triumph.

Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine through the vizard of a

helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was ready any day in the year over and above this to argue the

question of his rights. "You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted

"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I can imagine that at the end of ten

years we might have a very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epistolary style."

She looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so much less earnest a cast than

the countenance of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, just as he said very irrelevantly:

"Very much indeed." She dropped, but then she broke out. "What good do you expect to get by

"You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even from your own point of view," Isabel

"I disgust you very much," said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as if to provoke her to

compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that he might

"Yes, you don't at all delight me, you don't fit in, not in any way, just now, and the worst is that

your putting it to the proof in this manner is quite unnecessary." It wasn't certainly as if his nature had been

soft, so that pinpricks would draw blood from it; and from the first of her acquaintance with him, and of her

having to defend herself against a certain air that he had of knowing better what was good for her than she

knew herself, she had recognized the fact that perfect frankness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his

sensibility or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred the way less

sturdily this, in dealing with Caspar Goodwood, who would grasp at everything of every sort that one might

give him, was wasted agility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as well as his

active, was large and hard, and he might always be trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they required it,

himself. She came back, even for her measure of possible pangs and aches in him, to her old sense that he

"I can't reconcile myself to that," he simply said. There was a dangerous liberality about it; for she

felt how open it was to him to make the point that he had not always disgusted her.

"I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it's not the state of things that ought to exist between us. If

you'd only try to banish me from your mind for a few months we should be on good terms again."

"I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up

"You know that what you ask is impossible," said the young man, taking his adjective for granted

"Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?" she demanded. "You're strong for everything

"An effort calculated for what?" And then as she hung fire, "I'm capable of nothing with regard to

you," he went on, "but just of being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the more

"There's a good deal in that"; and indeed our young lady felt the force of it felt it thrown off, into

the vast of truth and poetry, as practically a bait to her imagination. But she promptly came round. "Think of

"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference in the world."

"There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't understand such things. If you make the

"I don't care a cent for your admiration not one straw, with nothing to show for it. When will you

"You'll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!" Caspar Goodwood bent his eyes again

and gazed a while into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face; she could see her sharpness had

at last penetrated. This immediately had a value classic, romantic, redeeming, what did she know? for her;

"the strong man in pain" was one of the categories of the human appeal, little charm as he might exert in the

given case. "Why do you make me say such things to you?" she cried in a trembling voice. "I only want to be

gentle to be thoroughly kind. It's not delightful to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to try and

reason them out of it. I think others also ought to be considerate; we have each to judge for ourselves. I know

you're considerate, as much as you can be; you've good reasons for what you do. But I really don't want to

marry, or to talk about it at all now. I shall probably never do it no, never. I've a perfect right to feel that

way, and it's no kindness to a woman to press her so hard, to urge her against her will. If I give you pain I can

only say I'm very sorry. It's not my fault; I can't marry you simply to please you. I won't say that I shall

always remain your friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it passes, I believe, for a sort of

Caspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed upon the name of his hatter, and it

was not until some time after she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he did so the sight of a rosy,

lovely eagerness in Isabel's face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyze her words. "I'll go home

I'll go tomorrow I'll leave you alone," he brought out at last. "Only," he heavily said, "I hate to lose sight of

"I told you just now that I don't wish to marry and that I almost certainly never shall."

"I know you did, and I like your 'almost certainly'! I put no faith in what you say."

"Thank you very much. Do you accuse me of lying to shake you off? You say very delicate

"You may perhaps even believe you're safe from wishing to be. But you're not," the young man

"I don't know, however," said Caspar Goodwood, "that my keeping you in sight would prevent it."

"Don't you indeed? I'm after all very much afraid of you. Do you think I'm so very easily pleased?"

"No I don't; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very

dazzling men in the world, no doubt; and if there were only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of all

"If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever," Isabel said "and I can't imagine what else you mean

I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself."

She looked at him a moment; then with a quick smile, "Oh, you ought to marry!" she said.

He might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him to sound the infernal note,

and it is not on record that her motive for discharging such a shaft had been of the clearest. He oughtn't to

stride about lean and hungry, however she certainly felt that for him. "God forgive you!" he murmured

Her accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she felt the need to right herself.

The easiest way to do it was to place him where she had been. "You do me great injustice you say what you

"I've proved it to others as well." And she paused a moment. "I refused a proposal of marriage last

"It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to recommend it." Isabel had

not proposed to herself to tell this story, but, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out and doing

herself justice took possession of her. "I was offered a great position and a great fortune by a person whom I

Her visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last said: "I'm glad he's

"Oh, those people? They're not of my humanity, and I don't care what becomes of them."

She turned away from him, walked to the open window and stood a moment looking into the

dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social animation. For some time neither of

these young persons spoke; Caspar lingered near the chimneypiece with eyes gloomily attached. She had

virtually requested him to go he knew that; but at the risk of making himself odious he kept his ground. She

was too nursed a need to be easily renounced, and he had crossed the sea all to wring from her some scrap of

a vow. Presently she left the window and stood again before him. "You do me very little justice after my

telling you what I told you just now. I'm sorry I told you since it matters so little to you."

"Ah," cried the young man, "if you were thinking of me when you did it!" And then he paused with

"A little? I don't understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had any weight with you at all,

Isabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. "I've refused a most kind, noble gentleman.

"I think it's better not. You'll be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing."

Isabel reflected and then answered: "I return in a day or two to my uncle's, and I can't propose to

Caspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. "You must do me justice too. I received an invitation

"From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your

authorization to accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from

"No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it." And she gave a little shudder of

dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have

The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man's heart; he seemed to see her

whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his

"I don't know," she answered rather grandly. "The world with all these places so arranged and so

"It's a sight too big for me!" Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity our young lady might have found

This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately embraced, and to be thorough she

said after a moment: "Don't think me unkind if I say it's just that being out of your sight that I like. If you

were in the same place I should feel you were watching me, and I don't like that I like my liberty too much.

If there's a thing in the world I'm fond of," she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur, "it's my personal

But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved Caspar Goodwood's

admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn't wings and

the need of beautiful free movements he wasn't, with his own long arms and strides, afraid of any force in

her. Isabel's words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the

sense that here was common ground. "Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I? What can give me

greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent doing whatever you like? It's to make you

"An ummarried woman a girl of your age isn't independent. There are all sorts of things she

"That's as she looks at the question," Isabel answered with much spirit. not in my first youth I can

do what I choose I belong quite to the independent class. I've neither father nor mother; I'm poor and of a

serious disposition; I'm not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can't

afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable

than not to judge at all. I don't wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know

something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me." She

paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently on the point of doing

so when she went on: "Let me say this to you, Mr. Goodwood. You're so kind as to speak of being afraid of

my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I'm on the point of doing so girls are liable to have such

things said about them remember what I have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it."

There was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave him this advice, and he

saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you

might have perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: "You want simply to travel for two

years? I'm quite willing to wait two years, and you may do what you like in the interval. If that's all you want,

pray say so. I don't want you to be conventional; do I strike you as conventional myself? Do you want to

improve your mind? Your mind's quite good enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about a while

and see different countries I shall be delighted to help you in any way in my power."

"You're very generous; that's nothing new to me. The best way to help me will be to put as many

"Well then," he said slowly, "I'll go home." And he put out his hand, trying to look contented and

Isabel's confidence in him, however, was greater than any he could feel in her. Not that he thought

her capable of committing an atrocity; but, turn it over as he would, there was something ominous in the way

she reserved her option. As she took his hand she felt a great respect for him; she knew how much he cared

for her and she thought him magnanimous. They stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a

handclasp which was not merely passive on her side. "That's right," she said very kindly, almost tenderly.

"But I'll come back, wherever you are, two years hence," he returned with characteristic grimness.

We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at this she suddenly changed her note.

"Ah, remember, I promise nothing absolutely nothing!" Then more softly, as if to help him to leave her:

"Perhaps I shall; it's even very probable. When that day comes I shall be very glad to see you."

She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into her room, and she waited a moment to

see whether her visitor would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to move; there was still an

immense unwillingness in his attitude and a sore remonstrance in his eyes. "I must leave you now," said

This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by a vague radiance sent up through the

window from the court of the hotel, and Isabel could make out the masses of the furniture, the dim shining of

the mirror and the looming of the big fourposted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, and at last she

heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the sittingroom and close the door behind him. She stood still a little

longer, and then, by an irresistible impulse, dropped on her knees before her bed and hid her face in her arms.

She was not praying; she was trembling trembling all over. Vibration was easy to her, was in fact

too constant with her, and she found herself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to

put on the cover, to case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to resist her excitement, and the

attitude of devotion, which she kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She intensely rejoiced that

Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was something in having thus got rid of him that was like the payment,

for a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on her mind. As she felt the glad relief she bowed her head a

little lower; the sense was there, throbbing in her heart; it was part of her emotion, but it was a thing to be

ashamed of it was profane and out of place. It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees,

and even when she came back to the sittingroom her tremor had not quite subsided. It had had, verily, two

causes: part of it was to be accounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be feared

that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair

again and took up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume. She leaned back,

with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her response to accidents of which the

brighter side was not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent

suitors in a fortnight. That love of liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as

yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it appeared to her

she had done something; she had tasted of the delight, if not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what

was truest to her plan. In the glow of this consciousness the image of Mr. Goodwood taking his sad walk

homeward through the dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force; so that, as at the same

moment the door of the room was opened, she rose with an apprehension that he had come back. But it was

Miss Stackpole immediately saw that our young lady had been "through" something, and indeed

the discovery demanded no great penetration. She went straight up to her friend, who received her without a

greeting. Isabel's elation in having sent Caspar Goodwood back to America presupposed her being in a

manner glad he had come to see her; but at the same time she perfectly remembered Henrietta had had no

right to set a trap for her. "Has he been here, dear?" the latter yearningly asked.

Isabel turned away and for some moments answered nothing. "You acted very wrongly," she

This declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too unselfish to heed the charge it

conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated with regard to her friend. "Isabel Archer," she observed with

equal abruptness and solemnity, "if you marry one of these people I'll never speak to you again!"

"Before making so terrible a threat you had better wait till I'm asked," Isabel replied. Never having

said a word to Miss Stackpole about Lord Warburton's overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify

"Oh, you'll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie Climber was asked

"I don't flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!" cried her friend. "I hope you don't mean to tell me

"I don't see why I should tell you anything; as I said to you just now, I can't trust you. But since

you're so much interested in Mr. Goodwood I won't conceal from you that he returns immediately to

"I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Henrietta." Miss Stackpole glittered for an

instant with dismay and then passed to the mirror over the chimneypiece and took off her bonnet. "I hope

But her companion was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions. "Do you know where you're

"Do you know where you're drifting?" Henrietta pursued, holding out her bonnet delicately.

"No, I haven't the least idea, and I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark

night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see that's my idea of happiness."

"Mr. Goodwood certainly didn't teach you to say such things as that like the heroine of an

Isabel was irritated by her friend's interference, yet she still tried to think what truth this

declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that diverted her from saying: "You must be very fond

"Well, if you love me intensely let me as intensely alone. I asked that of Mr. Goodwood, and I

"You're a creature of risks you make me shudder!" cried Henrietta. "When does Mr. Goodwood

This assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid defiance to comment; but at last she

exclaimed: "Well, Isabel, if I didn't know you I might think you were heartless!"

"I'm afraid I've done that already. I hope, at least," Miss Stackpole added, "that he may cross with

Isabel learned from her the next morning that she had determined not to return to Gardencourt

(where old Mr. Touchett had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London the arrival of the

invitation that Mr. Bantling had promised her from his sister Lady Pensil. Miss Stackpole related very freely

her conversation with Ralph Touchett's sociable friend and declared to Isabel that she really believed she had

now got hold of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of Lady Pensil's letter Mr. Bantling

had virtually guaranteed the arrival of this document she would immediately depart for Bedfordshire, and if

Isabel cared to look out for her impressions in the Interviewer she would certainly find them. Henrietta was

"Do you know where you're drifting, Henrietta Stackpole?" Isabel asked, imitating the tone in

"I'm drifting to a big position that of the Queen of American Journalism. If my next letter isn't

She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the young lady of the continental offers,

that they should go together to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber's farewell to a

hemisphere in which she at least had been appreciated; and she presently repaired to Jermyn Street to pick up

her companion. Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel

saw he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence. He had received from

his mother a telegram to the effect that his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much

alarmed and that she begged he would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occasion at least Mrs.

"I've judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope, first," Ralph said; "by great good

luck he's in town. He's to see me at halfpast twelve, and I shall make sure of his coming down to

Gardencourt which he will do the more readily as he has already seen my father several times, both there

and in London. There's an express at twofortyfive, which I shall take; and you'll come back with me or

"I shall certainly go with you," Isabel returned. "I don't suppose I can be of any use to my uncle,

"I think you're fond of him," said Ralph with a certain shy pleasure in his face. "You appreciate

She welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a small sigh of relief at the thought that Mr.

Touchett was one of those admirers who couldn't propose to marry her. This, however, was not what she

spoke; she went on to inform Ralph that there were other reasons for her not remaining in London. She was

tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta was going away going to stay in Bedfordshire.

"With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who has answered for an invitation."

Ralph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. Suddenly, none the less, his gravity

returned. "Bantling's a man of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way?"

"The good Homer sometimes nods," said Ralph. "However," he went on more brightly, "the good

Ralph went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, and Isabel made her arrangements for

quitting Pratt's Hotel. Her uncle's danger touched her nearly, and while she stood before her open trunk,

looking about her vaguely for what she should put into it, the tears suddenly rose to her eyes. It was perhaps

for this reason that when Ralph came back at two o'clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. He

found Miss Stackpole, however, in the sittingroom, where she had just risen from her luncheon, and this

"He's a grand old man," she said; "he's faithful to the last. If it's really to be the last pardon my

alluding to it, but you must often have thought of the possibility I'm sorry that I shall not be at

"I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time," said Henrietta with much propriety. But she

"My father may live a long time," said Ralph simply. Then, adverting to topics more cheerful, he

Now that Ralph was in trouble she addressed him in a tone of larger allowance and told him that

she was much indebted to him for having made her acquainted with Mr. Bantling. "He has told me just the

things I want to know," she said; "all the societyitems and all about the royal family. I can't make out that

what he tells me about the royal family is much to their credit; but he says that's only my peculiar way of

looking at it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the facts; I can put them together quick enough, once

I've got them." And she added that Mr. Bantling had been so good as to promise to come and take her out that

"To Buckingham Palace. He's going to show me over it, so that I may get some idea how they

"Ah," said Ralph, "we leave you in good hands. The first thing we shall hear is that you're invited

"If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I'm not afraid. But for all that," Henrietta

"Well, I've told you before, and I suppose there's no harm in my going on. I always finish a subject

Ralph opened his eyes; he even blushed a little his blush being the sign of an emotion somewhat

acute. He remembered that Isabel, in separating from him in Winchester Square, had repudiated his

suggestion that her motive in doing so was the expectation of a visitor at Prates Hotel, and it was a new pang

to him to have to suspect her of duplicity. On the other hand, he quickly said to himself, what concern was it

of his that she should have made an appointment with a lover? Had it not been thought graceful in every age

that young ladies should make a mystery of such appointments? Ralph gave Miss Stackpole a diplomatic

answer. "I should have thought that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, this would satisfy you

"That he should come to see her? That was very well, as far as it went. It was a little plot of mine; I

let him know that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I should spend the evening out I

sent him a word the word we just utter to the 'wise.' I hoped he would find her alone; I won't pretend I didn't

hope that you'd be out of the way. He came to see her, but he might as well have stayed away."

"Isabel was cruel?" and Ralph's face lighted with the relief of his cousin's not having shown

"I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no satisfaction she sent him

"Poor Mr. Goodwood!" Ralph repeated. The exclamation, it must be confessed, was automatic; it

"Ah," said Ralph, "you must remember that I don't know this interesting young man that I've

"Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn't believe Isabel would come

round," Miss Stackpole added "well, I'd give up myself. I mean I'd give her up!"

It had occurred to Ralph that, in the conditions, Isabel's parting with her friend might be of a

slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin, who, after a

slight delay, followed with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in her eyes. The two

made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had

no better news to give them of Mr. Touchett a fact which caused Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir

Matthew Hope's having promised to come down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Touchett,

he learned, on reaching home, had been constantly with the old man and was with him at that moment; and

this fact made Ralph say to himself that, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The finer

natures were those that shone at the larger times. Isabel went to her own room, noting throughout the house

that perceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs in search

of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the library, but Mrs. Touchett was

not there, and as the weather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, it was not probable

she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel was on the point of ringing to send a question to her

room, when this purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound the sound of low music proceeding

apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched the piano, and the musician was therefore

probably Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the

present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father had been relieved; so that the girl took her

way, almost with restored cheer, toward the source of the harmony. The drawingroom at Gardencourt was

an apartment of great distances, and, as the piano was placed at the end of it furthest removed from the door

at which she entered, her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the instrument. This person was

neither Ralph nor his mother; it was a lady whom Isabel immediately saw to be a stranger to herself, though

her back was presented to the door. This back an ample and welldressed one Isabel viewed for some

moments with surprise. The lady was of course a visitor who had arrived during her absence and who had not

been mentioned by either of the servants one of them her aunt's maid of whom she had had speech since

her return. Isabel had already learned, however, with what treasures of reserve the function of receiving

orders may be accompanied, and she was particularly conscious of having been treated with dryness by her

aunt's maid, through whose hands she had slipped perhaps a little too mistrustfully and with an effect of

The advent of a guest was in itself far from disconcerting; she had not yet divested herself of a

young faith that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence on her life. By the time she

had made these reflexions she became aware that the lady at the piano played remarkably well. She was

playing something of Schubert's Isabel knew not what, but recognized Schubert and she touched the piano

with a discretion of her own. It showed skill, it showed feeling; Isabel sat down noiselessly on the nearest

chair and waited till the end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire to thank the player, and

rose from her seat to do so, while at the same time the stranger turned quickly round, as if but just aware of

"That's very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still," said Isabel with all the

"You don't think I disturbed Mr. Touchett then?" the musician answered as sweetly as this

compliment deserved. "The house is so large and his room so far away that I thought I might venture,

"She's a Frenchwoman," Isabel said to herself; "she says that as if she were French." And this

supposition made the visitor more interesting to our speculative heroine. "I hope my uncle's doing well,"

Isabel added. "I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better."

The lady smiled and discriminated. "I'm afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has

"I'm not in that state now then," said Isabel. "On the contrary I should be so glad if you would play

"If it will give you pleasure delighted." And this obliging person took her place again and struck a

few chords, while Isabel sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the newcomer stopped with her hands on

the keys, halfturning and looking over her shoulder. She was forty years old and not pretty, though her

expression charmed. "Pardon me," she said; "but are you the niece the young American?"

The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, casting her air of interest over her shoulder. "That's

"Ah then she's not French," Isabel murmured; and as the opposite supposition had made her

romantic it might have seemed that this revelation would have marked a drop. But such was not the fact; rarer

The lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the

shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain,

which had now begun in earnest, washing the coldlooking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees. At

last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up and, coming nearer with a smile, before Isabel had

time to thank her again, said: "I'm very glad you've come back; I've heard a great deal about you."

Isabel thought her a very attractive person, but nevertheless spoke with a certain abruptness in

The stranger hesitated a single moment and then, "From your uncle," she answered. "I've been here

three days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his room. Then he talked constantly of

"It made me want to know you. All the more that since then your aunt being so much with Mr.

Touchett I've been quite alone and have got rather tired of my own society. I've not chosen a good moment

A servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another bearing the teatray. On

the appearance of this repast Mrs. Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed

herself to the teapot. Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid of

this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither act was it becoming to make a show of avidity.

Questioned about her husband she was unable to say he was better; but the local doctor was with him, and

much light was expected from this gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.

"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance," she pursued. "If you haven't I recommend you

to do so; for so long as we continue Ralph and I to cluster about Mr. Touchett's bed you're not likely to

"I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician," Isabel said to the visitor.

"There's a good deal more than that to know," Mrs. Touchett affirmed in her little dry tone.

"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!" the lady exclaimed with a light laugh.

"I'm an old friend of your aunt's. I've lived much in Florence. I'm Madame Merle." She made this last

announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct identity. For Isabel, however, it

represented little; she could only continue to feel that Madame Merle had as charming a manner as any she

"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name," said Mrs. Touchett. "She was born I always forget

"On the contrary," said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; "if I remembered your

Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of worldwide smile, a thing that overreached

"Ah," exclaimed Madame Merle, "I've great faults, but I don't think that's one of them; it certainly

isn't the greatest. I came into the world in the Brooklyn navyyard. My father was a high officer in the United

States Navy, and had a post a post of responsibility in that establishment at the time. I suppose I ought to

love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land; the great thing is to love

Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs. Touchett's

characterization of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the

sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a face that told of an amplitude of nature

and of quick and free motions and, though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging and

attaching. Madame Merle was a tall, fair, smooth woman; everything in her person was round and replete,

though without those accumulations which suggest heaviness. Her features were thick but in perfect

proportion and harmony, and her complexion had a healthy clearness. Her grey eyes were small but full of

light and incapable of stupidity incapable, according to some people, even of tears; she had a liberal,

fullrimmed mouth which when she smiled drew itself upward to the left side in a manner that most people

thought very odd, some very affected and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range herself in the last

category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow "classically" and as if she were a Bust,

Isabel judged a Juno or a Niobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that their

possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings. Isabel had taken her at first, as we

have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a German a German of

high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a countess, a princess. It would never have been supposed she

had come into the world in Brooklyn though one could doubtless not have carried through any argument

that the air of distinction marking her in so eminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true

that the national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and

stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude she there took towards life. And yet she had evidently

nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose

and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it

had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in

The girl made these reflections while the three ladies sat at their tea, but that ceremony was

interrupted before long by the arrival of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately ushered

into the drawingroom. Mrs. Touchett took him off to the library for a private talk; and then Madame Merle

and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of seeing more of this interesting woman did much to

When she came into the drawingroom before dinner she found the place empty; but in the course

of a moment Ralph arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's view of his

condition was less depressed than his own had been. The doctor recommended that the nurse alone should

remain with the old man for the next three or four hours; so that Ralph, his mother and the great physician

himself were free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew appeared; Madame Merle was the last.

Before she came Isabel spoke of her to Ralph, who was standing before the fireplace. "Pray who is

"I didn't invite her, and when we came back from London I didn't know she was here. No one

invited her. She's a friend of my mother's, and just after you and I went to town my mother got a note from

her. She had arrived in England (she usually lives abroad, though she has first and last spent a good deal of

time here), and asked leave to come down for a few days. She's a woman who can make such proposals with

perfect confidence; she's so welcome wherever she goes. And with my mother there could be no question of

hesitating; she's the one person in the world whom my mother very much admires. If she were not herself

(which she after all much prefers), she would like to be Madame Merle. It would indeed be a great change."

"Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. The husband of Madame Merle would

Isabel gazed at her cousin again. "I don't know what you mean. You mean something that you

Isabel was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for the third time that he was odious; but

the discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She came rustling in quickly,

apologizing for being late, fastening a bracelet, dressed in dark blue satin, which exposed a white bosom that

was ineffectually covered by a curious silver necklace. Ralph offered her his arm with the exaggerated

Even if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had other things to think about. The great

doctor spent the night at Gardencourt and, returning to London on the morrow, after another consultation

with Mr. Touchett's own medical adviser, concurred in Ralph's desire that he should see the patient again on

the day following. On the day following Sir Matthew Hope reappeared at Gardencourt, and now took a less

encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the twentyfour hours. His feebleness was

extreme, and to his son, who constantly sat by his bedside, it often seemed that his end must be at hand. The

local doctor, a very sagacious man, in whom Ralph had secretly more confidence than in his distinguished

colleague, was constantly in attendance, and Sir Matthew Hope came back several times. Mr. Touchett was

much of the time unconscious; he slept a great deal; he rarely spoke. Isabel had a great desire to be useful to

him and was allowed to watch with him at hours when his other attendants (of whom Mrs. Touchett was not

the least regular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and she always said to herself, "Suppose he

should die while I'm sitting here"; an idea which excited her and kept her awake. Once he opened his eyes for

a while and fixed them upon her intelligently, but when she went to him, hoping he would recognize her, he

closed them and relapsed into stupor. The day after this, however, he revived for a longer time; but on this

occasion Ralph only was with him. The old man began to talk, much to his son's satisfaction, who assured

"No, my boy," said Mr. Touchett, "not unless you bury me in a sitting posture, as some of the

"Ah, daddy, don't talk about that," Ralph murmured. "You mustn't deny that you're getting better."

"There will be no need of my denying it if you don't say it," the old man answered. "Why should

we prevaricate just at the last? We never prevaricated before. I've got to die some time, and it's better to die

when one's sick than when one's well. I'm very sick as sick as I shall ever be. I hope you don't want to prove

that I shall ever be worse than this? That would be too bad. You don't? Well then."

Having made this excellent point he became quiet; but the next time that Ralph was with him he

again addressed himself to conversation. The nurse had gone to her supper and Ralph was alone in charge,

having just relieved Mrs. Touchett, who had been on guard since dinner. The room was lighted only by the

flickering fire, which of late had become necessary, and Ralph's tall shadow was projected over wall and

Mr. Touchett said nothing for a while; and then, "I want to talk a little," he went on.

"It won't matter if it does. I shall have a long rest. I want to talk about you.

Ralph had drawn nearer to the bed; he sat leaning forward with his hand on his father's. "You had

"You were always bright; I used to be proud of your brightness. I should like so much to think

"That's just what I don't want; it's what I want to talk about. You must get a new interest."

"I don't want a new interest, daddy. I have more old ones than I know what to do with."

The old man lay there looking at his son; his face was the face of the dying, but his eyes were the

eyes of Daniel Touchett. He seemed to be reckoning over Ralph's interests. "Of course you have your

"Well," said his father, "perhaps as she grows older she'll need a little help."

"Very likely she will; but that's no reason!" Mr. Touchett let his phrase die away in a helpless but

"Don't trouble yourself about us," said his son. "My mother and I get on very well together, you

"Well," the old man observed with wandering irrelevance, "it can't be said that my death will make

"Well, she'll have more money," said Mr. Touchett. "I've left her a good wife's portion, just as if

"She has been one, daddy, according to her own theory. She has never troubled you."

"Ah, some troubles are pleasant," Mr. Touchett murmured. "Those you've given me for instance.

But your mother has been less less what shall I call it? less out of the way since I've been ill. I presume she

"It won't make any difference to her; she doesn't do it to please me. She does it to please to

please" And he lay a while trying to think why she did it. "She does it because it suits her. But that's not

what I want to talk about," he added. "It's about you. You'll be very well off."

"Yes," said Ralph, "I know that. But I hope you've not forgotten the talk we had a year ago when

I told you exactly what money I should need and begged you to make some good use of the rest."

"Yes, yes, I remember. I made a new will in a few days. I suppose it was the first time such a

"It is not against me," said Ralph. "It would be against me to have a large property to take care of.

It's impossible for a man in my state of health to spend much money, and enough is as good as a feast."

"Well, you'll have enough and something over. There will be more than enough for one there

"Ah, don't say that. The best thing you can do, when I'm gone, will be to marry."

Ralph had foreseen what his father was coming to, and this suggestion was by no means fresh. It

had long been Mr. Touchett's most ingenious way of taking the cheerful view of his son's possible duration.

Ralph had usually treated it facetiously; but present circumstances proscribed the facetious. He simply fell

"If I, with a wife who hasn't been very fond of me, have had a very happy life," said the old man,

carrying his ingenuity further still, "what a life mightn't you have if you should marry a person different from

Mrs. Touchett. There are more different from her than there are like her." Ralph still said nothing; and after a

At this Ralph started, meeting the question with a strained smile. "Do I understand you to propose

"Yes, very much." And Ralph got up from his chair and wandered over to the fire. He stood before

"Well," said his father, "I know she likes you. She has told me how much she likes you."

"No, but she can't have anything against you. And she's the most charming young lady I've ever

"So have I," said Ralph, coming back to the bedside again. "I don't mind telling you that."

"You are in love with her then? I should think you would be. It's as if she came over on purpose."

"No, I'm not in love with her; but I should be if if certain things were different."

"Ah, things are always different from what they might be," said the old man. "If you wait for them

to change you'll never do anything. I don't know whether you know," he went on; "but I suppose there's no

harm in my alluding to it at such an hour as this: there was some one wanted to marry Isabel the other day,

"No, it was an older friend; a poor gentleman who came over from America to see about it."

"Well, I'm sorry for him, whoever he was. But it only proves what I say that the way's open to

"If it is, dear father, it's all the greater pity that I'm unable to tread it. I haven't many convictions;

but I have three or four that I hold strongly. One is that people, on the whole, had better not marry their

cousins. Another is that people in an advanced stage of pulmonary disorder had better not marry at all."

The old man raised his weak hand and moved it to and fro before his face. "What do you mean by

that? You look at things in a way that would make everything wrong. What sort of a cousin is a cousin that

you had never seen for more than twenty years of her life? We're all each other's cousins, and if we stopped at

that the human race would die out. It's just the same with your bad lung. You're a great deal better than you

used to be. All you want is to lead a natural life. It is a great deal more natural to marry a pretty young lady

"You said just now that you would be if you didn't think it wrong. I want to prove to you that it

"It will only tire you, dear daddy," said Ralph, who marvelled at his father's tenacity and at his

"Where shall you be if I don't provide for you? You won't have anything to do with the bank, and

you won't have me to take care of. You say you've so many interests; but I can't make them out."

Ralph leaned back in his chair with folded arms; his eyes were fixed for some time in meditation.

At last, with the air of a man fairly mustering courage, "I take a great interest in my cousin," he said, "but not

the sort of interest you desire. I shall not live many years; but I hope I shall live long enough to see what she

does with herself. She's entirely independent of me; I can exercise very little influence upon her life. But I

"I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she wants. She wants to see the

"Ah, I'm glad you've thought of that," said the old man. "But I've thought of it too. I've left her a

Something of that veiled acuteness with which it had been on Daniel Touchett's part the habit of a

lifetime to listen to a financial proposition still lingered in the face in which the invalid had not obliterated the

"Isabel's poor then. My mother tells me that she has but a few hundred dollars a year. I should like

"I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination. Isabel has a

"So have you, my son," said Mr. Touchett, listening very attentively but a little confusedly.

"You tell me I shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you should kindly relieve me

of my superfluity and make it over to Isabel. Divide my inheritance into two equal halves and give her the

"Her marrying some one or other? It's just to do away with anything of that sort that I make my

suggestion. If she has an easy income she'll never have to marry for a support. That's what I want cannily to

"Well, you seem to have thought it out," said Mr. Touchett. "But I don't see why you appeal to me.

The old man gave a groan. "Don't tell me you're not in love with her! Do you want me to have the

"Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your will, without the slightest reference to me."

"A few words will do it; you can attend to it the next time you feel a little lively."

"Very probably; I shall like him to think it," said Ralph, smiling; "and, to carry out the idea, I give

The humour of this appeared to touch his father, who lay a little while taking it in. "I'll do anything

you like," Mr. Touchett said at last; "but I'm not sure it's right. You say you want to put wind in her sails; but

"Well, I don't think I understand," said Mr. Touchett with a sigh. "Young men are very different

from what I was. When I cared for a girl when I was young I wanted to do more than look at her. You've

scruples that I shouldn't have had, and you've ideas that I shouldn't have had either. You say Isabel wants to

be free, and that her being rich will keep her from marrying for money. Do you think that she's a girl to do

"By no means. But she has less money than she has ever had before. Her father then gave her

everything, because he used to spend his capital. She has nothing but the crumbs of that feast to live on, and

she doesn't really know how meagre they are she has yet to learn it. My mother has told me all about it.

Isabel will learn it when she's really thrown upon the world, and it would be very painful to me to think of her

"I've left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a good many wants with that."

Poor Mr. Touchett's acuteness was rapidly giving place to pure confusion. "It would merely be a

"No though at first I think she'd plunge into that pretty freely: she'd probably make over a part of

it to each of her sisters. But after that she'd come to her senses, remember she has still a lifetime before her,

"Well, you have worked it out," said the old man helplessly. "You do take an interest in her,

"Well, I don't know," Mr. Touchett answered. "I don't think I enter into your spirit. It seems to me

"It surely depends upon the person. When the person's good, your making things easy is all to the

credit of virtue. To facilitate the execution of good impulses, what can be a nobler act?"

This was a little difficult to follow, and Mr. Touchett considered it for a while. At last he said:

"Well," Mr. Touchett declared, "she ought to get a great many opportunities for sixty thousand

"Of course I'll do what you want," said the old man. "I only want to understand it a little."

"Well, dear daddy, don't you understand it now?" his son caressingly asked. "If you don't we won't

Mr. Touchett lay a long time still. Ralph supposed he had given up the attempt to follow. But at

last, quite lucidly, he began again. "Tell me this first. Doesn't it occur to you that a young lady with sixty

"Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my calculation. I think it's appreciable, but I think

Poor Mr. Touchett's acuteness had passed into perplexity, and his perplexity now passed into

admiration. "Well, you have gone into it!" he repeated. "But I don't see what good you're to get of it."

Ralph leaned over his father's pillows and gently smoothed them; he was aware their talk had been

unduly prolonged. "I shall get just the good I said a few moments ago I wished to put into Isabel's reach that

of having met the requirements of my imagination. But it's scandalous, the way I've taken advantage of you!"

As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle were thrown much together during the

illness of their host, so that if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a breach of good

manners. Their manners were of the best, but in addition to this they happened to please each other. It is

perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship, but tacitly at least they called the future to

witness. Isabel did so with a perfectly good conscience, though she would have hesitated to admit she was

intimate with her new friend in the high sense she privately attached to this term. She often wondered indeed

if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with any one. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of

several other sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case it had not seemed to her in other cases

that the actual completely expressed. But she often reminded herself that there were essential reasons why

one's ideal could never become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see a matter of faith, not of

experience. Experience, however, might supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the part of

wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly, on the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more

agreeable and interesting figure than Madame Merle; she had never met a person having less of that fault

which is the principal obstacle to friendship the air of reproducing the more tiresome, the stale, the

toofamiliar parts of one's own character. The gates of the girl's confidence were opened wider than they had

ever been; she said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes she took

alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels.

These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Isabel possessed, but there was all the greater

reason for their being carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one should never

regret a generous error and that if Madame Merle had not the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse

for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she had great merits she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent,

cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's illfortune to go through life without meeting in her

own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and preeminent. There

are many amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good natured and

restlessly witty. She knew how to think an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought to very

good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel couldn't have spent a week with her without being

sure of that. This was indeed Madame Merle's great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she

had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction to be taken in her society that when the girl talked of

what she was pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so easily and quickly. Emotion, it is

true, had become with her rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to

having been rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed

moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and

"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems to me one has earned the right. One

can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.

I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of some kind; I often think

that after forty one can't really feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll keep them longer

than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me to see you some years hence. I want to see what life

makes of you. One thing's certain it can't spoil you. It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break you

Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting from a slight skirmish in which he

has come off with honour, might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a recognition of

merit it seemed to come with authority. How could the lightest word do less on the part of a person who was

prepared to say, of almost everything Isabel told her, "Oh, I've been in that, my dear; it passes, like

everything else." On many of her interlocutors Madame Merle might have produced an irritating effect; it

was disconcertingly difficult to surprise her. But Isabel, though by no means incapable of desiring to be

effective, had not at present this impulse. She was too sincere, too interested in her judicious companion. And

then moreover Madame Merle never said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness; they dropped

A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew shorter and there was an end

to the pretty teaparties on the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with her fellow

visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive

apparatus which the English climate and the English genius have between them brought to such perfection.

Madame Merle liked almost everything, including the English rain. "There's always a little of it and never too

much at once," she said; "and it never wets you and it always smells good." She declared that in England the

pleasures of smell were great that in this inimitable island there was a certain mixture of fog and beer and

soot which, however odd it might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the nostril; and

she used to lift the sleeve of her British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the

wool. Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner; in

bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the windows

with his hands in his pockets and, from a countenance halfrueful, halfcritical, watch Isabel and Madame

Merle as they walked down the avenue under a pair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm,

even in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came back with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking

at the soles of their neat, stout boots and declaring that their walk had done them inexpressible good. Before

luncheon, always, Madame Merle was engaged; Isabel admired and envied her rigid possession of her

morning. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources and had taken a certain pride in being one;

but she wandered, as by the wrong side of the wall of a private garden, round the enclosed talents,

accomplishments, aptitudes of Madame Merle. She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in twenty

such ways this lady presented herself as a model. "I should like awfully to be so!" Isabel secretly exclaimed,

more than once, as one after another of her friend's fine aspects caught the light, and before long she knew

that she had learned a lesson from a high authority. It took no great time indeed for her to feel herself, as the

phrase is, under an influence. "What's the harm," she wondered, "so long as it's a good one? The more one's

under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them to understand them as

we go. That, no doubt, I shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm

not pliable enough?" It is said that imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes moved to

gape at her friend aspiringly and despairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to shine as

because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Merle. She liked her extremely, but was even more

dazzled than attracted. She sometimes asked herself what Henrietta Stackpole would say to her thinking so

much of this perverted product of their common soil, and had a conviction that it would be severely judged.

Henrietta would not at all subscribe to Madame Merle; for reasons she could not have defined this truth came

home to the girl. On the other hand she was equally sure that, should the occasion offer, her new friend would

strike off some happy view of her old: Madame Merle was too humorous, too observant, not to do justice to

Henrietta, and on becoming acquainted with her would probably give the measure of a tact which Miss

Stackpole couldn't hope to emulate. She appeared to have in her experience a touchstone for everything, and

somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial memory she would find the key to Henrietta's value. "That's

the great thing," Isabel solemnly pondered; "that's the supreme good fortune: to be in a better position for

appreciating people than they are for appreciating you." And she added that such, when one considered it,

was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation. In this light, if in none other, one should aim at the

I may not count over all the links in the chain which led Isabel to think of Madame Merle's

situation as aristocratic a view of it never expressed in any reference made to it by that lady herself. She had

known great things and great people, but she had never played a great part. She was one of the small ones of

the earth; she had not been born to honours; she knew the world too well to nourish fatuous illusions on the

article of her own place in it. She had encountered many of the fortunate few and was perfectly aware of

those points at which their fortune differed from hers. But if by her informed measure she was no figure for a

high scene, she had yet to Isabel's imagination a sort of greatness. To be so cultivated and civilized, so wise

and so easy, and still make so light of it that was really to be a great lady, especially when one so carried

and presented one's self. It was as if somehow she had all society under contribution, and all the arts and

graces it practised or was the effect rather that of charming uses found for her, even from a distance, subtle

service rendered by her to a clamorous world wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a succession

of letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable: her correspondence was a source of surprise to

Isabel when they sometimes walked together to the village postoffice to deposit Madame Merle's offering to

the mail. She knew more people, as she told Isabel, than she knew what to do with, and something was

always turning up to be written about. Of painting she was devotedly fond, and made no more of brushing in

a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At Gardencourt she was perpetually taking advantage of an hour's

sunshine to go out with a campstool and a box of watercolours. That she was a brave musician we have

already perceived, and it was evidence of the fact that when she seated herself at the piano, as she always did

in the evening, her listeners resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the grace of her talk. Isabel,

since she had known her, felt ashamed of her own facility, which she now looked upon as basely inferior; and

indeed, though she had been thought rather a prodigy at home, the loss to society when, in taking her place

upon the musicstool, she turned her back to the room, was usually deemed greater than the gain. When

Madame Merle was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she was usually employed upon

wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimneypiece; an art in which

her bold, free invention was as noted as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, for when engaged in

none of the ways I have mentioned she was either reading (she appeared to Isabel to read "everything

important"), or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with

all this she had always the social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her

pastimes as easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to impute scant

worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained

there, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was in short

the most comfortable, profitable, amenable person to live with. If for Isabel she had a fault it was that she was

not natural; by which the girl meant, not that she was either affected or pretentious, since from these vulgar

vices no woman could have been more exempt, but that her nature had been too much overlaid by custom and

her angles too much rubbed away. She had become too flexible, too useful, was too ripe and too final. She

was in a word too perfectly the social animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended to be;

and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which we may assume to have belonged even

to the most amiable persons in the ages before countryhouse life was the fashion. Isabel found it difficult to

think of her in any detachment or privacy, she existed only in her relations, direct or indirect, with her fellow

mortals. One might wonder what commerce she could possibly hold with her own spirit. One always ended,

however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn't necessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in

which, in one's youth, one had but just escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was not superficial not she.

She was deep, and her nature spoke none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional tongue.

"What's language at all but a convention?" said Isabel. "She has the good taste not to pretend, like some

"I'm afraid you've suffered much," she once found occasion to say to her friend in response to

"What makes you think that?" Madame Merle asked with the amused smile of a person seated at a

"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been happy wouldn't have

"I haven't always been happy," said Madame Merle, smiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she

But Isabel rose to the irony. "A great many people give me the impression of never having for a

"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it

that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I

flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've been shockingly chipped and cracked. I

do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard the

quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices as much as I can. But when I've to come out

I know not whether it was on this occasion or on some other that when the conversation had taken

the turn I have just indicated she said to Isabel that she would some day a tale unfold. Isabel assured her she

should delight to listen to one, and reminded her more than once of this engagement. Madame Merle,

however, begged repeatedly for a respite, and at last frankly told her young companion that they must wait till

they knew each other better. This would be sure to happen; a long friendship so visibly lay before them.

Isabel assented, but at the same time enquired if she mightn't be trusted if she appeared capable of a betrayal

"It's not that I'm afraid of your repeating what I say," her fellow visitor answered; "I'm afraid, on

the contrary, of your taking it too much to yourself. You'd judge me too harshly; you're of the cruel age." She

preferred for the present to talk to Isabel of Isabel, and exhibited the greatest interest in our heroine's history,

sentiments, opinions, prospects. She made her chatter and listened to her chatter infinite good nature. This

flattered and quickened the girl, who was struck with all the distinguished people her friend had known and

with her having lived, as Mrs. Touchett said, in the best company in Europe. Isabel thought the better of

herself for enjoying the favour of a person who had so large a field of comparison; and it was perhaps partly

to gratify the sense of profiting by comparison that she often appealed to these stores of reminiscence.

Madame Merle had been a dweller in many lands and had social ties in a dozen different countries. "I don't

pretend to be educated," she would say, "but I think I know my Europe"; and she spoke one day of going to

Sweden to stay with an old friend, and another of proceeding to Malta to follow up a new acquaintance. With

England, where she had often dwelt, she was thoroughly familiar, and for Isabel's benefit threw a great deal

of light upon the customs of the country and the character of the people, who "after all," as she was fond of

"You mustn't think it strange her remaining here at such a time as this, when Mr. Touchett's

passing away," that gentleman's wife remarked to her niece. "She is incapable of a mistake; she's the most

tactful woman I know. It's a favour to me that she stays; she's putting off a lot of visits at great houses," said

Mrs. Touchett, who never forgot that when she herself was in England her social value sank two or three

degrees in the scale. "She has her pick of places; she's not in want of a shelter. But I've asked her to put in this

time because I wish you to know her. I think it will be a good thing for you. Serena Merle hasn't a fault."

"If I didn't already like her very much that description might alarm me," Isabel returned.

"She's never the least little bit 'off.' I've brought you out here and I wish to do the best for you.

Your sister Lily told me she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. I give you one in putting you in

"I like her better than I like your description of her," Isabel persisted in saying.

"Do you flatter yourself that you'll ever feel her open to criticism? I hope you'll let me know when

"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know," said Mrs. Touchett.

Isabel after this observed to their companion that she hoped she knew Mrs. Touchett considered

she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which "I'm obliged to you," Madame Merle replied, "but I'm afraid

your aunt imagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the clockface doesn't register."

"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having no faults, for your aunt, means

that one's never late for dinner that is for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other day, when you

came back from London; the clock was just at eight when I came into the drawingroom; it was the rest of

you that were before the time. It means that one answers a letter the day one gets it and that when one comes

to stay with her one doesn't bring too much luggage and is careful not to be taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those

things constitute virtue; it's a blessing to be able to reduce it to its elements."

Madame Merle's own conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched with bold, free touches of

criticism, which, even when they had a restrictive effect, never struck Isabel as illnatured. It couldn't occur

to the girl for instance that Mrs. Touchett's accomplished guest was abusing her; and this for very good

reasons. In the first place Isabel rose eagerly to the sense of her shades; in the second Madame Merle implied

that there was a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the third that for a person to speak to one without

ceremony of one's near relations was an agreeable sign of that person's intimacy with one's self. These signs

of deep communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and there was none of which Isabel was more sensible

than of her companion's preference for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she referred frequently to

the incidents of her own career she never lingered upon them; she was as little of a gross egotist as she was of

"I'm old and stale and faded," she said more than once; "I'm of no more interest than last week's

newspaper. You're young and fresh and of today; you've the great thing you've actuality. I once had it we

all have it for an hour. You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you then; you can say nothing

I shall not care to hear. It's a sign that I'm growing old that I like to talk with younger people. I think it's a

very pretty compensation. If we can't have youth within us we can have it outside, and I really think we see it

and feel it better that way. Of course we must be in sympathy with it that I shall always be. I don't know that

I shall ever be illnatured with old people I hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall

never be anything but abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me too much. I give you carte

blanche then; you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I

were a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born before the French Revolution. Ah,

my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to the old, old world. But it's not of that I want to talk; I want to talk about

the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me enough. Here I've been since I was

brought here as a helpless child, and it's ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous, how little I know about that

splendid, dreadful, funny country surely the greatest and drollest of them all. There are a great many of us

like that in these parts, and I must say I think we're a wretched set of people. You should live in your own

land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we're not good Americans we're certainly poor

Europeans; we've no natural place here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven't our feet

in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems

to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more

or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified? you declare you'll never crawl? It's very true that I

don't see you crawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor creatures. Very good; on the whole, I

don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over

here? I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at poor Ralph Touchett: what sort of a figure do

you call that? Fortunately he has a consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do. His

consumption's his carriere; it's a kind of position. You can say: 'Oh Mr. Touchett, he takes care of his lungs,

he knows a great deal about climates.' But without that who would he be, what would he represent? 'Mr.

Ralph Touchett: an American who lives in Europe.' That signifies absolutely nothing it's impossible

anything should signify less. 'He's very cultivated,' they say: 'he has a very pretty collection of old

snuffboxes.' The collection is all that's wanted to make it pitiful. I'm tired of the sound of the word; I think

it's grotesque. With the poor old father it's different; he has his identity, and it's rather a massive one. He

represents a great financial house, and that, in our day, is as good as anything else. For an American, at any

rate, that will do very well. But I persist in thinking your cousin very lucky to have a chronic malady so long

as he doesn't die of it. It's much better than the snuffboxes. If he weren't ill, you say, he'd do something?

he'd take his father's place in the house. My poor child, I doubt it; I don't think he's at all fond of the house.

However, you know him better than I, though I used to know him rather well, and he may have the benefit of

the doubt. The worst case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of ours, who lives in Italy (where he also

was brought before he knew better), and who is one of the most delightful men I know. Some day you must

know him. I'll bring you together and then you'll see what I mean. He's Gilbert Osmond he lives in Italy;

that's all one can say about him or make of him. He's exceedingly clever, a man made to be distinguished;

but, as I tell you, you exhaust the description when you say he's Mr. Osmond who lives tout betement in Italy.

No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please

paints in watercolours; like me, only better than I. His painting's pretty bad; on the whole I'm rather glad of

that. Fortunately he's very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a sort of position. He can say, 'Oh, I do

nothing; I'm too deadly lazy. You can do nothing today unless you get up at five o'clock in the morning.' In

that way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel he might do something if he'd only rise early. He never

speaks of his painting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he has a little girl a dear little girl; he

does speak of her. He's devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father he'd be very

distinguished. But I'm afraid that's no better than the snuffboxes; perhaps not even so good. Tell me what

they do in America," pursued Madame Merle, who, it must be observed parenthetically, did not deliver

herself all at once of these reflexions, which are presented in a cluster for the convenience of the reader. She

talked of Florence, where Mr. Osmond lived and where Mrs. Touchett occupied a mediaeval palace; she

talked of Rome, where she herself had a little piedaterre with some rather good old damask. She talked of

places, of people and even, as the phrase is, of "subjects"; and from time to time she talked of their kind old

host and of the prospect of his recovery. From the first she had thought this prospect small, and Isabel had

been struck with the positive, discriminating, competent way in which she took the measure of his remainder

"Sir Matthew Hope told me so as plainly as was proper," she said; "standing there, near the fire,

before dinner. He makes himself very agreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean his saying that has anything to

do with it. But he says such things with great tact. I had told him I felt ill at my ease, staying here at such a

time; it seemed to me so indiscreet it wasn't as if I could nurse. 'You must remain, you must remain,' he

answered; 'your office will come later.' Wasn't that a very delicate way of saying both that poor Mr. Touchett

would go and that I might be of some use as a consoler? In fact, however, I shall not be of the slightest use.

Your aunt will console herself; she, and she alone, knows just how much consolation she'll require. It would

be a very delicate matter for another person to undertake to administer the dose. With your cousin it will be

different; he'll miss his father immensely. But I should never presume to condole with Mr. Ralph; we're not

on those terms." Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined incongruity in her relations

with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel took this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends.

"I hope not; because if you do you'll never end. That's the way with your cousin; he doesn't get

over it. It's an antipathy of nature if I can call it that when it's all on his side. I've nothing whatever against

him and don't bear him the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I want. However, one

feels that he's a gentleman and would never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table," Madame

"I hope not indeed," said Isabel, who added something about his being the kindest creature living.

She remembered, however, that on her first asking him about Madame Merle he had answered her in a

manner which this lady might have thought injurious without being explicit. There was something between

them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing more than this. If it were something of importance it should

inspire respect; if it were not it was not worth her curiosity. With all her love of knowledge she had a natural

shrinking from raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her

But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, made her raise her clear eyebrows at

the time and think of the words afterwards. "I'd give a great deal to be your age again," she broke out once

with a bitterness which, though diluted in her customary amplitude of ease, was imperfectly disguised by it.

"Your life's before you yet," Isabel answered gently, for she was vaguely awestruck.

"Why not what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of

But Madame Merle interrupted her. "What have my talents brought me? Nothing but the need of

using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat myself with some pretence of movement, of

unconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said about them the better. You'll be my friend till

"Yes; I would make an effort to keep you." And her companion looked at her gravely. "When I say

I should like to be your age I mean with your qualities frank, generous, sincere like you. In that case I

Madame Merle took a sheet of music she was seated at the piano and had abruptly wheeled about

on the stool when she first spoke and mechanically turned the leaves. "I'm very ambitious!" she at last

Isabel wondered what they could have been whether Madame Merle had aspired to wear a crown.

"I don't know what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to have been successful. To me indeed

"You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It's to see some dream of one's youth come true."

"Ah," Madame Merle exclaimed, "that I've never seen! But my dreams were so great so

preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I'm dreaming now!" And she turned back to the piano and began grandly to

play. On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of success had been very pretty, yet frightfully sad.

Measured in that way, who had succeeded? The dreams of one's youth, why they were enchanting, they were

"Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood that of having a pink sash and a doll that

Madame Merle appeared to note this eagerness. "I suspect that's what you do mean. We've all had

the young man with the moustache. He's the inevitable young man; he doesn't count."

Isabel was silent a little but then spoke with extreme and characteristic inconsequence. "Why

"And yours was a paragon is that what you mean?" asked her friend with a laugh. "If you've had

the identical young man you dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate you with all my heart.

"What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don't tell me that; I refuse to recognize that

"That's very crude of you. When you've lived as long as I you'll see that every human being has his

shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances.

There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us made up of some cluster of

appurtenances. What shall we call our 'self'? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into

everything that belongs to us and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I

choose to wear. I've a great respect for things! One's self for other people is one's expression of one's self;

and one's house, one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps these things

This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had

already made. Isabel was fond of metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this bold analysis

of the human personality. "I don't agree with you. I think just the other way. I don't know whether I succeed

in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure

of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes

which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!"

"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they

don't express me. To begin with it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed upon me by

"Should you prefer to go without them?" Madame Merle enquired in a tone which virtually

I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the sketch I have given of the youthful

loyalty practiced by our heroine toward this accomplished woman, that Isabel had said nothing whatever to

her about Lord Warburton and had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood. She had not,

however, concealed the fact that she had had opportunities of marrying and had even let her friend know of

how advantageous a kind they had been. Lord Warburton had left Lockleigh and was gone to Scotland, taking

his sisters with him; and though he had written to Ralph more than once to ask about Mr. Touchett's health

the girl was not liable to the embarrassment of such enquiries as, had he still been in the neighbourhood, he

would probably have felt bound to make in person. He had excellent ways, but she felt sure that if he had

come to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked her

and betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend. It so happened that during this lady's previous

visits to Gardencourt each of them much shorter than the present he had either not been at Lockleigh or

had not called at Mr. Touchett's. Therefore, though she knew him by name as the great man of that country,

she had no cause to suspect him as a suitor of Mrs. Touchett's freshlyimported niece.

"You've plenty of time," she had said to Isabel in return for the mutilated confidences which our

young woman made her and which didn't pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at moments the girl

had compunctions at having said so much. "I'm glad you've done nothing yet that you have it still to do. It's

a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers so long of course as they are not the best she's

likely to have. Pardon me if my tone seems horribly corrupt; one must take the worldly view sometimes.

Only don't keep on refusing for the sake of refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting's after all

an exercise of power as well. There's always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell

into I didn't refuse often enough. You're an exquisite creature, and I should like to see you married to a

prime minister. But speaking strictly, you know, you're not what is technically called a parti. You're

extremely goodlooking and extremely clever; in yourself you're quite exceptional. You appear to have the

vaguest ideas about your earthly possessions; but from what I can make out you're not embarrassed with an

"I wish I had!" said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for the moment that her poverty had been

In spite of Sir Matthew Hope's benevolent recommendation Madame Merle did not remain to the

end, as the issue of poor Mr. Touchett's malady had now come frankly to be designated. She was under

pledges to other people which had at last to be redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with the understanding

that she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or else in town, before quitting England. Her

parting with Isabel was even more like the beginning of a friendship than their meeting had been. "I'm going

to six places in succession, but I shall see no one I like so well as you. They'll all be old friends, however; one

doesn't make new friends at my age. I've made a great exception for you. You must remember that and must

By way of answer Isabel kissed her, and, though some women kiss with facility, there are kisses

and kisses, and this embrace was satisfactory to Madame Merle. Our young lady, after this, was much alone;

she saw her aunt and cousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours during which Mrs. Touchett was

invisible only a minor portion was now devoted to nursing her husband. She spent the rest in her own

apartments, to which access was not allowed even to her niece, apparently occupied there with mysterious

and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave and silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude Isabel

could see it was a conviction. She wondered if her aunt repented of having taken her own way so much; but

there was no visible evidence of this no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration of a zeal always to its own sense

adequate. Mrs. Touchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over and summing them up; she

had a little moral accountbook with columns unerringly ruled and a sharp steel clasp which she kept with

exemplary neatness. Uttered reflection had with her ever, at any rate, a practical ring. "If I had foreseen this

I'd not have proposed your coming abroad now," she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had left the house.

"So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It's a great happiness to me to have come

"That's very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle that I brought you to Europe." A

perfectly veracious speech; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. She had leisure to think of this and

other matters. She took a solitary walk every day and spent vague hours in turning over books in the library.

Among the subjects that engaged her attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, with whom

she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked her friend's private epistolary style better than her public; that

is she felt her public letters would have been excellent if they had not been printed. Henrietta's career,

however, was not so successful, as might have been wished even in the interest of her private felicity; that

view of the inner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an

ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr.

Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part

of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and

believed that he owed her a setoff to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He says he should think I would go

to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; and as he thinks of going there himself I suppose his advice is sincere. He

wants to know why I don't take a view of French life; and it's a fact that I want very much to see the new

Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn't care much about the Republic, but he thinks of going over to Paris anyway. I

must say he's quite as attentive as I could wish, and at least I shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep

telling Mr. Bantling that he ought to have been an American, and you should see how that pleases him.

Whenever I say so he always breaks out with the same exclamation 'Ah, but really, come now!'" A few days

later she wrote that she had decided to go to Paris at the end of the week and that Mr. Bantling had promised

to see her off perhaps even would go as far as Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should

arrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to start on her continental journey alone and making

no allusion to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their late companion, our heroine communicated

several passages from this correspondence to Ralph, who followed with an emotion akin to suspense the

"It seems to me she's doing very well," he said, "going over to Paris with an exLancer! If she

"It's not conventional, certainly," Isabel answered; "but if you mean that as far as Henrietta is

concerned it's not perfectly innocent, you're very much mistaken. You'll never understand Henrietta."

"Pardon me, I understand her perfectly. I didn't at all at first, but now I've the point of view. I'm

afraid, however, that Bantling hasn't; he may have some surprises. Oh, I understand Henrietta as well as if I

Isabel was by no means sure of this, but she abstained from expressing further doubt, for she was

disposed in these days to extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon less than a week after Madame

Merle's departure she was seated in the library with a volume to which her attention was not fastened. She

had placed herself in a deep windowbench, from which she looked out into the dull, damp park; and as the

library stood at right angles to the entrancefront of the house she could see the doctor's brougham, which

had been waiting for the last two hours before the door. She was struck with his remaining so long, but at last

she saw him appear in the portico, stand a moment slowly drawing on his gloves and looking at the knees of

his horse, and then get into the vehicle and roll away. Isabel kept her place for half an hour; there was a great

stillness in the house. It was so great that when she at last heard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the

room she was almost startled by the sound. She turned quickly away from the window and saw Ralph

Touchett standing there with his hands still in his pockets, but with a face absolutely void of its usual latent

Some fortnight after this Madame Merle drove up in a hansom cab to the house in Winchester

Square. As she descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between the diningroom windows, a

large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint the words "This noble

freehold mansion to be sold"; with the name of the agent to whom application should be made. "They

certainly lose no time," said the visitor as, after sounding the big brass knocker, she waited to be admitted;

"it's a practical country!" And within the house, as she ascended to the drawingroom, she perceived

numerous signs of abdication; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped

and floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett presently received her and intimated in a few words that condolences

"I know what you're going to say he was a very good man. But I know it better than any one,

because I gave him more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife." Mrs. Touchett added that at the

end her husband apparently recognized this fact. "He has treated me most liberally," she said; "I won't say

more liberally than I expected, because I didn't expect. You know that as a general thing I don't expect. But

he chose, I presume, to recognize the fact that though I lived much abroad and mingled you may say freely

"For any one but yourself," Madame Merle mentally observed; but the reflexion was perfectly

"I never sacrificed my husband to another," Mrs. Touchett continued with her stout curtness.

There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so

as they are not in accord either with the view somewhat superficial perhaps that we have hitherto enjoyed

of Madame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett's history; the more so, too, as Madame

Merle had a wellfounded conviction that her friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a

sidethrust at herself. The truth is that the moment she had crossed the threshold she received an impression

that Mr. Touchett's death had had subtle consequences and that these consequences had been profitable to a

little circle of persons among whom she was not numbered. Of course it was an event which would naturally

have consequences; her imagination had more than once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt.

But it had been one thing to foresee such a matter mentally and another to stand among its massive records.

The idea of a distribution of property she would almost have said of spoils just now pressed upon her

senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far from wishing to picture her as one of the hungry

mouths or envious hearts of the general herd, but we have already learned of her having desires that had

never been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would of course have admitted with a fine proud

smile that she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett's relics. "There was never anything in the

world between us," she would have said. "There was never that, poor man!" with a fillip of her thumb and

her third finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if she couldn't at the present moment keep from quite

perversely yearning she was careful not to betray herself. She had after all as much sympathy for Mrs.

"He has left me this house," the newlymade widow said; "but of course I shall not live in it; I've a

much better one in Florence. The will was opened only three days since, but I've already offered the house for

sale. I've also a share in the bank; but I don't yet understand if I'm obliged to leave it there. If not I shall

certainly take it out. Ralph, of course, has Gardencourt; but I'm not sure that he'll have means to keep up the

place. He's naturally left very well off, but his father has given away an immense deal of money; there are

bequests to a string of third cousins in Vermont. Ralph, however, is very fond of Gardencourt and would be

quite capable of living there in summer with a maidofallwork and a gardener's boy. There's one

remarkable clause in my husband's will," Mrs. Touchett added. "He has left my niece a fortune."

Madame Merle's hands were clasped in her lap; at this she raised them, still clasped, and held them

a moment against her bosom while her eyes, a little dilated, fixed themselves on those of her friend. "Ah," she

For an instant Madame Merle's colour rose and she dropped her eyes. "It certainly is clever to

Madame Merle was seldom guilty of the awkwardness of retracting what she had said; her wisdom

was shown rather in maintaining it and placing it in a favourable light. "My dear friend, Isabel would

certainly not have had seventy thousand pounds left her if she had not been the most charming girl in the

"She never dreamed, I'm sure, of my husband's doing anything for her; and I never dreamed of it

either, for he never spoke to me of his intention," Mrs. Touchett said. "She had no claim upon him whatever;

it was no great recommendation to him that she was my niece. Whatever she achieved she achieved

Mrs. Touchett reserved her opinion. "The girl's fortunate; I don't deny that. But for the present

"That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn't know what to think about the matter at all. It

has been as if a big gun were suddenly fired off behind her; she's feeling herself to see if she be hurt. It's but

three days since she received a visit from the principal executor, who came in person, very gallantly, to notify

her. He told me afterwards that when he had made his little speech she suddenly burst into tears. The money's

Madame Merle shook her head with a wise and now quite benignant smile. "How very delicious!

After she has done that two or three times she'll get used to it." Then after a silence, "What does your son

"He left England before the will was read used up by his fatigue and anxiety and hurrying off to

the south. He's on his way to the Riviera and I've not yet heard from him. But it's not likely he'll ever object to

"Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for the people in America. He's

"It depends upon whom he regards as number one!" said Madame Merle. And she remained

thoughtful a moment, her eyes bent on the floor. "Am I not to see your happy niece?" she asked at last as she

"You may see her; but you'll not be struck with her being happy. She has looked as solemn, these

Isabel came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call her; and Madame Merle thought, as

she appeared, that Mrs. Touchett's comparison had its force. The girl was pale and grave an effect not

mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into her face as she saw

Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine's shoulder and, after looking at her a

moment, kissed her as if she were returning the kiss she had received from her at Gardencourt. This was the

only allusion the visitor, in her great good taste, made for the present to her young friend's inheritance.

Mrs. Touchett had no purpose of awaiting in London the sale of her house. After selecting from

among its furniture the objects she wished to transport to her other abode, she left the rest of its contents to be

disposed of by the auctioneer and took her departure for the Continent. She was of course accompanied on

this journey by her niece, who now had plenty of leisure to measure and weigh and otherwise handle the

windfall on which Madame Merle had covertly congratulated her. Isabel thought very often of the fact of her

accession of means, looking at it in a dozen different lights; but we shall not now attempt to follow her train

of thought or to explain exactly why her new consciousness was at first oppressive. This failure to rise to

immediate joy was indeed but brief; the girl presently made up her mind that to be rich was a virtue because it

was to be able to do, and that to do could only be sweet. It was the graceful contrary of the stupid side of

weakness especially the feminine variety. To be weak was, for a delicate young person, rather graceful, but,

after all, as Isabel said to herself, there was a larger grace than that. Just now, it is true, there was not much to

do once she had sent off a cheque to Lily, and another to poor Edith; but she was thankful for the quiet

months which her mourning robes and her aunt's fresh widowhood compelled them to spend together. The

acquisition of power made her serious; she scrutinized her power with a kind of tender ferocity, but was not

eager to exercise it. She began to do so during a stay of some weeks which she eventually made with her aunt

in Paris, though in ways that will inevitably present themselves as trivial. They were the ways most naturally

imposed in a city in which the shops are the admiration of the world, and that were prescribed unreservedly

by the guidance of Mrs. Touchett, who took a rigidly practical view of the transformation of her niece from a

poor girl to a rich one. "Now that you're a young woman of fortune you must know how to play the part I

mean to play it well," she said to Isabel once for all; and she added that the girl's first duty was to have

everything handsome. "You don't know how to take care of your things, but you must learn," she went on;

this was Isabel's second duty. Isabel submitted, but for the present her imagination was not kindled; she

Mrs. Touchett rarely changed her plans, and, having intended before her husband's death to spend

a part of the winter in Paris, saw no reason to deprive herself still less to deprive her companion of this

advantage. Though they would live in great retirement she might still present her niece, informally, to the

little circle of her fellow countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Elysees. With many of these

amiable colonists Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared their expatriation, their convictions, their pastimes,

their ennui. Isabel saw them arrive with a good deal of assiduity at her aunt's hotel, and pronounced on them

with a trenchancy doubtless to be accounted for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty. She

made up her mind that their lives were, though luxurious, inane, and incurred some disfavour by expressing

this view on bright Sunday afternoons, when the American absentees were engaged in calling on each other.

Though her listeners passed for people kept exemplarily genial by their cooks and dressmakers, two or three

of them thought her cleverness, which was generally admitted, inferior to that of the new theatrical pieces.

"You all live here this way, but what does it lead to?" she was pleased to ask. "It doesn't seem to lead to

Mrs. Touchett thought the question worthy of Henrietta Stackpole. The two ladies had found

Henrietta in Paris, and Isabel constantly saw her; so that Mrs. Touchett had some reason for saying to herself

that if her niece were not clever enough to originate almost anything, she might be suspected of having

borrowed that style of remark from her journalistic friend. The first occasion on which Isabel had spoken was

that of a visit paid by the two ladies to Mrs. Luce, an old friend of Mrs. Touchett's and the only person in

Paris she now went to see. Mrs. Luce had been living in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe; she used to

say jocosely that she was one of the generation of 1830 a joke of which the point was not always taken.

When it failed Mrs. Luce used to explain "Oh yes, I'm one of the romantics"; her French had never become

quite perfect. She was always at home on Sunday afternoons and surrounded by sympathetic compatriots,

usually the same. In fact she was at home at all times, and reproduced with wondrous truth in her

wellcushioned little corner of the brilliant city, the domestic tone of her native Baltimore. This reduced Mr.

Luce, her worthy husband, a tall, lean, grizzled, wellbrushed gentleman who wore a gold eyeglass and

carried his hat a little too much on the back of his head, to mere platonic praise of the "distractions" of Paris

they were his great word since you would never have guessed from what cares he escaped to them. One of

them was that he went every day to the American banker's, where he found a postoffice that was almost as

sociable and colloquial an institution as in an American country town. He passed an hour (in fine weather) in

a chair in the Champs Elysees, and he dined uncommonly well at his own table, seated above a waxed floor

which it was Mrs. Luce's happiness to believe had a finer polish than any other in the French capital.

Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Cafe Anglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a

source of felicity to his companions and an object of admiration even to the headwaiter of the establishment.

These were his only known pastimes, but they had beguiled his hours for upwards of half a century, and they

doubtless justified his frequent declaration that there was no place like Paris. In no other place, on these

terms, could Mr. Luce flatter himself that he was enjoying life. There was nothing like Paris, but it must be

confessed that Mr. Luce thought less highly of this scene of his dissipations than in earlier days. In the list of

his resources his political reflections should not be omitted, for they were doubtless the animating principle

of many hours that superficially seemed vacant. Like many of his fellow colonists Mr. Luce was a high or

rather a deep conservative, and gave no countenance to the government lately established in France. He had

no faith in its duration and would assure you from year to year that its end was close at hand. "They want to

be kept down, sir, to be kept down; nothing but the strong hand the iron heel will do for them," he would

frequently say of the French people; and his ideal of a fine showy clever rule was that of the superseded

Empire. "Paris is much less attractive than in the days of the Emperor; he knew how to make a city pleasant,"

Mr. Luce had often remarked to Mrs. Touchett, who was quite of his own way of thinking and wished to

know what one had crossed that odious Atlantic for but to get away from republics.

"Why, madam, sitting in the Champs Elysees, opposite to the Palace of Industry, I've seen the

courtcarriages from the Tuileries pass up and down as many as seven times a day. I remember one occasion

when they went as high as nine. What do you see now? It's no use talking, the style's all gone. Napoleon

knew what the French people want, and there'll be a dark cloud over Paris, our Paris, till they get the Empire

Among Mrs. Luce's visitors on Sunday afternoons was a young man with whom Isabel had had a

good deal of conversation and whom she found full of valuable knowledge. Mr. Edward Rosier Ned Rosier

as he was called was native to New York and had been brought up in Paris, living there under the eye of his

father who, as it happened, had been an early and intimate friend of the late Mr. Archer. Edward Rosier

remembered Isabel as a little girl; it had been his father who came to the rescue of the small Archers at the

inn at Neufchatel (he was travelling that way with the boy and had stopped at the hotel by chance), after their

bonne had gone off with the Russian prince and when Mr. Archer's whereabouts remained for some days a

mystery. Isabel remembered perfectly the neat little male child whose hair smelt of a delicious cosmetic and

who had a bonne all his own, warranted to lose sight of him under no provocation. Isabel took a walk with the

pair beside the lake and thought little Edward as pretty as an angel a comparison by no means conventional

in her mind, for she had a very definite conception of a type of features which she supposed to be angelic and

which her new friend perfectly illustrated. A small pink face surmounted by a blue velvet bonnet and set off

by a stiff embroidered collar had become the countenance of her childish dreams; and she had firmly believed

for some time afterwards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in a queer little dialect of

FrenchEnglish, expressing the properest sentiments, as when Edward told her that he was "defended" by his

bonne to go near the edge of the lake, and that one must always obey to one's bonne. Ned Rosier's English

had improved; at least it exhibited in a less degree the French variation. His father was dead and his bonne

dismissed, but the young man still conformed to the spirit of their teaching he never went to the edge of the

lake. There was still something agreeable to the nostrils about him and something not offensive to nobler

organs. He was a very gentle and gracious youth, with what are called cultivated tastes an acquaintance with

old china, with good wine, with the bindings of books, with the Almanach de Gotha, with the best shops, the

best hotels, the hours of railwaytrains. He could order a dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was

probable that as his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to that gentleman, whose rather

grim politics he also advocated in a soft and innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in Paris, decorated

with old Spanish altarlace, the envy of his female friends, who declared that his chimneypiece was better

draped than the high shoulders of many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of every winter at Pau,

He took a great interest in Isabel and remembered perfectly the walk at Neufchatel, when she

would persist in going so near the edge. He seemed to recognize this same tendency in the subversive enquiry

that I quoted a moment ago, and set himself to answer our heroine's question with greater urbanity than it

perhaps deserved. "What does it lead to, Miss Archer? Why Paris leads everywhere. You can't go anywhere

unless you come here first. Every one that comes to Europe has got to pass through. You don't mean it in that

sense so much? You mean what good it does you? Well, how can you penetrate futurity? How can you tell

what lies ahead? If it's a pleasant road I don't care where it leads. I like the road, Miss Archer; I like the dear

old asphalte. You can't get tired of it you can't if you try. You think you would, but you wouldn't; there's

always something new and fresh. Take the Hotel Drouot, now; they sometimes have three and four sales a

week. Where can you get such things as you can here? In spite of all they say I maintain they're cheaper too,

if you know the right places. I know plenty of places, but I keep them to myself. I'll tell you, if you like, as a

particular favour; only you mustn't tell any one else. Don't you go anywhere without asking me first; I want

you to promise me that. As a general thing avoid the Boulevards; there's very little to be done on the

Boulevards. Speaking conscientiously sans blague I don't believe any one knows Paris better than I. You

and Mrs. Touchett must come and breakfast with me some day, and I'll show you my things; je ne vous dis

que ca! There has been a great deal of talk about London of late; it's the fashion to cry up London. But there's

nothing in it you can't do anything in London. No Louis Quinze nothing of the First Empire; nothing but

their eternal Queen Anne. It's good for one's bedroom, Queen Anne for one's washingroom; but it isn't

proper for a salon. Do I spend my life at the auctioneer's?" Mr. Rosier pursued in answer to another question

of Isabel's. "Oh no; I haven't the means. I wish I had. You think I'm a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression

of your face you've got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don't mind my saying that; I mean it as a

kind of warning. You think I ought to do something, and so do I, so long as you leave it vague. But when you

come to the point you see you have to stop. I can't go home and be a shopkeeper. You think I'm very well

fitted? Ah, Miss Archer, you overrate me. I can buy very well, but I can't sell; you should see when I

sometimes try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability to make other people buy than to buy

yourself. When I think how clever they must be, the people who make me buy! Ah no; I couldn't be a

shopkeeper. I can't be a doctor; it's a repulsive business. I can't be a clergyman; I haven't got convictions. And

then I can't pronounce the names right in the Bible. They're very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. I

can't be a lawyer; I don't understand how do you call it? the American procedure. Is there anything else?

There's nothing for a gentleman in America. I should like to be a diplomatist; but American diplomacy that's

Henrietta Stackpole, who was often with her friend when Mr. Rosier, coming to pay his

compliments late in the afternoon, expressed himself after the fashion I have sketched, usually interrupted the

young man at this point and read him a lecture on the duties of the American citizen. She thought him most

unnatural; he was worse than poor Ralph Touchett. Henrietta, however, was at this time more than ever

addicted to fine criticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards Isabel. She had not

congratulated this young lady on her augmentations and begged to be excused from doing so.

"If Mr. Touchett had consulted me about leaving you the money," she frankly asserted, "I'd have

"I see," Isabel had answered, "You think it will prove a curse in disguise. Perhaps it will."

"To yourself for instance?" Isabel suggested jocosely. And then, "Do you really believe it will ruin

"I hope it won't ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your dangerous tendencies."

"No, no," said Henrietta; "I mean your exposure on the moral side. I approve of luxury; I think we

ought to be as elegant as possible. Look at the luxury of our western cities; I've seen nothing over here to

compare with it. I hope you'll never become grossly sensual; but I'm not afraid of that. The peril for you is

that you live too much in the world of your own dreams. You're not enough in contact with reality with the

toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world that surrounds you. You're too fastidious; you've

too many graceful illusions. Your newlyacquired thousands will shut you up more and more to the society

of a few selfish and heartless people who will be interested in keeping them up."

Isabel's eyes expanded as she gazed at this lurid scene. "What are my illusions?" she asked. "I try

"Well," said Henrietta, "you think you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing

yourself and pleasing others. You'll find you're mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in

it to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you:

it becomes grim reality! And you can't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That,

I admit, you're very ready to do; but there's another thing that's still more important you must often displease

others. You must always be ready for that you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you at all you're

too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking

romantic views that's your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be prepared on many occasions

Isabel shook her head sadly; she looked troubled and frightened. "This, for you, Henrietta," she

It was certainly true that Miss Stackpole, during her visit to Paris, which had been professionally

more remunerative than her English sojourn, had not been living in the world of dreams. Mr. Bantling, who

had now returned to England, was her companion for the first four weeks of her stay; and about Mr. Bantling

there was nothing dreamy. Isabel learned from her friend that the two had led a life of great personal intimacy

and that this had been a peculiar advantage to Henrietta, owing to the gentleman's remarkable knowledge of

Paris. He had explained everything, shown her everything, been her constant guide and interpreter. They had

breakfasted together, dined together, gone to the theatre together, supped together, really in a manner quite

lived together. He was a true friend, Henrietta more than once assured our heroine; and she had never

supposed that she could like any Englishman so well. Isabel could not have told you why, but she found

something that ministered to mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the Interviewer had struck with Lady

Pensil's brother; her amusement moreover subsisted in face of the fact that she thought it a credit to each of

them. Isabel couldn't rid herself of a suspicion that they were playing somehow at crosspurposes that the

simplicity of each had been entrapped. But this simplicity was on either side none the less honourable. It was

as graceful on Henrietta's part to believe that Mr. Bantling took an interest in the diffusion of lively

journalism and in consolidating the position of ladycorrespondents as it was on the part of his companion to

suppose that the cause of the Interviewer a periodical of which he never formed a very definite conception

was, if subtly analyzed (a task to which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss

Stackpole's need of demonstrative affection. Each of these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of

which the other was impatiently conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of rather a slow and a discursive habit,

relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who charmed him by the influence of a shining, challenging eye

and a kind of bandbox freshness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a mind to which the usual fare

of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, on the other hand, enjoyed the society of a gentleman who appeared

somehow, in his way, made, by expensive, roundabout, almost "quaint" processes, for her use, and whose

leisured state, though generally indefensible, was a decided boon to a breathless mate, and who was furnished

with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical question

that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling's answers very convenient, and in the press of catching the

American post would largely and showily address them to publicity. It was to be feared that she was indeed

drifting toward those abysses of sophistication as to which Isabel, wishing for a goodhumoured retort, had

warned her. There might be danger in store for Isabel; but it was scarcely to be hoped that Miss Stackpole, on

her side, would find permanent rest in any adoption of the views of a class pledged to all the old abuses.

Isabel continued to warn her goodhumouredly; Lady Pensil's obliging brother was sometimes, on our

heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and facetious allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Henrietta's

amiability on this point; she used to abound in the sense of Isabel's irony and to enumerate with elation the

hours she had spent with this perfect man of the world a term that had ceased to make with her, as

previously, for opprobrium. Then, a few moments later, she would forget that they had been talking jocosely

and would mention with impulsive earnestness some expedition she had enjoyed in his company. She would

say: "Oh, I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Bantling. I was bound to see it thoroughly I

warned him when we went out there that I was thorough: so we spent three days at the hotel and wandered all

over the place. It was lovely weather a kind of Indian summer, only not so good. We just lived in that park.

Oh yes; you can't tell me anything about Versailles." Henrietta appeared to have made arrangements to meet

Mrs. Touchett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for her departure and by the middle of

February had begun to travel southward. She interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San

Remo, on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been spending a dull, bright winter beneath a

slowmoving white umbrella. Isabel went with her aunt as a matter of course, though Mrs. Touchett, with

"Now, of course, you're completely your own mistress and are as free as the bird on the bough. I

don't mean you were not so before, but you're at present on a different footing property erects a kind of

barrier. You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticized if you were poor.

You can go and come, you can travel alone, you can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll

take a companion some decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints on velvet.

You don't think you'd like that? Of course you can do as you please; I only want you to understand how much

you're at liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your dame de compagnie; she'd keep people off very

well. I think, however, that it's a great deal better you should remain with me, in spite of there being no

obligation. It's better for several reasons, quite apart from your liking it. I shouldn't think you'd like it, but I

recommend you to make the sacrifice. Of course whatever novelty there may have been at first in my society

has quite passed away, and you see me as I am a dull, obstinate, narrowminded old woman."

"But you do think I'm obstinate and narrowminded? I told you so!" said Mrs. Touchett with much

Isabel remained for the present with her aunt, because, in spite of eccentric impulses, she had a

great regard for what was usually deemed decent, and a young gentlewoman without visible relations had

always struck her as a flower without foliage. It was true that Mrs. Touchett's conversation had never again

appeared so brilliant as that first afternoon in Albany, when she sat in her damp waterproof and sketched the

opportunities that Europe would offer to a young person of taste. This, however, was in a great measure the

girl's own fault; she had got a glimpse of her aunt's experience, and her imagination constantly anticipated the

judgements and emotions of a woman who had very little of the same faculty. Apart from this, Mrs. Touchett

had a great merit; she was as honest as a pair of compasses. There was a comfort in her stiffness and

firmness; you knew exactly where to find her and were never liable to chance encounters and concussions.

On her own ground she was perfectly present, but was never overinquisitive as regards the territory of her

neighbour. Isabel came at last to have a kind of undemonstrable pity for her; there seemed something so

dreary in the condition of a person whose nature had, as it were, so little surface offered so limited a face to

the accretions of human contact. Nothing tender, nothing sympathetic, had ever had a chance to fasten upon

it no windsown blossom, no familiar softening moss. Her offered, her passive extent, in other words, was

about that of a knifeedge. Isabel had reason to believe none the less that as she advanced in life she made

more of those concessions to the sense of something obscurely distinct from convenience more of them than

she independently exacted. She was learning to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that inferior order

for which the excuse must be found in the particular case. It was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude that

she should have gone the longest way round to Florence in order to spend a few weeks with her invalid son;

since in former years it had been one of her most definite convictions that when Ralph wished to see her he

was at liberty to remember that Palazzo Crescentini contained a large apartment known as the quarter of the

"I want to ask you something," Isabel said to this young man the day after her arrival at San

Remo "something I've thought more than once of asking you by letter, but that I've hesitated on the whole to

write about. Face to face, nevertheless, my question seems easy enough. Did you know your father intended

Ralph stretched his legs a little further than usual and gazed a little more fixedly at the

Mediterranean. "What does it matter, my dear Isabel, whether I knew? My father was very obstinate."

"If I believed that I should be very unhappy. Fortunately I don't believe it. I want to be treated with

"Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of

"I'm not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very moment when I'm asking such odious

For a moment she answered nothing; then she broke out: "Do you think it good for me suddenly to

"I differ with Miss Stackpole," Ralph went on more gravely. "I think it very good for you to have

Isabel looked at him with serious eyes. "I wonder whether you know what's good for me or

"If I know depend upon it I care. Shall I tell you what it is? Not to torment yourself."

"You can't do that; I'm proof. Take things more easily. Don't ask yourself so much whether this or

that is good for you. Don't question your conscience so much it will get out of tune like a strummed piano.

Keep it for great occasions. Don't try so much to form your character it's like trying to pull open a tight,

tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for

you; the exceptions are very rare, and a comfortable income's not one of them." Ralph paused, smiling; Isabel

had listened quickly. "You've too much power of thought above all too much conscience," Ralph added.

"It's out of all reason, the number of things you think wrong. Put back your watch. Diet your fever. Spread

She had listened eagerly, as I say; and it was her nature to understand quickly. "I wonder if you

"You frighten me a little, but I think I'm right," said Ralph, persisting in cheer.

"All the same what you say is very true," Isabel pursued. "You could say nothing more true. I'm

absorbed in myself I look at life too much as a doctor's prescription. Why indeed should we perpetually be

thinking whether things are good for us, as if we were patients lying in a hospital? Why should I be so afraid

of not doing right? As if it mattered to the world whether I do right or wrong!"

"You're a capital person to advise," said Ralph; "you take the wind out of my sails!"

She looked at him as if she had not heard him though she was following out the train of reflexion

which he himself had kindled. "I try to care more about the world than about myself but I always come back

to myself. It's because I'm afraid." She stopped; her voice had trembled a little. "Yes, I'm afraid; I can't tell

you. A large fortune means freedom, and I'm afraid of that. It's such a fine thing, and one should make such a

good use of it. If one shouldn't one would be ashamed. And one must keep thinking; it's a constant effort. I'm

"For weak people I've no doubt it's a greater happiness. For weak people the effort not to be

"Ah," Ralph answered with a flush that the girl noticed, "if you are I'm awfully sold!"

The charm of the Mediterranean coast only deepened for our heroine on acquaintance, for it was

the threshold of Italy, the gate of admirations. Italy, as yet imperfectly seen and felt, stretched before her as a

land of promise, a land in which a love of the beautiful might be comforted by endless knowledge. Whenever

she strolled upon the shore with her cousin and she was the companion of his daily walk she looked across

the sea, with longing eyes, to where she knew that Genoa lay. She was glad to pause, however, on the edge of

this larger adventure; there was such a thrill even in the preliminary hovering. It affected her moreover as a

peaceful interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a career which she had little warrant as yet for regarding

as agitated, but which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by the light of her hopes, her fears,

her fancies, her ambitions, her predilections, and which reflected these subjective accidents in a manner

sufficiently dramatic. Madame Merle had predicted to Mrs. Touchett that after their young friend had put her

hand into her pocket half a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a

munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so often justified before, that lady's perspicacity. Ralph

Touchett had praised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is for being quick to take a hint that was

meant as good advice. His advice had perhaps helped the matter; she had at any rate before leaving San Remo

grown used to feeling rich. The consciousness in question found a proper place in rather a dense little group

of ideas that she had about herself, and often it was by no means the least agreeable. It took perpetually for

granted a thousand good intentions. She lost herself in a maze of visions; the fine things to be done by a rich,

independent, generous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations were sublime in the

mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a part of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her

even, to her own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in the imagination of others is

another affair, and on this point we must also touch in time. The visions I have just spoken of were mixed

with other debates. Isabel liked better to think of the future than of the past; but at times, as she listened to the

murmur of the Mediterranean waves, her glance took a backward flight. It rested upon two figures which, in

spite of increasing distance, were still sufficiently salient; they were recognizable without difficulty as those

of Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton. It was strange how quickly these images of energy had fallen into

the background of our young lady's life. It was in her disposition at all times to lose faith in the reality of

absent things; she could summon back her faith, in case of need, with an effort, but the effort was often

painful even when the reality had been pleasant. The past was apt to look dead and its revival rather to show

the livid light of a judgementday. The girl moreover was not prone to take for granted that she herself lived

in the mind of others she had not the fatuity to believe she left indelible traces. She was capable of being

wounded by the discovery that she had been forgotten; but of all liberties the one she herself found sweetest

was the liberty to forget. She had not given her last shilling, sentimentally speaking, either to Caspar

Goodwood or to Lord Warburton, and yet couldn't but feel them appreciably in debt to her. She had of course

reminded herself that she was to hear from Mr. Goodwood again; but this was not to be for another year and a

half, and in that time a great many things might happen. She had indeed failed to say to herself that her

American suitor might find some other girl more comfortable to woo; because, though it was certain many

other girls would prove so, she had not the smallest belief that this merit would attract him. But she reflected

that she herself might know the humiliation of change, might really, for that matter, come to the end of the

things that were not Caspar (even though there appeared so many of them), and find rest in those very

elements of his presence which struck her now as impediments to the finer respiration. It was conceivable

that these impediments should some day prove a sort of blessing in disguise a clear and quiet harbour

enclosed by a brave granite breakwater. But that day could only come in its order, and she couldn't wait for it

with folded hands. That Lord Warburton should continue to cherish her image seemed to her more than a

noble humility or an enlightened pride ought to wish to reckon with. She had so definitely undertaken to

preserve no record of what had passed between them that a corresponding effort on his own part would be

eminently just. This was not, as it may seem, merely a theory tinged with sarcasm. Isabel candidly believed

that his lordship would, in the usual phrase, get over his disappointment. He had been deeply affected this

she believed, and she was still capable of deriving pleasure from the belief; but it was absurd that a man both

so intelligent and so honourably dealt with should cultivate a scar out of proportion to any wound.

Englishmen liked moreover to be comfortable, said Isabel, and there could be little comfort for Lord

Warburton, in the long run, in brooding over a selfsufficient American girl who had been but a casual

acquaintance. She flattered herself that, should she hear from one day to another that he had married some

young woman of his own country who had done more to deserve him, she should receive the news without a

pang even of surprise. It would have proved that he believed she was firm which was what she wished to

On one of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr. Touchett's death, a small group that

might have been described by a painter as composing well was gathered in one of the many rooms of an

ancient villa crowning an olivemuffled hill outside of the Roman gate of Florence. The villa was a long,

rather blanklooking structure, with the farprojecting roof which Tuscany loves and which, on the hills that

encircle Florence, when considered from a distance, make so harmonious a rectangle with the straight, dark,

definite cypresses that usually rise in groups of three or four beside it. The house had a front upon a little

grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the hilltop; and this front, pierced with a few windows

in irregular relations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to the base of the structure and

useful as a loungingplace to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which

in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly

passive attitude this antique, solid, weatherworn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative

character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality

looked another way looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. In that

quarter the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had

a narrow garden, in the manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses and other old stone

benches, mossy and sunwarmed. The parapet of the terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it

the ground declined into the vagueness of olivecrops and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of

the place that we are concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tenants had reason to prefer the

shady side of the wall. The windows of the groundfloor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their

noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication with the

world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively crossbarred, and placed at such a height that

curiosity, even on tiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a row of three of these

jealous apertures one of the several distinct apartments into which the villa was divided and which were

mainly occupied by foreigners of random race long resident in Florence a gentleman was seated in company

with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was, however, less sombre than our

indications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the tangled garden

behind; and the tall iron lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. It was

moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly

proclaimed, and containing a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, those chests and

cabinets of carved and timepolished oak, those angular specimens of pictorial art in frames as pedantically

primitive, those perverse looking relics of mediaeval brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not

quite exhausted storehouse. These things kept terms with articles of modern furniture in which large

allowance had been made for a lounging generation; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep and

well padded and that much space was occupied by a writingtable of which the ingenious perfection bore the

stamp of London and the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion and magazines and newspapers,

and a few small, odd, elaborate pictures, chiefly in watercolour. One of these productions stood on a

drawingroom easel before which, at the moment we begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have

Silence absolute silence had not fallen upon her companions; but their talk had an appearance of

embarrassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled themselves in their respective chairs; their

attitude expressed a final reserve and their faces showed the glaze of prudence. They were plain, ample,

mildfeatured women, with a kind of businesslike modesty to which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened

linen and of the serge that draped them as if nailed on frames gave an advantage. One of them, a person of a

certain age, in spectacles, with a fresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating manner than

her colleague, as well as the responsibility of their errand, which apparently related to the young girl. This

object of interest wore her hat an ornament of extreme simplicity and not at variance with her plain muslin

gown, too short for her years, though it must already have been "let out." The gentleman who might have

been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function, it

being in its way as arduous to converse with the very meek as with the very mighty. At the same time he was

clearly much occupied with their quiet charge, and while she turned her back to him his eyes rested gravely

on her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty, with a high but wellshaped head, on which the hair, still

dense, but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine, narrow, extremely modelled and

composed face, of which the only fault was just this effect of its running a trifle too much to points; an

appearance to which the shape of the beard contributed not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the

portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of which the ends had a romantic

upward flourish, gave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman who

studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard,

expressive of the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that he studied it only within

wellchosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to

determine his original clime and country; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer

to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his veins it had probably received some

French or Italian commixture; but he suggested, fine gold coin as he was, no stamp nor emblem of the

common mintage that provides for general circulation; he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a

special occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languidlooking figure, and was apparently neither tall nor

short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar things.

"Well, my dear, what do you think of it?" he asked the young girl. He used the Italian tongue, and

used it with perfect ease; but this would not have convinced you he was Italian.

The child turned her head earnestly to one side and the other. "It's very pretty, papa. Did you make

"Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures." And she turned round and showed a

"She draws very very carefully," the elder of the nuns remarked, speaking in French.

"Happily no," said the good sister, blushing a little. "Ce n'est pas ma partie. I teach nothing; I leave

that to those who are wiser. We've an excellent drawingmaster, Mr. Mr. what is his name?" she asked of

Her companion looked about at the carpet. "It's a German name," she said in Italian, as if it needed

The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had wandered away to the open door of the

large room and stood looking into the garden. "And you, my sister, are French," said the gentleman.

"Yes, sir," the visitor gently replied. "I speak to the pupils in my own tongue. I know no other. But

we have sisters of other countries English, German, Irish. They all speak their proper language."

The gentleman gave a smile. "Has my daughter been under the care of one of the Irish ladies?"

And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected a joke, though failing to understand it, "You're very complete,"

"We have gymnastics," the Italian sister ventured to remark. "But not dangerous."

"I hope not. Is that your branch?" A question which provoked much candid hilarity on the part of

the two ladies; on the subsidence of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked that she had

"Yes, but I think she has finished. She'll remain not big," said the French sister.

"I'm not sorry. I prefer women like books very good and not too long. But I know," the gentleman

The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might be beyond our knowledge.

"Yes, she looks sound." And the young girl's father watched her a moment. "What do you see in

"I see many flowers," she replied in a sweet, small voice and with an accent as good as his own.

"Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out and gather some for ces dames."

The child, satisfied with this authorization, descended from the threshold and was presently lost to

"For everything they must ask leave. That's our system. Leave is freely granted, but they must ask

"Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I've no doubt it's excellent. I sent you my daughter to see

"One must have faith," the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her spectacles.

Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement had in each case a

He watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking she would say that a good Christian was

everything; but for all her simplicity she was not so crude as that. "A charming young lady a real little

"We love her too much," said the spectacled sister with dignity. "And as for faults, how can we

give what we have not? Le couvent n'est pas comme le monde, monsieur. She's our daughter, as you may say.

"Of all those we shall lose this year she's the one we shall miss most," the younger woman

"Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her," said the other. "We shall hold her up to the new ones." And at

this the good sister appeared to find her spectacles dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment,

"It's not certain you'll lose her; nothing's settled yet," their host rejoined quickly; not as if to

anticipate their tears, but in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable to himself.

"Oh," exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet used, "it is not I who wish to

"Ah, monsieur," said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, "good as she is, she's made for the

"If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would the world get on?" her

This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently supposed; and the lady in

spectacles took a harmonizing view by saying comfortably: "Fortunately there are good people everywhere."

For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and they simply looked at each other

in decent deprecation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl with two large

"I give you your choice, Mamman Catherine," said the child. "It's only the colour that's different,

The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with "Which will you take?" and "No,

"I'll take the red, thank you," said mother Catherine in the spectacles. I'm so red myself. They'll

"Ah, they won't last," cried the young girl. "I wish I could give you something that would last!"

"I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads," the child went on.

"Not today, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu vous garde, ma fille."

Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went forward to open the door through

which they were to pass; but as he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond. The door

opened into a vaulted antechamber, as high as a chapel and paved with red tiles; and into this antechamber

a lady had just been admitted by a servant, a lad in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the

apartment in which our friends were grouped. The gentleman at the door, after dropping his exclamation,

remained silent; in silence too the lady advanced. He gave her no further audible greeting and offered her no

hand, but stood aside to let her pass into the saloon. At the threshold she hesitated. "Is there any one?" she

She went in and found herself confronted with the two nuns and their pupil, who was coming

forward, between them, with a hand in the arm of each. At the sight of the new visitor they all paused, and the

lady, who had also stopped, stood looking at them. The young girl gave a little soft cry:

The visitor had been slightly startled, but her manner the next instant was none the less gracious.

"Yes, it's Madame Merle, come to welcome you home." And she held out two hands to the girl, who

immediately came up to her, presenting her forehead to be kissed. Madame Merle saluted this portion of her

charming little person and then stood smiling at the two nuns. They acknowledged her smile with a decent

obeisance, but permitted themselves no direct scrutiny of this imposing, brilliant woman, who seemed to

"These ladies have brought my daughter home, and now they return to the convent," the gentleman

"Ah, you go back to Rome? I've lately come from there. It's very lovely now," said Madame Merle.

The good sisters, standing with their hands folded into their sleeves, accepted this statement

uncritically; and the master of the house asked his new visitor how long it was since she had left Rome. "She

came to see me at the convent," said the young girl before the lady addressed had time to reply.

"I've been more than once, Pansy," Madame Merle declared. "Am I not your great friend in

"I remember the last time best," said Pansy, "because you told me I should come away."

"I hardly remember. I told her what I thought would please her. I've been in Florence a week. I

"I should have done so if I had known you were there. One doesn't know such things by

These two speeches were made in a particular tone of voice a tone halflowered and carefully

quiet, but as from habit rather than from any definite need. Madame Merle looked about her, choosing her

seat. "You're going to the door with these women? Let me of course not interrupt the ceremony. Je vous

"This lady's a great friend of ours; you will have seen her at the convent," said their entertainer.

"We've much faith in her judgement, and she'll help me to decide whether my daughter shall return to you at

"I hope you'll decide in our favour, madame," the sister in spectacles ventured to remark.

"That's Mr. Osmond's pleasantry; I decide nothing," said Madame Merle, but also as in pleasantry.

"I believe you've a very good school, but Miss Osmond's friends must remember that she's very naturally

"That's what I've told monsieur," sister Catherine answered. "It's precisely to fit her for the world,"

she murmured, glancing at Pansy, who stood, at a little distance, attentive to Madame Merle's elegant apparel.

"Do you hear that, Pansy? You're very naturally meant for the world," said Pansy's father.

The child fixed him an instant with her pure young eyes. "Am I not meant for you, papa?"

Papa gave a quick, light laugh. "That doesn't prevent it! I'm of the world, Pansy."

"Kindly permit us to retire," said sister Catherine. "Be good and wise and happy in any case, my

"I shall certainly come back and see you," Pansy returned, recommencing her embraces, which

"Stay with me, dear child," she said, "while your father takes the good ladies to the door."

Pansy stared, disappointed, yet not protesting. She was evidently impregnated with the idea of

submission, which was due to any one who took the tone of authority; and she was a passive spectator of the

operation of her fate. "May I not see Mamman Catherine get into the carriage?" she nevertheless asked very

"It would please me better if you'd remain with me," said Madame Merle, while Mr. Osmond and

his companions, who had bowed low again to the other visitor, passed into the antechamber.

"Oh yes, I'll stay," Pansy answered; and she stood near Madame Merle, surrendering her little

hand, which this lady took. She stared out of the window; her eyes had filled with tears.

"I'm glad they've taught you to obey," said Madame Merle. "That's what good little girls should

"Oh yes, I obey very well," cried Pansy with soft eagerness, almost with boastfulness, as if she had

been speaking of her pianoplaying. And then she gave a faint, just audible sigh.

Madame Merle, holding her hand, drew it across her own fine palm and looked at it. The gaze was

critical, but it found nothing to deprecate; the child's small hand was delicate and fair. "I hope they always see

that you wear gloves," she said in a moment. "Little girls usually dislike them."

"I thank you very much. What colours will they be?" Pansy demanded with interest.

"Well, they won't be too pretty," Madame Merle returned with a laugh. She took the child's other

hand and drew her nearer; after which, looking at her a moment, "Shall you miss mother Catherine?" she

"Try then not to think of her. Perhaps some day," added Madame Merle, "you'll have another

"I don't think that's necessary," Pansy said, repeating her little soft conciliatory sigh. "I had more

Her father's step sounded again in the antechamber, and Madame Merle got up, releasing the

child. Mr. Osmond came in and closed the door; then, without looking at Madame Merle, he pushed one or

two chairs back into their places. His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him as he moved

about. Then at last she said: "I hoped you'd have come to Rome. I thought it possible you'd have wished

"That was a natural supposition; but I'm afraid it's not the first time I've acted in defiance of your

Mr. Osmond busied himself for a moment in the room there was plenty of space in it to move

about in the fashion of a man mechanically seeking pretexts for not giving an attention which may be

embarrassing. Presently, however, he had exhausted his pretexts; there was nothing left for him unless he

took up a book but to stand with his hands behind him looking at Pansy. "Why didn't you come and see the

Pansy hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Merle. "I asked her to stay with me," said this

"Ah, that was better," Osmond conceded. With which he dropped into a chair and sat looking at

Madame Merle; bent forward a little, his elbows on the edge of the arms and his hands interlocked.

"You're very kind to her," said Osmond. "She's supposed to have everything she needs."

"If you like I won't listen," Pansy suggested with an appearance of candour which imposed

"You may listen, charming child, because you won't understand," her father replied. The child sat

down, deferentially, near the open door, within sight of the garden, into which she directed her innocent,

wistful eyes; and Mr. Osmond went on irrelevantly, addressing himself to his other companion. "You're

"You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me on your return from England that you

"I'm pleased that you remember so well what I say. That was my intention. But I've come to

Florence to meet some friends who have lately arrived and as to whose movements I was at that time

Madame Merle smiled straight at her host. "It's less characteristic than your comment upon it

which is perfectly insincere. I don't, however, make a crime of that," she added, "because if you don't believe

what you say there's no reason why you should. I don't ruin myself for my friends; I don't deserve your

"Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves so much of every one else and of everything.

"What do you call one's life?" asked Madame Merle. "One's appearance, one's movements, one's

Madame Merle looked a moment at Pansy. "I wonder if she understands that," she murmured.

"You see she can't stay with us!" And Pansy's father gave rather a joyless smile. "Go into the

garden, mignonne, and pluck a flower or two for Madame Merle," he went on in French.

"That's just what I wanted to do," Pansy exclaimed, rising with promptness and noiselessly

departing. Her father followed her to the open door, stood a moment watching her, and then came back, but

remained standing, or rather strolling to and from as if to cultivate a sense of freedom which in another

"My ambitions are principally for you," said Madame Merle, looking up at him with a certain

"That comes back to what I say. I'm part of your life I and a thousand others. You're not selfish I

can't admit that. If you were selfish, what should I be? What epithet would properly describe me?"

"No; I don't think I care much. What sort of a fault do you call that? My indolence, at any rate, was

"It's not of importance to me at least that you didn't go; though I should have been glad to see

you. I'm glad you're not in Rome now which you might be, would probably be, if you had gone there a

"I do remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that way you'll have both the virtue and the reward.

This is not a great labour, and it may prove a real interest. How long is it since you made a new

"It's time then you should make another. There's a friend of mine I want you to know."

Mr. Osmond, in his walk, had gone back to the open door again and was looking at his daughter as

she moved about in the intense sunshine. "What good will it do me?" he asked with a sort of genial crudity.

Madame Merle waited. "It will amuse you." There was nothing crude in this rejoinder; it had been

"If you say that, you know, I believe it," said Osmond, coming toward her. "There are some points

in which my confidence in you is complete. I'm perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society

"Pardon me. That isn't the knowledge I impute to you a common sort of wisdom. You've gained

it in the right way experimentally; you've compared an immense number of more or less impossible people

"It's what I hope. It will depend on yourself. If I could only induce you to make an effort!"

"Ah, there you are! I knew something tiresome was coming. What in the world that's likely to

Madame Merle flushed as with a wounded intention. "Don't be foolish, Osmond. No one knows

"The person I came to Florence to see. She's a niece of Mrs. Touchett, whom you'll not have

"A niece? The word niece suggests youth and ignorance. I see what you're coming to."

"Yes, she's young twentythree years old. She's a great friend of mine. I met her for the first time

in England, several months ago, and we struck up a grand alliance. I like her immensely, and I do what I don't

"Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedentedly virtuous? It's

only on those conditions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to

speak to me of a creature who shouldn't correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy people; I don't

"Miss Archer isn't dingy; she's as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description; it's

"No; quite literally. She's beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an American, wellborn.

Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind with his eyes on his

"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can

Madame Merle got up. "If that's a beginning of interest in her I take note of it."

The two stood there face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so. "You're

looking very well," Osmond repeated still less relevantly than before. "You have some idea. You're never so

In the manner and tone of these two persons, on first meeting at any juncture, and especially when

they met in the presence of others, was something indirect and circumspect, as if they had approached each

other obliquely and addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an

appreciable degree the selfconsciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off any

embarrassment better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the form she would

have liked to have the perfect selfpossession she would have wished to wear for her host. The point to be

made is, however, that at a certain moment the element between them, whatever it was, always levelled itself

and left them more closely face to face than either ever was with any one else. This was what had happened

now. They stood there knowing each other well and each on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of

knowing as a compensation for the inconvenience whatever it might be of being known. "I wish very

much you were not so heartless," Madame Merle quietly said. "It has always been against you, and it will be

"I'm not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me as for instance your

saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be.

"You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you'll never

"You, after all, are the most remarkable of women," said Osmond. "You have more in you than

almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs. Touchett's niece should matter very much to me, when

"That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and appreciated such a woman as

"Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs. Touchett's Palazzo Crescentini and

"Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the girl?" said Osmond. "You

Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question he could ever put

would find unprepared. "Do you wish to know why? Because I've spoken of you to her."

Osmond frowned and turned away. "I'd rather not know that." Then in a moment he pointed out the

easel supporting the little watercolour drawing. "Have you seen what's there my last?"

Madame Merle drew near and considered. "Is it the Venetian Alps one of your last year's

She looked a moment longer, then turned away. "You know I don't care for your drawings."

"I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much better than most people's."

"That may very well be. But as the only thing you do well, it's so little. I should have liked you to

"Things that were impossible," said Madame Merle. And then in quite a different tone: "In itself

your little picture's very good." She looked about the room at the old cabinets, pictures, tapestries, surfaces

of faded silk. "Your rooms at least are perfect. I'm struck with that afresh whenever I come back; I know none

better anywhere. You understand this sort of thing as nobody anywhere does. You've such adorable taste."

"You must nevertheless let Miss Archer come and see it. I've told her about it."

"You do it delightfully. As cicerone of your museum you appear to particular advantage."

Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply looked at once colder and more attentive. "Did

"Satisfactory woman! I mean you. And if I go to see her shall I see the mother?"

"I don't object to her," said Osmond; "I rather like Mrs. Touchett. She has a sort of oldfashioned

character that's passing away a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes the son is he about the place?"

"I think you're mistaken. He's a very clever man. But he's not fond of being about when I'm there,

"What could be more asinine than that? Did you say she has looks?" Osmond went on.

"Yes; but I won't say it again, lest you should be disappointed in them. Come and make a

"Really," said Osmond after some meditation, "I don't understand your ambitions."

"I think you'll understand this one after you've seen Miss Archer. Suspend your judgement."

Madame Merle, as she spoke, had drawn near the open door of the garden, where she stood a moment

"I don't know," said Osmond. "I like what they've made of her. It's very charming."

"Why doesn't she come back with my flowers then?" Madame Merle asked. "She's not in a hurry."

"She doesn't like me," the visitor murmured as she raised her parasol and they passed into the

Madame Merle, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett's arrival at the invitation of this lady

Mrs. Touchett offering her for a month the hospitality of Palazzo Crescentini the judicious Madame Merle

spoke to Isabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond and expressed the hope she might know him; making, however,

no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond's

attention. The reason of this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to Madame Merle's

proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of friends, both among the natives of the country

and its heterogeneous visitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl would find it well to

"meet" of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever in the wide world she would and had placed Mr.

Osmond near the top of the list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these dozen years; he

was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men well, in Europe simply. He was altogether above the

respectable average; quite another affair. He wasn't a professional charmer far from it, and the effect he

produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and his spirits. When not in the right mood he could

fall as low as any one, saved only by his looking at such hours rather like a demoralized prince in exile. But if

he cared or was interested or rightly challenged just exactly rightly it had to be then one felt his cleverness

and his distinction. Those qualities didn't depend, in him, as in so many people, on his not committing or

exposing himself. He had his perversities which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all the men

really worth knowing and didn't cause his light to shine equally for all persons. Madame Merle, however,

thought she could undertake that for Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored, too easily, and dull

people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like Isabel would give him a stimulus which was

too absent from his life. At any rate he was a person not to miss. One shouldn't attempt to live in Italy without

making a friend of Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about the country than any one except two or three

German professors. And if they had more knowledge than he it was he who had most perception and taste

being artistic through and through. Isabel remembered that her friend had spoken of him during their plunge,

at Gardencourt, into the deeps of talk, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie binding these

superior spirits. She felt that Madame Merle's ties always somehow had histories, and such an impression was

part of the interest created by this inordinate woman. As regards her relations with Mr. Osmond, however,

she hinted at nothing but a longestablished calm friendship. Isabel said she should be happy to know a

person who had enjoyed so high a confidence for so many years. "You ought to see a great many men,"

Madame Merle remarked; "you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them."

"Used to them?" Isabel repeated with that solemn stare which sometimes seemed to proclaim her

deficient in the sense of comedy. "Why, I'm not afraid of them I'm as used to them as the cook to the

"Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes to with most of them. You'll

This was a note of cynicism that Madame Merle didn't often allow herself to sound; but Isabel was

not alarmed, for she had never supposed that as one saw more of the world the sentiment of respect became

the most active of one's emotions. It was excited, none the less, by the beautiful city of Florence, which

pleased her not less than Madame Merle had promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able to

gauge its charms she had clever companions as priests to the mystery. She was in no want indeed of aesthetic

illumination, for Ralph found it a joy that renewed his own early passion to act as cicerone to his eager young

kinswoman. Madame Merle remained at home; she had seen the treasures of Florence again and again and

had always something else to do. But she talked of all things with remarkable vividness of memory she

recalled the righthand corner of the large Perugino and the position of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the

picture next to it. She had her opinions as to the character of many famous works of art, differing often from

Ralph with great sharpness and defending her interpretations with as much ingenuity as goodhumour. Isabel

listened to the discussions taking place between the two with a sense that she might derive much benefit from

them and that they were among the advantages she couldn't have enjoyed for instance in Albany. In the clear

May mornings before the formal breakfast this repast at Mrs. Touchett's was served at twelve o'clock she

wandered with her cousin through the narrow and sombre Florentine streets, resting a while in the thicker

dusk of some historic church or the vaulted chambers of some dispeopled convent. She went to the galleries

and palaces; she looked at the pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her, and exchanged

for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation a presentiment which proved usually to have been a

blank. She performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to Italy, youth and

enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius and knew the

sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. But the return, every

day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; the return into the wide, monumental court of the great house

in which Mrs. Touchett, many years before, had established herself, and into the high, cool rooms where the

carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the sixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the

age of advertisement. Mrs. Touchett inhabited an historic building in a narrow street whose very name

recalled the strife of mediaeval factions; and found compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the

modicity of her rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked as archaic as the rugged

architecture of the palace and which cleared and scented the rooms in regular use. To live in such a place

was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her

Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the young lady lurking at the

other side of the room. Isabel took on this occasion little part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the

others turned to her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and had paid even a large sum for

her place. Mrs. Touchett was not present, and these two had it, for the effect of brilliancy, all their own way.

They talked of the Florentine, the Roman, the cosmopolite world, and might have been distinguished

performers figuring for a charity. It all had the rich readiness that would have come from rehearsal. Madame

Merle appealed to her as if she had been on the stage, but she could ignore any learnt cue without spoiling the

scene though of course she thus put dreadfully in the wrong the friend who had told Mr. Osmond she could

be depended on. This was no matter for once; even if more had been involved she could have made no

attempt to shine. There was something in the visitor that checked her and held her in suspense made it more

important she should get an impression of him than that she should produce one herself. Besides, she had

little skill in producing an impression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in general,

than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to glitter by arrangement. Mr. Osmond, to do him

justice, had a wellbred air of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even the first show of

his own wit. This was the more grateful as his face, his head, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was

fine, as fine as one of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of the Uffizi. And his very voice was

fine the more strangely that, with its clearness, it yet somehow wasn't sweet. This had had really to do with

making her abstain from interference. His utterance was the vibration of glass, and if she had put out her

finger she might have changed the pitch and spoiled the concert. Yet before he went she had to speak.

"Madame Merle," he said, "consents to come up to my hilltop some day next week and drink tea

in my garden. It would give me much pleasure if you would come with her. It's thought rather pretty there's

what they call a general view. My daughter too would be so glad or rather, for she's too young to have

strong emotions, I should be so glad so very glad." And Mr. Osmond paused with a slight air of

"I should be so happy if you could know my daughter," he went on a moment afterwards.

Isabel replied that she should be delighted to see Miss Osmond and that if Madame Merle would

show her the way to the hilltop she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave;

after which Isabel fully expected her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to her surprise that

lady, who indeed never fell into the mere matterofcourse, said to her in a few moments: "You were

charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you. You're never disappointing."

A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more probable that Isabel would

have taken it in good part; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the first

feeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. "That's more than I intended," she answered coldly.

Madame Merle perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit to retract. "My dear child, I

didn't speak for him, poor man; I spoke for yourself. It's not of course a question as to his liking you; it

"Everything that concerns you matters to me," Madame Merle returned with her weary nobleness;

Whatever Isabel's obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be admitted that she found

them sufficient to lead her to put to Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Ralph's judgements

distorted by his trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowance for that.

"Do I know him?" said her cousin. "Oh, yes, I 'know' him; not well, but on the whole enough. I've

never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is

he, what is he? He's a vague, unexplained American who has been living these thirty years, or less, in Italy.

Why do I call him unexplained? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, his family,

his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way like a

prince who has abdicated in a fit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He used to

live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode here; I remember hearing him say that Rome has

grown vulgar. He has a great dread of vulgarity; that's his special line; he hasn't any other that I know of. He

lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarly large. He's a poor but honest gentleman that's

what he calls himself. He married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. He also has a

sister, who's married to some small Count or other, of these parts; I remember meeting her of old. She's nicer

than he, I should think, but rather impossible. I remember there used to be some stories about her. I don't

think I recommend you to know her. But why don't you ask Madame Merle about these people? She knows

"A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will you care for that?"

"Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more information one has

"I don't agree to that it may make them dangers. We know too much about people in these days;

we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any

"That's what I try to do," said Isabel; "but when you do that people call you conceited."

"You're not to mind them that's precisely my argument; not to mind what they say about yourself

Isabel considered. "I think you're right; but there are some things I can't help minding: for instance

"Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however," Ralph

"I shall see Mr. Osmond for myself," said Isabel. "I've promised to pay him a visit."

"To go and see his view, his pictures, his daughter I don't know exactly what. Madame Merle's to

"Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance," said Ralph. "She knows none but

Isabel said no more about Mr. Osmond, but she presently remarked to her cousin that she was not

satisfied with his tone about Madame Merle. "It seems to me you insinuate things about her. I don't know

what you mean, but if you've any grounds for disliking her I think you should either mention them frankly or

Ralph, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness than he commonly used. "I

speak of Madame Merle exactly as I speak to her: with an even exaggerated respect."

"Ah, I protest!" Isabel earnestly cried. "If ever there was a woman who made small claims!"

"You put your finger on it," Ralph interrupted. "Her modesty's exaggerated. She has no business

"Her merits are immense," said Ralph. "She's indescribably blameless; a pathless desert of virtue;

"Well, say to call her a fool! She's the only woman I know who has but that one little fault."

Isabel turned away with impatience. "I don't understand you; you're too paradoxical for my plain

"Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in the vulgar sense that she boasts,

overstates, gives too fine an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too

far that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She's too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too

accomplished, too everything. She's too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and

that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just."

Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this

"By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle," said Ralph Touchett

"You're very odious, sir!" Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if he knew anything that was

"Nothing whatever. Don't you see that's just what I mean? On the character of every one else you

may find some little black speck; if I were to take half an hour to it, some day, I've no doubt I should be able

to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I'm spotted like a leopard. But on Madame Merle's nothing,

"That's just what I think!" said Isabel with a toss of her head. "That is why I like her so much."

"She's a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world you couldn't have a better

It had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into her head to believe, been a refinement of

malice in him to say that he delighted in Madame Merle. Ralph Touchett took his refreshment wherever he

could find it, and he would not have forgotten himself if he had been left wholly unbeguiled by such a

mistress of the social art. There are deeplying sympathies and antipathies, and it may have been that, in spite

of the administered justice she enjoyed at his hands, her absence from his mother's house would not have

made life barren to him. But Ralph Touchett had learned more or less inscrutably to attend, and there could

have been nothing so "sustained" to attend to as the general performance of Madame Merle. He tasted her in

sips, he let her stand, with an opportuneness she herself could not have surpassed. There were moments when

he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly enough, were the moments when his kindness was least

demonstrative. He was sure she had been yearningly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished

was far below her secret measure. She had got herself into perfect training, but had won none of the prizes.

She was always plain Madame Merle, the widow of a Swiss negociant, with a small income and a large

acquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal and was almost as universally "liked" as some new volume

of smooth twaddle. The contrast between this position and any one of some halfdozen others that he

supposed to have at various moments engaged her hope had an element of the tragical. His mother thought he

got on beautifully with their genial guest; to Mrs. Touchett's sense two persons who dealt so largely in

tooingenious theories of conduct that is of their own would have much in common. He had given due

consideration to Isabel's intimacy with her eminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could

not, without opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best of it, as he had done of worse

things. He believed it would take care of itself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these two superior persons

knew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made an important discovery or two there would

be, if not a rupture, at least a relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite willing to admit that the conversation of the

elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who had a great deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better

from Madame Merle than from some other instructors of the young. It was not probable that Isabel would be

It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to her from the visit she presently

paid to Mr. Osmond's hilltop. Nothing could have been more charming than this occasion a soft afternoon

in the full maturity of the Tuscan spring. The companions drove out of the Roman Gate, beneath the

enormous blank superstructure which crowns the fine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly

impressive, and wound between highwalled lanes into which the wealth of blossoming orchards

overdrooped and flung a fragrance, until they reached the small superurban piazza, of crooked shape, where

the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by Mr. Osmond formed a principal, or at least a very

imposing, object. Isabel went with her friend through a wide, high court, where a clear shadow rested below

and a pair of lightarched galleries, facing each other above, caught the upper sunshine upon their slim

columns and the flowering plants in which they were dressed. There was something grave and strong in the

place; it looked somehow as if, once you were in, you would need an act of energy to get out. For Isabel,

however, there was of course as yet no thought of getting out, but only of advancing. Mr. Osmond met her in

the cold antechamber it was cold even in the month of May and ushered her, with her conductress, into

the apartment to which we have already been introduced. Madame Merle was in front, and while Isabel

lingered a little, talking with him, she went forward familiarly and greeted two persons who were seated in

the saloon. One of these was little Pansy, on whom she bestowed a kiss; the other was a lady whom Mr.

Pansy had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly arranged in a net; she wore her small

shoes tied sandalfashion about her ankles. She made Isabel a little conventual curtsey and then came to be

kissed. The Countess Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see she was a woman of high

fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird a long

beaklike nose, small, quicklymoving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded extremely. Her expression,

however, thanks to various intensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as

regards her appearance, it was plain she understood herself and made the most of her points. Her attire,

voluminous and delicate, bristling with elegance, had the look of shimmering plumage, and her attitudes were

as light and sudden as those of a creature who perched upon twigs. She had a great deal of manner; Isabel,

who had never known any one with so much manner, immediately classed her as the most affected of

women. She remembered that Ralph had not recommended her as an acquaintance; but she was ready to

acknowledge that to a casual view the Countess Gemini revealed no depths. Her demonstrations suggested

the violent waving of some flag of general truce white silk with fluttering streamers.

"You'll believe I'm glad to see you when I tell you it's only because I knew you were to be here

that I came myself. I don't come and see my brother I make him come and see me. This hill of his is

impossible I don't see what possesses him. Really, Osmond, you'll be the ruin of my horses some day, and if

it hurts them you'll have to give me another pair. I heard them wheezing today; I assure you I did. It's very

disagreeable to hear one's horses wheezing when one's sitting in the carriage; it sounds too as if they weren't

what they should be. But I've always had good horses; whatever else I may have lacked I've always managed

that. My husband doesn't know much, but I think he knows a horse. In general Italians don't, but my husband

goes in, according to his poor light, for everything English. My horses are English so it's all the greater pity

they should be ruined. I must tell you," she went on, directly addressing Isabel, "that Osmond doesn't often

invite me; I don't think he likes to have me. It was quite my own idea, coming today. I like to see new

people, and I'm sure you're very new. But don't sit there; that chair's not what it looks. There are some very

These remarks were delivered with a series of little jerks and pecks, of roulades of shrillness, and

in an accent that was as some fond recall of good English, or rather of good American, in adversity.

"I don't like to have you, my dear?" said her brother. "I'm sure you're invaluable."

"I don't see any horrors anywhere," Isabel returned, looking about her. "Everything seems to me

"I've a few good things," Mr. Osmond allowed; "indeed I've nothing very bad. But I've not what I

He stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing about; his manner was an odd mixture of

the detached and the involved. He seemed to hint that nothing but the right "values" was of any consequence.

Isabel made a rapid induction: perfect simplicity was not the badge of his family. Even the little girl from the

convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small submissive face and her hands locked before her, stood

there as if she were about to partake of her first communion, even Mr. Osmond's diminutive daughter had a

"You'd have liked a few things from the Uffizi and the Pitti that's what you'd have liked," said

"Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes!" the Countess Gemini exclaimed: she

appeared to call her brother only by his familyname. Her ejaculation had no particular object; she smiled at

Her brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking what he could say to Isabel:

"Won't you have some tea? you must be very tired," he at last bethought himself of remarking.

"No, indeed, I'm not tired; what have I done to tire me?" Isabel felt a certain need of being very

direct, of pretending to nothing; there was something in the air, in her general impression of things she

could hardly have said what it was that deprived her of all disposition to put herself forward. The place, the

occasion, the combination of people, signified more than lay on the surface; she would try to understand she

would not simply utter graceful platitudes. Poor Isabel was doubtless not aware that many women would

have uttered graceful platitudes to cover the working of their observation. It must be confessed that her pride

was a trifle alarmed. A man she had heard spoken of in terms that excited interest and who was evidently

capable of distinguishing himself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish of her favours, to come to his

house. Now that she had done so the burden of the entertainment rested naturally on his wit. Isabel was not

rendered less observant, and for the moment, we judge, she was not rendered more indulgent, by perceiving

that Mr. Osmond carried his burden less complacently than might have been expected. "What a fool I was to

"You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his bibelots and gives you a lecture on

"I'm not afraid of that; but if I'm tired I shall at least have learned something."

"Very little, I suspect. But my sister's dreadfully afraid of learning anything," said Mr. Osmond.

"Oh, I confess to that; I don't want to know anything more I know too much already. The more

"You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not finished her education,"

"Pansy will never know any harm," said the child's father. "Pansy's a little conventflower."

"Oh, the convents, the convents!" cried the Countess with a flutter of her ruffles. "Speak to me of

the convents! You may learn anything there; I'm a conventflower myself. I don't pretend to be good, but the

Isabel was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very bad at following arguments. The

Countess then declared that she herself detested arguments, but that this was her brother's taste he would

always discuss. "For me," she said, "one should like a thing or one shouldn't; one can't like everything, of

course. But one shouldn't attempt to reason it out you never know where it may lead you. There are some

very good feelings that may have bad reasons, don't you know? And then there are very bad feelings,

sometimes, that have good reasons. Don't you see what I mean? I don't care anything about reasons, but I

"Ah, that's the great thing," said Isabel, smiling and suspecting that her acquaintance with this

lightlyflitting personage would not lead to intellectual repose. If the Countess objected to argument Isabel at

this moment had as little taste for it, and she put out her hand to Pansy with a pleasant sense that such a

gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a divergence of views. Gilbert Osmond apparently took

a rather hopeless view of his sister's tone; he turned the conversation to another topic. He presently sat down

on the other side of his daughter, who had shyly brushed Isabel's fingers with her own; but he ended by

drawing her out of her chair and making her stand between his knees, leaning against him while he passed his

arm round her slimness. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with a still, disinterested gaze which seemed void

of an intention, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of many things; Madame Merle had said he

could be agreeable when he chose, and today, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but to have

determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of

persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Isabel heard the

Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latter's lucidity as a poodle splashes after a

thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle were seeing how far she would go. Mr. Osmond talked of Florence,

of Italy, of the pleasure of living in that country and of the abatements to the pleasure. There were both

satisfactions and drawbacks; the drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a world as all

romantic. It met the case soothingly for the human, for the social failure by which he meant the people who

couldn't "realize," as they said, on their sensibility: they could keep it about them there, in their poverty,

without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an inconvenient entailed place that brought you in

nothing. Thus there were advantages in living in the country which contained the greatest sum of beauty.

Certain impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable to life, you never got, and you got some that

were very bad. But from time to time you got one of a quality that made up for everything. Italy, all the same,

had spoiled a great many people; he was even fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have

been a better man if he had spent less of his life there. It made one idle and dilettantish and secondrate; it

had no discipline for the character, didn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social and

other "cheek" that flourished in Paris and London. "We're sweetly provincial," said Mr. Osmond, "and I'm

perfectly aware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talk

with you not that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock I suspect your intellect of being!

But you'll be going away before I've seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never see you after that. That's

what it is to live in a country that people come to. When they're disagreeable here it's bad enough; when

they're agreeable it's still worse. As soon as you like them they're off again! I've been deceived too often; I've

ceased to form attachments, to permit myself to feel attractions. You mean to stay to settle? That would be

really comfortable. Ah yes, your aunt's a sort of guarantee; I believe she may be depended on. Oh, she's an

old Florentine; I mean literally an old one; not a modern outsider. She's a contemporary of the Medici; she

must have been present at the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure she didn't throw a handful of chips into

the flame. Her face is very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that must have

had a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portrait in a fresco

of Ghirlandaio's. I hope you don't object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I've an idea you don't.

Perhaps you think that's even worse. I assure you there's no want of respect in it, to either of you. You know

While Isabel's host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat confidential fashion she

looked occasionally at Madame Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on this occasion,

there was no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage. Madame Merle eventually

proposed to the Countess Gemini that they should go into the garden, and the Countess, rising and shaking

out her feathers, began to rustle toward the door. "Poor Miss Archer!" she exclaimed, surveying the other

"Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family to which you belong," Mr.

Osmond answered, with a laugh which, though it had something of a mocking ring, had also a finer patience.

"I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm in me but what you tell her. I'm

better than he says, Miss Archer," the Countess went on. "I'm only rather an idiot and a bore. Is that all he has

said? Ah then, you keep him in goodhumour. Has he opened on one of his favourite subjects? I give you

notice that there are two or three that he treats a fond. In that case you had better take off your bonnet."

"I don't think I know what Mr. Osmond's favourite subjects are," said Isabel, who had risen to her

The Countess assumed for an instant an attitude of intense meditation, pressing one of her hands,

with the fingertips gathered together, to her forehead. "I'll tell you in a moment. One's Machiavelli; the

"Ah, with me," said Madame Merle, passing her arm into the Countess Gemini's as if to guide her

"Oh you," the Countess answered as they moved away, "you yourself are Machiavelli you

"We shall hear next that poor Madame Merle is Metastasio!" Gilbert Osmond resignedly sighed.

Isabel had got up on the assumption that they too were to go into the garden; but her host stood

there with no apparent inclination to leave the room, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his daughter,

who had now locked her arm into one of his own, clinging to him and looking up while her eyes moved from

his own face to Isabel's. Isabel waited, with a certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements

directed; she liked Mr. Osmond's talk, his company: she had what always gave her a very private thrill, the

consciousness of a new relation. Through the open doors of the great room she saw Madame Merle and the

Countess stroll across the fine grass of the garden; then she turned, and her eyes wandered over the things

scattered about her. The understanding had been that Mr. Osmond should show her his treasures; his pictures

and cabinets all looked like treasures. Isabel after a moment went toward one of the pictures to see it better;

but just as she had done so he said to her abruptly: "Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister?"

She faced him with some surprise. "Ah, don't ask me that I've seen your sister too little."

"Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed that there is not a great deal of her to

see. What do you think of our family tone?" he went on with his cool smile. "I should like to know how it

strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. I know what you're going to say you've had almost no observation of it.

Of course this is only a glimpse. But just take notice, in future, if you have a chance. I sometimes think we've

got into a rather bad way, living off here among things and people not our own, without responsibilities or

attachments, with nothing to hold us together or keep us up; marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes,

playing tricks with our natural mission. Let me add, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my

sister. She's a very honest lady more so than she seems. She's rather unhappy, and as she's not of a serious

turn she doesn't tend to show it tragically: she shows it comically instead. She has got a horrid husband,

though I'm not sure she makes the best of him. Of course, however, a horrid husband's an awkward thing.

Madame Merle gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary to learn a

language with. He can look out the words, but he can't put them together. My sister needs a grammar, but

unfortunately she's not grammatical. Pardon my troubling you with these details; my sister was very right in

saying you've been taken into the family. Let me take down that picture; you want more light."

He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it. She

looked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear most acceptable to

a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his medallions and tapestries were

interesting; but after a while Isabel felt the owner much more so, and independently of them, thickly as they

seemed to overhang him. He resembled no one she had ever seen; most of the people she knew might be

divided into groups of half a dozen specimens. There were one or two exceptions to this; she could think for

instance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia. There were other people who were, relatively

speaking, original original, as one might say, by courtesy such as Mr. Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, as

Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord Warburton, as Madame Merle. But in essentials, when one came to look at

them, these individuals belonged to types already present to her mind. Her mind contained no class offering a

natural place to Mr. Osmond he was a specimen apart. It was not that she recognized all these truths at the

hour, but they were falling into order before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this "new

relation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Merle had had that note of rarity, but

what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and

did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious that

he was showing her on the underside of old plates and in the corner of sixteenthcentury drawings: he

indulged in no striking deflections from common usage, he was an original without being an eccentric. She

had never met a person of so fine a grain. The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to

impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without

being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure

which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture these

personal points struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of

interest. He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility had governed him

possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by

himself, in a sorted, sifted, arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had consulted his

taste in everything his taste alone perhaps, as a sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his

lawyer: that was what made him so different from every one else. Ralph had something of this same quality,

this appearance of thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind

of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it.

She was certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was

hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side which was exactly the side she

would have taken him most to lack. Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last

refinement of high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very interesting to learn. If it was

provincial to have that harmony, what then was the finish of the capital? And she could put this question in

spite of so feeling her host a sly personage; since such shyness as his the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine

perceptions was perfectly consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and

touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a

man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of

himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a

rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited. If

he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that gradual, subtle, successful conversion of it to which she

owed both what pleased her in him and what mystified her. If he had suddenly asked her what she thought of

the Countess Gemini, that was doubtless a proof that he was interested in her; it could scarcely be as a help to

knowledge of his own sister. That he should be so interested showed an enquiring mind; but it was a little

singular he should sacrifice his fraternal feeling to his curiosity. This was the most eccentric thing he had

There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been received, equally full of

romantic objects, and in these apartments Isabel spent a quarter of an hour. Everything was in the last degree

curious and precious, and Mr. Osmond continued to be the kindest of ciceroni as he led her from one fine

piece to another and still held his little girl by the hand. His kindness almost surprised our young friend, who

wondered why he should take so much trouble for her; and she was oppressed at last with the accumulation of

beauty and knowledge to which she found herself introduced. There was enough for the present; she had

ceased to attend to what he said; she listened to him with attentive eyes, but was not thinking of what he told

her. He probably thought her quicker, cleverer in every way, more prepared, than she was. Madame Merle

would have pleasantly exaggerated; which was a pity, because in the end he would be sure to find out, and

then perhaps even her real intelligence wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Isabel's fatigue came

from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Merle had described her, and from the fear

(very unusual with her) of exposing not her ignorance; for that she cared comparatively little but her

possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed her to express a liking for something he, in his

superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated

mind would arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness in which she had seen women (and

it was a warning) serenely, yet ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to

what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful than she had ever been before.

They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been served; but as the two other

ladies were still on the terrace, and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, the paramount

distinction of the place, Mr. Osmond directed her steps into the garden without more delay. Madame Merle

and the Countess had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon was lovely the Countess proposed they

should take their tea in the open air. Pansy therefore was sent to bid the servant bring out the preparations.

The sun had got low, the golden light took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that stretched

beneath them the masses of purple shadow glowed as richly as the places that were still exposed. The scene

had an extraordinary charm. The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with

its gardenlike culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and delicatelyfretted hills, its peculiarly

humanlooking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace. "You seem so well

pleased that I think you can be trusted to come back," Osmond said as he led his companion to one of the

"I shall certainly come back," she returned, "in spite of what you say about its being bad to live in

Italy. What was that you said about one's natural mission? I wonder if I should forsake my natural mission if I

"Very true she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry. People ought to make it very plain

"I'm glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling. Madame Merle had given me an idea that you

were of a rather roving disposition. I thought she spoke of your having some plan of going round the world."

"It seems frivolous, I think," said Isabel. "One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be

"Not to worry not to strive nor struggle. To resign myself. To be content with little." He spoke

these sentences slowly, with short pauses between, and his intelligent regard was fixed on his visitor's with

"Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my indifference. Mind you, not my natural

She scarcely understood him; it seemed a question whether he were joking or not. Why should a

man who struck her as having a great fund of reserve suddenly bring himself to be so confidential? This was

his affair, however, and his confidences were interesting. "I don't see why you should have renounced," she

"Because I could do nothing. I had no prospects, I was poor, and I was not a man of genius. I had

no talents even; I took my measure early in life. I was simply the most fastidious young gentleman living.

There were two or three people in the world I envied the Emperor of Russia, for instance, and the Sultan of

Turkey! There were even moments when I envied the Pope of Rome for the consideration he enjoys. I

should have been delighted to be considered to that extent; but since that couldn't be I didn't care for anything

less, and I made up my mind not to go in for honours. The leanest gentleman can always consider himself,

and fortunately I was, though lean, a gentleman. I could do nothing in Italy I couldn't even be an Italian

patriot. To do that I should have had to get out of the country; and I was too fond of it to leave it, to say

nothing of my being too well satisfied with it, on the whole, as it then was, to wish it altered. So I've passed a

great many years here on that quiet plan I spoke of. I've not been at all unhappy. I don't mean to say I've cared

for nothing; but the things I've cared for have been definite limited. The events of my life have been

absolutely unperceived by any one save myself; getting an old silver crucifix at a bargain (I've never bought

anything dear, of course), or discovering, as I once did, a sketch by Correggio on a panel daubed over by

This would have been rather a dry account of Mr. Osmond's' career if Isabel had fully believed it;

but her imagination supplied the human element which she was sure had not been wanting. His life had been

mingled with other lives more than he admitted; naturally she couldn't expect him to enter into this. For the

present she abstained from provoking further revelations; to intimate that he had not told her everything

would be more familiar and less considerate than she now desired to be would in fact be uproariously

vulgar. He had certainly told her quite enough. It was her present inclination, however, to express a measured

sympathy for the success with which he had preserved his independence. "That's a very pleasant life," she

"Oh, I've made in my way a good thing of it. Don't imagine I'm whining about it. It's one's own

This was large; she kept down to something smaller. "Have you lived here always?"

"No, not always. I lived a long time at Naples, and many years in Rome. But I've been here a good

while. Perhaps I shall have to change, however; to do something else. I've no longer myself to think of. My

daughter's growing up and may very possibly not care so much for the Correggios and crucifixes as I. I shall

"Ah," cried Gilbert Osmond beautifully, "she's a little saint of heaven! She is my great happiness!"

While this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some time after we cease to follow it)

went forward Madame Merle and her companion, breaking a silence of some duration, had begun to

exchange remarks. They were sitting in an attitude of unexpressed expectancy; an attitude especially marked

on the part of the Countess Gemini, who, being of a more nervous temperament than her friend, practised

with less success the art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were waiting for would not have been

apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their own minds. Madame Merle waited for Osmond to release

their young friend from her teteatete, and the Countess waited because Madame Merle did. The Countess,

moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for one of her pretty perversities. She might have desired for some

minutes to place it. Her brother wandered with Isabel to the end of the garden, to which point her eyes

"My dear," she then observed to her companion, "you'll excuse me if I don't congratulate you!"

"Haven't you a little plan that you think rather well of?" And the Countess nodded at the

Madame Merle's eyes took the same direction; then she looked serenely at her neighbour. "You

"No one can understand better than you when you wish. I see that just now you don't wish."

"You say things to me that no one else does," said Madame Merle gravely, yet without bitterness.

"Yes, a poisoned one sometimes. If you mean that I'm not so clever as he you mustn't think I shall

suffer from your sense of our difference. But it will be much better that you should understand me."

"If I don't approve of your plan you ought to know it in order to appreciate the danger of my

Madame Merle looked as if she were ready to admit that there might be something in this; but in a

"It's not your calculating I think ill of; it's your calculating wrong. You've done so in this case."

"No, I've not had time. I've seen the girl but this once," said the Countess, "and the conviction has

"That indeed," piped the Countess, "is perhaps the best thing that could happen to her!"

Madame Merle said nothing for some time. The Countess's manner was odious, was really low; but

it was an old story, and with her eyes upon the violet slope of Monte Morello she gave herself up to

reflection. "My dear lady," she finally resumed, "I advise you not to agitate yourself. The matter you allude to

"Three persons? You and Osmond of course. But is Miss Archer also very strong of purpose?"

"Ah then," said the Countess radiantly, "if I convince her it's her interest to resist you she'll do so

"Resist us? Why do you express yourself so coarsely? She's not exposed to compulsion or

"I'm not sure of that. You're capable of anything, you and Osmond. I don't mean Osmond by

himself, and I don't mean you by yourself. But together you're dangerous like some chemical combination."

"My poor Amy," Madame Merle murmured, "I don't see what has got into your head."

The Countess's bright little eyes expanded and her face was set in a grimace. "Ah, you are

"If you want her to like you don't abuse your brother to her," said Madame Merle.

"I don't suppose you pretend she has fallen in love with him in two interviews."

Madame Merle looked a moment at Isabel and at the master of the house. He was leaning against

the parapet, facing her, his arms folded; and she at present was evidently not lost in the mere impersonal

view, persistently as she gazed at it. As Madame Merle watched her she lowered her eyes; she was listening,

possibly with a certain embarrassment, while she pressed the point of her parasol into the path. Madame

The shabby footboy, summoned by Pansy he might, tarnished as to livery and quaint as to type,

have issued from some stray sketch of oldtime manners, been "put in" by the brush of a Longhi or a Goya

had come out with a small table and placed it on the grass, and then had gone back and fetched the teatray;

after which he had again disappeared, to return with a couple of chairs. Pansy had watched these proceedings

with the deepest interest, standing with her small hands folded together upon the front of her scanty frock; but

she had not presumed to offer assistance. When the teatable had been arranged, however, she gently

The Countess looked at her with a deliberately critical gaze and without answering her question.

"Do you call it a common occasion when I come to see you? to say nothing of Madame Merle

Pansy reflected a moment, turning gravely from one of the persons mentioned to the other. Then

her face broke into its perfect smile. "I have a pretty dress, but even that one's very simple. Why should I

"Because it's the prettiest you have; for me you must always wear the prettiest. Please put it on the

The child sparingly stroked down her antiquated skirt. "It's a good little dress to make tea don't

"Impossible for me to say, my child," said the Countess. "For me, your father's ideas are

Madame Merle smiled with her usual grace. "It's a weighty question let me think. It seems to me

it would please your father to see a careful little daughter making his tea. It's the proper duty of the daughter

"So it seems to me, Madame Merle!" Pansy cried. "You shall see how well I'll make it. A spoonful

"Two spoonfuls for me," said the Countess, who, with Madame Merle, remained for some

moments watching her. "Listen to me, Pansy," the Countess resumed at last. "I should like to know what you

"She's charming charming," Pansy repeated in her little neat conversational tone. "She pleases me

"Ah really, Countess!" murmured Madame Merle dissuasively. "Go and call them to tea," she went

"You'll see if they don't like it!" Pansy declared; and departed to summon the others, who had still

"If Miss Archer's to become her mother it's surely interesting to know if the child likes her," said

"If your brother marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake," Madame Merle replied. "She'll soon be

sixteen, and after that she'll begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother."

"I shall certainly take an interest in her marrying fortunately. I imagine you'll do the same."

"Indeed I shan't!" cried the Countess. "Why should I, of all women, set such a price on a

"You didn't marry fortunately; that's what I'm speaking of. When I say a husband I mean a good

Madame Merle closed her eyes a moment. "You're irritated just now; I don't know why," she

presently said. "I don't think you'll really object either to your brother's or to your niece's marrying when the

time comes for them to do so; and as regards Pansy I'm confident that we shall some day have the pleasure of

looking for a husband for her together. Your large acquaintance will be a great help."

"Yes, I'm irritated," the Countess answered. "You often irritate me. Your own coolness is fabulous.

Madame Merle shook her head as for quiet amusement. "No indeed, you've not my coolness!"

Isabel and Mr. Osmond were now slowly coming toward them and Isabel had taken Pansy by the

The Countess jerked herself into a succession of attitudes. "Do you mean as most gentlemen

behave? That would be much to be thankful for! Of course Osmond's a gentleman; his own sister needn't be

reminded of that. But does he think he can marry any girl he happens to pick out? Osmond's a gentleman, of

course; but I must say I've never, no, no, never, seen any one of Osmond's pretensions! What they're all

founded on is more than I can say. I'm his own sister; I might be supposed to know. Who is he, if you please?

What has he ever done? If there had been anything particularly grand in his origin if he were made of some

superior clay I presume I should have got some inkling of it. If there had been any great honours or

splendours in the family I should certainly have made the most of them: they would have been quite in my

line. But there's nothing, nothing, nothing. One's parents were charming people of course; but so were yours,

I've no doubt. Every one's a charming person nowadays. Even I'm a charming person; don't laugh, it has

literally been said. As for Osmond, he has always appeared to believe that he's descended from the gods."

"You may say what you please," said Madame Merle, who had listened to this quick outbreak none

the less attentively, we may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker and her hands busied

themselves with adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. "You Osmonds are a fine race your blood must

flow from some very pure source. Your brother, like an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it if he has

not had the proofs. You're modest about it, but you yourself are extremely distinguished. What do you say

about your niece? The child's a little princess. Nevertheless," Madame Merle added, "it won't be an easy

"I've heard you say that before, but I haven't yet discovered what he has done."

"What he has done? He has done nothing that has had to be undone. And he has known how to

"That's not what I mean," said Madame Merle. "Miss Archer has seventy thousand pounds."

"Well, it's a pity she's so charming," the Countess declared. "To be sacrificed, any girl would do.

"If she weren't superior your brother would never look at her. He must have the best."

"Yes," returned the Countess as they went forward a little to meet the others, "he's very hard to

Gilbert Osmond came to see Isabel again; that is he came to Palazzo Crescentini. He had other

friends there as well, and to Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle he was always impartially civil; but the former

of these ladies noted the fact that in the course of a fortnight he called five times, and compared it with

another fact that she found no difficulty in remembering. Two visits a year had hitherto constituted his

regular tribute to Mrs. Touchett's worth, and she had never observed him select for such visits those

moments, of almost periodical recurrence, when Madame Merle was under her roof. It was not for Madame

Merle that he came; these two were old friends and he never put himself out for her. He was not fond of

Ralph Ralph had told her so and it was not supposable that Mr. Osmond had suddenly taken a fancy to her

son. Ralph was imperturbable Ralph had a kind of loosefitting urbanity that wrapped him about like an

illmade overcoat, but of which he never divested himself; he thought Mr. Osmond very good company and

was willing at any time to look at him in the light of hospitality. But he didn't flatter himself that the desire to

repair a past injustice was the motive of their visitor's calls; he read the situation more clearly. Isabel was the

attraction, and in all conscience a sufficient one. Osmond was a critic, a student of the exquisite, and it was

natural he should be curious of so rare an apparition. So when his mother observed to him that it was plain

what Mr. Osmond was thinking of, Ralph replied that he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Touchett had from far

back found a place on her scant list for this gentleman, though wondering dimly by what art and what

process so negative and so wise as they were he had everywhere effectively imposed himself. As he had

never been an importunate visitor he had had no chance to be offensive, and he was recommended to her by

his appearance of being as well able to do without her as she was to do without him a quality that always,

oddly enough, affected her as providing ground for a relation with her. It gave her no satisfaction, however,

to think that he had taken it into his head to marry her niece. Such an alliance, on Isabel's part, would have an

air of almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer;

and that a young lady with whom Lord Warburton had not successfully wrestled should content herself with

an obscure American dilettante, a middleaged widower with an uncanny child and an ambiguous income,

this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett's conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the

sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony a view which has always had much to recommend it. "I

trust she won't have the folly to listen to him," she said to her son; to which Ralph replied that Isabel's

listening was one thing and Isabel's answering quite another. He knew she had listened to several parties, as

his father would have said, but had made them listen in return; and he found much entertainment in the idea

that in these few months of his knowing her he should observe a fresh suitor at her gate. She had wanted to

see life, and fortune was serving her to her taste; a succession of fine gentlemen going down on their knees to

her would do as well as anything else. Ralph looked forward to a fourth, a fifth, a tenth besieger; he had no

conviction she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and open a parley; she would certainly not

allow number three to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who

looked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying things that he

"I don't think I know what you mean," she said; "you use too many figures of speech; I could never

understand allegories. The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If Isabel wants to marry

Mr. Osmond she'll do so in spite of all your comparisons. Let her alone to find a fine one herself for anything

she undertakes. I know very little about the young man in America; I don't think she spends much of her time

in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for her. There's nothing in life to prevent her

marrying Mr. Osmond if she only looks at him in a certain way. That's all very well; no one approves more

than I of one's pleasing one's self. But she takes her pleasure in such odd things; she's capable of marrying

Mr. Osmond for the beauty of his opinions or for his autograph of Michael Angelo. She wants to be

disinterested: as if she were the only person who's in danger of not being so! Will he be so disinterested when

he has the spending of her money? That was her idea before your father's death, and it has acquired new

charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she shall herself be sure; and

"My dear mother, I'm not afraid," Ralph answered. "She's making fools of us all. She'll please

herself, of course; but she'll do so by studying human nature at close quarters and yet retaining her liberty.

She has started on an exploring expedition, and I don't think she'll change her course, at the outset, at a signal

from Gilbert Osmond. She may have slackened speed for an hour, but before we know it she'll be steaming

Mrs. Touchett excused it perhaps, but was not so much reassured as to withhold from Madame

Merle the expression of her fears. "You who know everything," she said, "you must know this: whether that

"Gilbert Osmond?" Madame Merle widened her clear eyes and, with a full intelligence, "Heaven

"You make me feel an idiot, but I confess it hadn't. I wonder," she added, "if it has occurred to

Madame Merle reflected. "Don't put it into her head. The thing would be to ask Mr. Osmond."

"I can't do that," said Mrs. Touchett. "I won't have him enquire of me as he perfectly may with

"It's being none whatever is just why I can afford to speak. It's so much less my business than any

one's else that he can put me off with anything he chooses. But it will be by the way he does this that I shall

"Pray let me hear then," said Mrs. Touchett, "of the fruits of your penetration. If I can't speak to

Her companion sounded at this the note of warning. "Don't be too quick with her. Don't inflame

"I never did anything in my life to any one's imagination. But I'm always sure of her doing

"No, you wouldn't like this," Madame Merle observed without the point of interrogation.

"Why in the world should I, pray? Mr. Osmond has nothing the least solid to offer."

Again Madame Merle was silent while her thoughtful smile drew up her mouth even more

charmingly than usual toward the left corner. "Let us distinguish. Gilbert Osmond's certainly not the first

comer. He's a man who in favourable conditions might very well make a great impression. He has made a

"Don't tell me about his probably quite coldblooded loveaffairs; they're nothing to me!" Mrs.

Touchett cried. "What you say's precisely why I wish he would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world

that I know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a more or less pert little daughter."

"The early masters are now worth a good deal of money," said Madame Merle, "and the daughter's

"In other words she's an insipid little chit. Is that what you mean? Having no fortune she can't hope

to marry as they marry here; so that Isabel will have to furnish her either with a maintenance or with a

"Isabel probably wouldn't object to being kind to her. I think she likes the poor child."

"Another reason then for Mr. Osmond's stopping at home! Otherwise, a week hence, we shall have

my niece arriving at the conviction that her mission in life's to prove that a stepmother may sacrifice herself

"She would make a charming stepmother," smiled Madame Merle; "but I quite agree with you that

she had better not decide upon her mission too hastily. Changing the form of one's mission's almost as

difficult as changing the shape of one's nose: there they are, each, in the middle of one's face and one's

character one has to begin too far back. But I'll investigate and report to you."

All this went on quite over Isabel's head; she had no suspicions that her relations with Mr. Osmond

were being discussed. Madame Merle had said nothing to put her on her guard; she alluded no more pointedly

to him than to the other gentlemen of Florence, native and foreign, who now arrived in considerable numbers

to pay their respects to Miss Archer's aunt. Isabel thought him interesting she came back to that; she liked so

to think of him. She had carried away an image from her visit to his hilltop which her subsequent

knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which put on for her a particular harmony with other supposed

and divined things, histories within histories: the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man,

strolling on a mossgrown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose

belllike clearness gave a new grace to childhood. The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of

tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it. It spoke of the kind of personal issue that

touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects, contacts what might she call them? of a

thin and those of a rich association; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes

ached today; of a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a

care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the career appeared to stretch beneath

it in the disposed vistas and with the ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian garden

allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of a quaint halfanxious, halfhelpless

fatherhood. At Palazzo Crescentini Mr. Osmond's manner remained the same; diffident at first oh

selfconscious beyond doubt! and full of the effort (visible only to a sympathetic eye) to overcome this

disadvantage; an effort which usually resulted in a great deal of easy, lively, very positive, rather aggressive,

always suggestive talk. Mr. Osmond's talk was not injured by the indication of an eagerness to shine; Isabel

found no difficulty in believing that a person was sincere who had so many of the signs of strong conviction

as for instance an explicit and graceful appreciation of anything that might be said on his own side of the

question, said perhaps by Miss Archer in especial. What continued to please this young woman was that

while he talked so for amusement he didn't talk, as she had heard people, for "effect." He uttered his ideas as

if, odd as they often appeared, he were used to them and had lived with them; old polished knobs and heads

and handles, of precious substance, that could be fitted if necessary to new walkingsticks not switches

plucked in destitution from the common tree and then too elegantly waved about. One day he brought his

small daughter with him, and she rejoiced to renew acquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her

forehead to be kissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly of an ingenue in a French play.

Isabel had never seen a little person of this pattern; American girls were very different different too were the

maidens of England. Pansy was so formed and finished for her tiny place in the world, and yet in

imagination, as one could see, so innocent and infantine. She sat on the sofa by Isabel; she wore a small

grenadine mantle and a pair of the useful gloves that Madame Merle had given her little grey gloves with a

single button. She was like a sheet of blank paper the ideal jeune fille of foreign fiction. Isabel hoped that so

The Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the Countess was quite another affair. She

was by no means a blank sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands, and Mrs. Touchett, who felt

by no means honoured by her visit, pronounced that a number of unmistakeable blots were to be seen upon

her surface. The Countess gave rise indeed to some discussion between the mistress of the house and the

visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing

with them) availed herself felicitously enough of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as

freely as she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had declared it a piece of audacity that this highly compromised

character should have presented herself at such a time of day at the door of a house in which she was

esteemed so little as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini. Isabel had been made

acquainted with the estimate prevailing under that roof: it represented Mr. Osmond's sister as a lady who had

so mismanaged her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all which was at the least what

one asked of such matters and had become the mere floating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding

social circulation. She had been married by her mother a more administrative person, with an appreciation

of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by this time thrown off to Italian

nobleman who had perhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of outrage.

The Countess, however, had consoled herself outrageously, and the list of her excuses had now lost itself in

the labyrinth of her adventures. Mrs. Touchett had never consented to receive her, though the Countess had

made overtures of old. Florence was not an austere city; but, as Mrs. Touchett said, she had to draw the line

Madame Merle defended the luckless lady with a great deal of zeal and wit. She couldn't see why

Mrs. Touchett should make a scapegoat of a woman who had really done no harm, who had only done good

in the wrong way. One must certainly draw the line, but while one was about it one should draw it straight: it

was a very crooked chalkmark that would exclude the Countess Gemini. In that case Mrs. Touchett had

better shut up her house; this perhaps would be the best course so long as she remained in Florence. One must

be fair and not make arbitrary differences: the Countess had doubtless been imprudent, she had not been so

clever as other women. She was a good creature, not clever at all; but since when had that been a ground of

exclusion from the best society? For ever so long now one had heard nothing about her, and there could be no

better proof of her having renounced the error of her ways than her desire to become a member of Mrs.

Touchett's circle. Isabel could contribute nothing to this interesting dispute, not even a patient attention; she

contented herself with having given a friendly welcome to the unfortunate lady, who, whatever her defects,

had at least the merit of being Mr. Osmond's sister. As she liked the brother Isabel thought it proper to try and

like the sister: in spite of the growing complexity of things she was still capable of these primitive sequences.

She had not received the happiest impression of the Countess on meeting her at the villa, but was thankful for

an opportunity to repair the accident. Had not Mr. Osmond remarked that she was a respectable person? To

have proceeded from Gilbert Osmond this was a crude proposition, but Madame Merle bestowed upon it a

certain improving polish. She told Isabel more about the poor Countess than Mr. Osmond had done, and

related the history of her marriage and its consequences. The Count was a member of an ancient Tuscan

family, but of such small estate that he had been glad to accept Amy Osmond, in spite of the questionable

beauty which had yet not hampered her career, with the modest dowry her mother was able to offer a sum

about equivalent to that which had already formed her brother's share of their patrimony. Count Gemini since

then, however, had inherited money, and now they were well enough off, as Italians went, though Amy was

horribly extravagant. The Count was a lowlived brute; he had given his wife every pretext. She had no

children; she had lost three within a year of their birth. Her mother, who had bristled with pretensions to

elegant learning and published descriptive poems and corresponded on Italian subjects with the English

weekly journals, her mother had died three years after the Countess's marriage, the father, lost in the grey

American dawn of the situation, but reputed originally rich and wild, having died much earlier. One could see

this in Gilbert Osmond, Madame Merle held see that he had been brought up by a woman; though, to do

him justice, one would suppose it had been by a more sensible woman than the American Corinne, as Mrs.

Osmond had liked to be called. She had brought her children to Italy after her husband's death, and Mrs.

Touchett remembered her during the year that followed her arrival. She thought her a horrible snob; but this

was an irregularity of judgement on Mrs. Touchett's part, for she, like Mrs. Osmond, approved of political

marriages. The Countess was very good company and not really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to

do with her was to observe the simple condition of not believing a word she said. Madame Merle had always

made the best of her for her brother's sake; he appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, because (if it had to

be confessed for him) he rather felt she let down their common name. Naturally he couldn't like her style, her

shrillness, her egotism, her violations of taste and above all of truth: she acted badly on his nerves, she was

not his sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh, the very opposite of the Countess, a woman to

whom the truth should be habitually sacred. Isabel was unable to estimate the number of times her visitor

had, in half an hour, profaned it: the Countess indeed had given her an impression of rather silly sincerity.

She had talked almost exclusively about herself; how much she should like to know Miss Archer; how

thankful she should be for a real friend; how base the people in Florence were; how tired she was of the

place; how much she should like to live somewhere else in Paris, in London, in Washington; how

impossible it was to get anything nice to wear in Italy except a little old lace; how dear the world was

growing everywhere; what a life of suffering and privation she had led. Madame Merle listened with interest

to Isabel's account of this passage, but she had not needed it to feel exempt from anxiety. On the whole she

was not afraid of the Countess, and she could afford to do what was altogether best not to appear so.

Isabel had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not, even behind her back, so easy a matter to

patronize. Henrietta Stackpole, who had left Paris after Mrs. Touchett's departure for San Remo and had

worked her way down, as she said, through the cities of North Italy, reached the banks of the Arno about the

middle of May. Madame Merle surveyed her with a single glance, took her in from head to foot, and after a

pang of despair determined to endure her. She determined indeed to delight in her. She mightn't be inhaled as

a rose, but she might be grasped as a nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance, and

Isabel felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done justice to her friend's intelligence. Henrietta's arrival

had been announced by Mr. Bantling, who, coming down from Nice while she was at Venice, and expecting

to find her in Florence, which she had not yet reached, called at Palazzo Crescentini to express his

disappointment. Henrietta's own advent occurred two days later and produced in Mr. Bantling an emotion

amply accounted for by the fact that he had not seen her since the termination of the episode at Versailles.

The humorous view of his situation was generally taken, but it was uttered only by Ralph Touchett, who, in

the privacy of his own apartment, when Bantling smoked a cigar there, indulged in goodness knew what

strong comedy on the subject of the alljudging one and her British backer. This gentleman took the joke in

perfectly good part and candidly confessed that he regarded the affair as a positive intellectual adventure. He

liked Miss Stackpole extremely; he thought she had a wonderful head on her shoulders, and found great

comfort in the society of a woman who was not perpetually thinking about what would be said and how what

she did, how what they did and they had done things! would look. Miss Stackpole never cared how

anything looked, and, if she didn't care, pray why should he? But his curiosity had been roused; he wanted

awfully to see if she ever would care. He was prepared to go as far as she he didn't see why he should break

Henrietta showed no signs of breaking down. Her prospects had brightened on her leaving

England, and she was now in the full enjoyment of her copious resources. She had indeed been obliged to

sacrifice her hopes with regard to the inner life; the social question, on the Continent, bristled with difficulties

even more numerous than those she had encountered in England. But on the Continent there was the outer

life, which was palpable and visible at every turn, and more easily convertible to literary uses than the

customs of those opaque islanders. Out of doors in foreign lands, as she ingeniously remarked, one seemed to

see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one seemed to see the wrong side, which gave one

no notion of the figure. The admission costs her historian a pang, but Henrietta, despairing of more occult

things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. She had been studying it for two months at Venice,

from which city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza, the Bridge of

Sighs, the pigeons and the young boatman who chanted Tasso. The Interviewer was perhaps disappointed,

but Henrietta was at least seeing Europe. Her present purpose was to get down to Rome before the malaria

should come on he apparently supposed that it began on a fixed day; and with this design she was to spend

at present but few days in Florence. Mr. Bantling was to go with her to Rome, and she pointed out to Isabel

that as he had been there before, as he was a military man and as he had had a classical education he had

been bred at Eton, where they study nothing but Latin and WhyteMelville, said Miss Stackpole he would

be a most useful companion in the city of the Caesars. At this juncture Ralph had the happy idea of proposing

to Isabel that she also, under his own escort, should make a pilgrimage to Rome. She expected to pass a

portion of the next winter there that was very well; but meantime there was no harm in surveying the field.

There were ten days left of the beautiful month of May the most precious month of all to the true Rome

lover. Isabel would become a Romelover; that was a foregone conclusion. She was provided with a trusty

companion of her own sex, whose society, thanks to the fact of other calls on this lady's attention, would

probably not be oppressive. Madame Merle would remain with Mrs. Touchett; she had left Rome for the

summer and wouldn't care to return. She professed herself delighted to be left at peace in Florence; she had

locked up her apartment and sent her cook home to Palestrina. She urged Isabel, however, to assent to Ralph's

proposal, and assured her that a good introduction to Rome was not a thing to be despised. Isabel in truth

needed no urging, and the party of four arranged its little journey. Mrs. Touchett, on this occasion, had

resigned herself to the absence of a duenna; we have seen that she now inclined to the belief that her niece

should stand alone. One of Isabel's preparations consisted of her seeing Gilbert Osmond before she started

"I should like to be in Rome with you," he commented. "I should like to see you on that wonderful

For a moment he said nothing more. "You'll like it," he went on at last. They've spoiled it, but

"Ought I to dislike it because, poor old dear the Niobe of Nations, you know it has been

"No, I think not. It has been spoiled so often," he smiled: "If I were to go, what should I do with

"I don't know that I like that though there's a very good old woman who looks after her. I can't

Mr. Osmond looked grave. "She has been in Rome all winter, at her convent; and she's too young

"I don't see why," said Isabel, who, however, was not sure there was not some truth in the speech.

Mr. Osmond didn't explain; he simply went on: "If I thought it would make her resemble you to

"I might send her to my sister," Mr. Osmond observed. He had almost the air of asking advice; he

"Yes," she concurred; "I think that wouldn't do much towards making her resemble me!"

After she had left Florence Gilbert Osmond met Madame Merle at the Countess Gemini's. There

were other people present; the Countess's drawingroom was usually well filled, and the talk had been

general, but after a while Osmond left his place and came and sat on an ottoman halfbehind, halfbeside

Madame Merle's chair: "She wants me to go to Rome with her," he remarked in a low voice.

"I rejoice to hear it but don't cry victory too soon. Of course you'll go to Rome."

"Don't pretend you don't enjoy it you're very ungrateful. You've not been so well occupied these

"The way you take it's beautiful," said Osmond. "I ought to be grateful for that."

"Not too much so, however," Madame Merle answered. She talked with her usual smile, leaning

back in her chair and looking round the room. "You've made a very good impression, and I've seen for myself

that you've received one. You've not come to Mrs. Touchett's seven times to oblige me."

Madame Merle dropped her eye on him a moment, during which her lips closed with a certain

She made no answer to this, but still presented her talkative grace to the room. "You're

unfathomable," she murmured at last. "I'm frightened at the abyss into which I shall have cast her."

Madame Merle remained silent and he changed his place again; but when she rose to go he also

took leave. Mrs. Touchett's victoria was awaiting her guest in the court, and after he had helped his friend

into it he stood there detaining her. "You're very indiscreet," she said rather wearily; you shouldn't have

He had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his forehead. "I always forget; I'm out of the

"You're quite unfathomable," she repeated, glancing up at the windows of the house, a modern

He paid no heed to this remark, but spoke in his own sense. "She's really very charming. I've

"It does me good to hear you say that. The better you like her the better for me."

"I like her very much. She's all you described her, and into the bargain capable, I feel, of great

Madame Merle leaned back, looking straight before her; then she spoke to the coachman. But her

I may not attempt to report in its fulness our young woman's response to the deep appeal of Rome,

to analyze her feelings as she trod the pavement of the Forum or to number her pulsations as she crossed the

threshold of Saint Peter's. It is enough to say that her impression was such as might have been expected of a

person of her freshness and her eagerness. She had always been fond of history, and here was history in the

stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine. She had an imagination that kindled at the mention of great

deeds, and wherever she turned some great deed had been acted. These things strongly moved her, but moved

her all inwardly. It seemed to her companions that she talked less than usual, and Ralph Touchett, when he

appeared to be looking listlessly and awkwardly over her head, was really dropping on her an intensity of

observation. By her own measure she was very happy; she would even have been willing to take these hours

for the happiest she was ever to know. The sense of the terrible human past was heavy to her, but that of

something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue. Her

consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her, and she

went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked at a great deal more

than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said,

confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn

places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy

niches had lost its chill and doubled its music. On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on

bundles of flowers. Our friends had gone one afternoon it was the third of their stay to look at the latest

excavations in the Forum, these labours having been for some time previous largely extended. They had

descended from the modern street to the level of the Sacred Way, along which they wandered with a

reverence of step which was not the same on the part of each. Henrietta Stackpole was struck with the fact

that ancient Rome had been paved a good deal like New York, and even found an analogy between the deep

chariotruts traceable in the antique street and the overjangled iron grooves which express the intensity of

American life. The sun had begun to sink, the air was a golden haze, and the long shadows of broken column

and vague pedestal leaned across the field of ruin. Henrietta wandered away with Mr. Bantling, whom it was

apparently delightful to her to hear speak of Julius Caesar as a "cheeky old boy," and Ralph addressed such

elucidations as he was prepared to offer to the attentive ear of our heroine. One of the humble archaeologists

who hover about the place had put himself at the disposal of the two, and repeated his lesson with a fluency

which the decline of the season had done nothing to impair. A process of digging was on view in a remote

corner of the Forum, and he presently remarked that if it should please the signori to go and watch it a little

they might see something of interest. The proposal commended itself more to Ralph than to Isabel, weary

with much wandering; so that she admonished her companion to satisfy his curiosity while she patiently

awaited his return. The hour and the place were much to her taste she should enjoy being briefly alone.

Ralph accordingly went off with the cicerone while Isabel sat down on a prostrate column near the

foundations of the Capitol. She wanted a short solitude, but she was not long to enjoy it. Keen as was her

interest in the rugged relics of the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion of

centuries had still left so much of individual life, her thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had

wandered, by a concatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to regions and objects charged

with a more active appeal. From the Roman past to Isabel Archer's future was a long stride, but her

imagination had taken it in a single flight and now hovered in slow circles over the nearer and richer field.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts, as she bent her eyes upon a row of cracked but not dislocated slabs

covering the ground at her feet, that she had not heard the sound of approaching footsteps before a shadow

was thrown across the line of her vision. She looked up and saw a gentleman a gentleman who was not

Ralph come back to say that the excavations were a bore. This personage was startled as she was startled; he

She looked about her to explain. "I'm alone, but my companions have just left me. My cousin's

"Ah yes; I see." And Lord Warburton's eyes wandered vaguely in the direction she had indicated.

He stood firmly before her now; he had recovered his balance and seemed to wish to show it, though very

kindly. "Don't let me disturb you," he went on, looking at her dejected pillar. "I'm afraid you're tired."

"Yes, I'm rather tired." She hesitated a moment, but sat down again. "Don't let me interrupt you,"

"Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do. I had no idea you were in Rome. I've just

"You've been making a long journey," said Isabel, who had learned from Ralph that Lord

"Yes, I came abroad for six months soon after I saw you last. I've been in Turkey and Asia

Minor; I came the other day from Athens." He managed not to be awkward, but he wasn't easy, and after a

longer look at the girl he came down to nature. "Do you wish me to leave you, or will you let me stay a

She took it all humanely. "I don't wish you to leave me, Lord Warburton; I'm very glad to see

The fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would have afforded a restingplace to several

persons, and there was plenty of room even for a highlydeveloped Englishman. This fine specimen of that

great class seated himself near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes he had asked her several

questions, taken rather at random and to which, as he put some of them twice over, he apparently somewhat

missed catching the answer; had given her too some information about himself which was not wasted upon

her calmer feminine sense. He repeated more than once that he had not expected to meet her, and it was

evident that the encounter touched him in a way that would have made preparation advisable. He began

abruptly to pass from the impunity of things to their solemnity, and from their being delightful to their being

impossible. He was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard had been burnished by the fire of Asia.

He was dressed in the loosefitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign lands is

wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes, his bronzed

complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his manly figure, his minimizing manner and his general air of being

a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of the British race as need not in any clime have

been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it. Isabel noted these things and was glad she had always

liked him. He had kept, evidently in spite of shocks, every one of his merits these properties partaking of the

essence of great decent houses, as one might put it; resembling their innermost fixtures and ornaments, not

subject to vulgar shifting and removable only by some whole breakup. They talked of the matters naturally

in order; her uncle's death, Ralph's state of health, the way she had passed her winter, her visit to Rome, her

return to Florence, her plans for the summer, the hotel she was staying at; and then of Lord Warburton's own

adventures, movements, intentions, impressions and present domicile. At last there was a silence, and it said

so much more than either had said that it scarce needed his final words. "I've written to you several times."

"I thought you wouldn't care for them," he went on with a simplicity that touched her. "It seemed

"I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped that that" But she

"I know what you're going to say. You hoped we should always remain good friends." This

formula, as Lord Warburton uttered it, was certainly flat enough; but then he was interested in making it

She found herself reduced simply to "Please don't talk of all that"; a speech which hardly struck

"I can't pretend to console you," said the girl, who, all still as she sat there, threw herself back with

a sort of inward triumph on the answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He was pleasant, he

was powerful, he was gallant; there was no better man than he. But her answer remained.

"It's very well you don't try to console me; it wouldn't be in your power," she heard him say

"I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you would attempt to make me feel I had

wronged you. But when you do that the pain's greater than the pleasure." And she got up with a small

"I don't want to make you feel that; of course I can't say that. I only just want you to know one or

two things in fairness to myself, as it were. I won't return to the subject again. I felt very strongly what I

expressed to you last year; I couldn't think of anything else. I tried to forget energetically, systematically. I

tried to take an interest in somebody else. I tell you this because I want you to know I did my duty. I didn't

succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad as far away as possible. They say travelling distracts the

mind, but it didn't distract mine. I've thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw you. I'm exactly the

same. I love you just as much, and everything I said to you then is just as true. This instant at which I speak

to you shows me again exactly how, to my great misfortune, you just insuperably charm me. There I can't

say less. I don't mean, however, to insist; it's only for a moment. I may add that when I came upon you a few

minutes since, without the smallest idea of seeing you, I was, upon my honour, in the very act of wishing I

knew where you were." He had recovered his selfcontrol, and while he spoke it became complete. He might

have been addressing a small committee making all quietly and clearly a statement of importance; aided by

an occasional look at a paper of notes concealed in his hat, which he had not again put on. And the

"I've often thought of you, Lord Warburton," Isabel answered. "You may be sure I shall always do

that." And she added in a tone of which she tried to keep up the kindness and keep down the meaning:

They walked along together, and she was prompt to ask about his sisters and request him to let

them know she had done so. He made for the moment no further reference to their great question, but dipped

again into shallower and safer waters. But he wished to know when she was to leave Rome, and on her

"Why do you say that if you yourself are only passing through?" she enquired with some anxiety.

"Ah, when I said I was passing through I didn't mean that one would treat Rome as if it were

His flushed smile, for a little, seemed to sound her. "You won't like that. You're afraid you'll see

"It doesn't matter what I like. I certainly can't expect you to leave this delightful place on my

They had gradually stopped and they stood a moment face to face. "Poor Lord Warburton!" she

"If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it." At this she walked in advance and

He hesitated. "To tell you again" But he checked himself. "I'll keep it down. I'll keep it down

Ralph Touchett had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss Stackpole and her attendant,

and these three now emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and

came into sight of Isabel and her companion. Poor Ralph hailed his friend with joy qualified by wonder, and

Henrietta exclaimed in a high voice "Gracious, there's that lord!" Ralph and his English neighbour greeted

with the austerity with which, after long separation, English neighbours greet, and Miss Stackpole rested her

large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt traveller. But she soon established her relation to the crisis. "I don't

"Indeed I do remember you," said Lord Warburton. "I asked you to come and see me, and you

Lord Warburton, for all his hilarity, seemed sure enough. Mr. Bantling had stood by without

claiming a recognition, but he now took occasion to nod to his lordship, who answered him with a friendly

"Ah, I'm afraid Bantling was ashamed of me," Lord Warburton laughed again. Isabel took pleasure

in that note; she gave a small sigh of relief as they kept their course homeward.

The next day was Sunday; she spent her morning over two long letters one to her sister Lily, the

other to Madame Merle; but in neither of these epistles did she mention the fact that a rejected suitor had

threatened her with another appeal. Of a Sunday afternoon all good Romans (and the best Romans are often

the northern barbarians) follow the custom of going to vespers at Saint Peter's; and it had been agreed among

our friends that they would drive together to the great church. After lunch, an hour before the carriage came,

Lord Warburton presented himself at the Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the two ladies, Ralph Touchett and

Mr. Bantling having gone out together. The visitor seemed to have wished to give Isabel a proof of his

intention to keep the promise made her the evening before; he was both discreet and frank not even dumbly

importunate or remotely intense. He thus left her to judge what a mere good friend he could be. He talked

about his travels, about Persia, about Turkey, and when Miss Stackpole asked him whether it would "pay" for

her to visit those countries assured her they offered a great field to female enterprise. Isabel did him justice,

but she wondered what his purpose was and what he expected to gain even by proving the superior strain of

his sincerity. If he expected to melt her by showing what a good fellow he was, he might spare himself the

trouble. She knew the superior strain of everything about him, and nothing he could now do was required to

light the view. Moreover his being in Rome at all affected her as a complication of the wrong sort she liked

so complications of the right. Nevertheless, when, on bringing his call to a close, he said he too should be at

Saint Peter's and should look out for her and her friends, she was obliged to reply that he must follow his

In the church, as she strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the first person she encountered. She

had not been one of the superior tourists who are "disappointed" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller than its

fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at the entrance, the

first time she found herself beneath the fararching dome and saw the light drizzle down through the air

thickened with incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic and bronze, her conception of

greatness rose and dizzily rose. After this it never lacked space to soar. She gazed and wondered like a child

or a peasant, she paid her silent tribute to the seated sublime. Lord Warburton walked beside her and talked of

Saint Sophia of Constantinople; she feared for instance that he would end by calling attention to his

exemplary conduct. The service had not yet begun, but at Saint Peter's there is much to observe, and as there

is something almost profane in the vastness of the place, which seems meant as much for physical as for

spiritual exercise, the different figures and groups, the mingled worshippers and spectators, may follow their

various intentions without conflict or scandal. In that splendid immensity individual indiscretion carries but a

short distance. Isabel and her companions, however, were guilty of none; for though Henrietta was obliged in

candour to declare that Michael Angelo's dome suffered by comparison with that of the Capitol at

Washington, she addressed her protest chiefly to Mr. Bantling's ear and reserved it in its more accentuated

form for the columns of the Interviewer. Isabel made the circuit of the church with his lordship, and as they

drew near the choir on the left of the entrance the voices of the Pope's singers were borne to them over the

heads of the large number of persons clustered outside the doors. They paused a while on the skirts of this

crowd, composed in equal measure of Roman cockneys and inquisitive strangers, and while they stood there

the sacred concert went forward. Ralph, with Henrietta and Mr. Bantling, was apparently within, where

Isabel, looking behind the dense group in front of her, saw the afternoon light, silvered by clouds of incense

that seemed to mingle with the splendid chant, slope through the embossed recesses of high windows. After a

while the singing stopped and then Lord Warburton seemed disposed to move off with her. Isabel could only

accompany him; whereupon she found herself confronted with Gilbert Osmond, who appeared to have been

standing at a short distance behind her. He now approached with all the forms he appeared to have

"Yes, I came last night and called this afternoon at your hotel. They told me you had come here,

She looked away; Lord Warburton was watching them; perhaps he had heard this. Suddenly she

remembered it to be just what he had said to her the morning he came to Gardencourt to ask her to marry him.

Mr. Osmond's words had brought the colour to her cheek, and this reminiscence had not the effect of

dispelling it. She repaired any betrayal by mentioning to each companion the name of the other, and

fortunately at this moment Mr. Bantling emerged from the choir, cleaving the crowd with British valour and

followed by Miss Stackpole and Ralph Touchett. I say fortunately, because this is perhaps a superficial view

of the matter; since on perceiving the gentleman from Florence Ralph Touchett appeared to take the case as

not committing him to joy. He didn't hang back, however, from civility, and presently observed to Isabel,

with due benevolence, that she would soon have all her friends about her. Miss Stackpole had met Mr.

Osmond in Florence, but she had already found occasion to say to Isabel that she liked him no better than her

other admirers than Mr. Touchett and Lord Warburton, and even than little Mr. Rosier in Paris. "I don't

know what it's in you," she had been pleased to remark, "but for a nicegirl you do attract the most unnatural

people. Mr. Goodwood's the only one I've any respect for, and he's just the one you don't appreciate."

"What's your opinion of Saint Peter's?" Mr. Osmond was meanwhile enquiring of our young lady.

"Isn't that the right way to feel in the greatest of human temples?" she asked with rather a liking for

"I suppose it's the right way to feel everywhere, when one is nobody. But I like it in a church as

"You ought indeed to be a Pope!" Isabel exclaimed, remembering something he had referred to in

Lord Warburton meanwhile had joined Ralph Touchett, and the two strolled away together.

"Nothing at all. Oh yes, he's an American; but one forgets that he's so little of one."

"Yes," said Lord Warburton after an instant; "I suppose that's what I horribly mean."

His lordship stared a moment, but apprehended. "Then we must be perfectly quiet?"

Lord Warburton took this at first in silence, but he spoke again. "Is he awfully clever?"

Ralph took him by the arm to turn him: they had to rejoin the others. "She wants nothing that we

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, illlighted 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 recognized. 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

"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely and want company,"

"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."

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 keenlyglancing, quicklymoving, 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 goodnight 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

"What's the character of that gentleman?" Osmond asked of Isabel after he had retired.

"He owns about half England; that's his character," Henrietta remarked. "That's what they call a

"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

"It seems to me you own a human being or two," Mr. Bantling suggested jocosely. "I wonder if

"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

"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to you over something

"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?" Osmond went on, questioning Isabel.

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

"As good as he's goodlooking do you mean? He's very goodlooking. How detestably fortunate!

to be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to

Isabel considered him with interest. "You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it

"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to destroy the people I only

"I should love it but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why" Osmond reverted "do you

"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

"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as if the idea were

"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 twentyfour 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

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."

Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: "Some day after you're married."

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

"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

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 oldtime 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 goodhumour 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 meadowflowers 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

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 fertilizing 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 sittingroom 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 railwaycarriages 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 tissuepaper 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

"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

She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the paperknife. "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

"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

She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world is bad, is stupid art."

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 an imagination that startles one!"

"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries I want most to see. Can't you

"You've a better excuse the means of going. You're quite wrong in your theory that I laugh at

"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should have the means to travel

"The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond. "Besides," he added as if it

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;

"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things one likes is often very

"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

"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when I'm tired," Isabel added

"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes that I can believe, though I've never seen it. But I'm

"You don't lose it you find it, and that must be beautiful." Osmond spoke with a noble

"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,"

"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.

"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

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

"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 we're separating that I leave

"I don't at all know you," she added abruptly; and then she coloured as she heard herself saying

"No, no," she emphatically answered "there you're not sincere. You're not easy to know; no one

"Well," he laughed, "I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast, but I do."

"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had better go. Goodnight."

"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."

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

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 patronizing. You say you don't know me, but

"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."

"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

"It will be a great pleasure to me to go," Isabel answered. "I'll tell her what you say. Once more

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

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

"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

That personage finely meditated. "After all, why should we both go; having, each of us, so much to

"I don't know about your going alone to the house of a handsome bachelor. He has been married

"You're right," Madame Merle audibly reflected. "I really think you wish to be kind to the child."

"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have come if you hadn't. Or rather,"

As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding way which led to Mr.

Osmond's hilltop, 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 drawingroom; 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 wideeyed

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 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 allknowing. Was the extremity of

her candour but the perfection of selfconsciousness? 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 halfdarkened, 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

"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 ofof 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 today 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 belltowers. I practice 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 slatepencil 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 goodbye, 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 musicstool; 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

"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.

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 springtime, 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 lightminded 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

figurepieces; 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 maidenaunt. 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 touristage; 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

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 sisterinlaw 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 eveningparties. 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 Isabelto 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

anticlimax 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

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 streetlamps, 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 apologize 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 ladyinwaiting 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 viewa

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 civilized

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 highwatermark 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 declinethere being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary

affection, in other words, was impossibleit 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,

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 herthat was the interesting issue. It could be nothing in the least soothingshe 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 olderever 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

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 moreto say at the end of a minute: "I can't tell you how I hoped you

"I've no doubt of that." And he looked about him for a seat. Not only had he come, but he meant to

"You must be very tired," said Isabel, seating herself, and generously, as she thought, to give him

"Last night, very late; in a kind of snailtrain they call the express. These Italian trains go at about

"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

"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I could! he candidly declared.

"That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a real conviction. "If you're not happy

"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 pinpricks. 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

"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

"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had got your letter."

"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me," Isabel declared, trying to smile

Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. "I guess she'll come right out," he said.

Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last, raising them, "Does she

"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 personan old

He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions, doing it quite without

"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,

"Why should he go back?" Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. "He has no profession."

"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simplehe contents himself with Italy."

"With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and no appearance of trying

"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

"Of course not," said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air of stiff helplessness, as if not

"You see how little you gain," she accordingly broke out"how little comfort or satisfaction I can

"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later we should have been sure to meet,

"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in order to help you to resign

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

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

torights, 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 selfcontrol. 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

"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner that I pretty well

She considered this an instant. "No one can be more surprised than myself at my present

"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,

"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done. There's no mistake whatever."

"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?" she asked with a certain fierceness.

"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

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."

"How little you make of these terrible journeys," she felt the poverty of her presently replying.

"If you're afraid I'm knocked upin any such way as thatyou may be at your ease about it." He

turned away, this time in earnest, and no handshake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them. At the

door he stopped with his hand on the knob. "I shall leave Florence tomorrow," he said without a quaver.

"I'm delighted to hear it!" she answered passionately. Five minutes after he had gone out she burst

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

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 drawingroom before the midday breakfast, and then she began.

Mrs. Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely: "You needn't tell me; I know

"The same way that I know when the window's openby feeling a draught. You're going to marry

"I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the principal thing he's known by?"

"If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement you're greatly

"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman 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.

Mrs. Touchett gave a sharp nod. "I think he must, after all, to have made you like him so much."

"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this that you refused Lord

"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.

"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings, you should know."

"What you will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as they go into partnershipto

"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

Isabel hesitated a little. "I think I value everything that's valuable. I care very much for money, and

"His name's good enough for me," the girl went on. "It's a very pretty name. Have I such a fine one

"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen American names. Do you

"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

"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of intelligence. I saw it coming,

"It was not considerateit was convenient," said Mrs. Touchett. "But I shall talk to Madame

"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good friend to me."

"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your engagement."

"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

"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me she was watching you

"She said that to please you," the girl answered; conscious, however, of the inadequacy of the

"I don't think you're ever much pleased," Isabel was obliged to reply. "If Madame Merle knew you

"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you were marching away, and she

"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and even if she had given

Mrs. Touchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained her gaze rather than

"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

"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it, and he argued the other

"He did it for the sake of argument," the girl smiled. "You don't accuse him of having deceived

"I'm glad of that!" cried Isabel gaily. "I wish very much," she presently added, "that when he

"Of course I'll mention it," said Mrs. Touchett. "I shall say nothing more to you about it, but I give

"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the announcement should come from you

"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 friendan 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

"He spends but twentyfour hours in Florence?" Mrs. Touchett cried. "He's an American

"He is indeed," said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what Caspar Goodwood had done

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 today, 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 loosejointed; 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 invalidthe 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

essencea 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

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 privilegeit would be indeed his natural lineto 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 criticize 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 criticize 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 knewor rather he supposedthat 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

One morning, on her return from her drive, some halfhour 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 Terpsichorea 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 fatherthe 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.

"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your engagement."

"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me wanting in good manners. I've

"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.

"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

"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

"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 an idea, all winter,

while I read your delightful letters, that you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put

"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?"

"Well, for a little more light," said Ralph with rather an absurd smile, while his hands found their

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,

'Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike'? I'm willing to wound him, yesbut 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."

She stroked out her long gloves again. "I know you've a great affection for me. I can't get rid of

"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince you how intensely I want you

There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. "I trust you, but I don't trust

She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. "You've said it now, and I'm glad you've

"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

"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I had a negative. I didn't think

"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."

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."

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

Isabel waited a littlethen she went on with majesty. "In everything that makes one care for people

Mr. Osmond is preeminent. 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

"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me to be soaring far up

in the blueto be, sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded

rosebuda missile that should never have reached youand straight you drop to the ground. It hurts me," said

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 careerI don't understand that.

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 aa person she likes," said poor

"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticize, 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 somehowwell, 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

"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that," said Isabel. "It makes one more

Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone. "Yes, but everything is relative;

one ought to feel one's relation to thingsto others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."

"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,

"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride. But have you ever seen such a

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 wayyou were meant for something better than to keep guard

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.

Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden wish to strike him off. "Ah

"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph quickly, forcing a smile and feeling that in that

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 itbut 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 importantno, 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 largeit'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 saidI may just answer you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary

marriagewhat they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one ambitionto 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 today.

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 mana 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 oneyou 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 mannera 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 advantagesno 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 manhe'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 impressionthe 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 be 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 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 elationabsolutely and

perversely of gratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct clearer to her. "Shall you

"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

Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets followed her with his eyes; then the lurking

chill of the highwalled court struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast

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 beforefrom 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 allthat was what it really meantbecause 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

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

selfconscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of selfcontrol. 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 appearancewhich presented indeed no

difficultyof 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 literallythat 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 onea 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

"Are you speaking of my auntof 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 thingfor your not

having the shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask nothing thinkI'm not even capable

perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so concerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin

today, 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 yourswhether 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 suspectthat 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

denybrighter 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 uswhat a long summer afternoon awaits us. It's the

latter half of an Italian daywith 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 today. Upon my honour,

I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've got what we liketo 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 wellseasoned. We've

my poor child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's all soft and mellowit has the

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 needa 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

He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the CascinePansy 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 themPansy 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

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.

"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 longerto 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

innocenceher 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

"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

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 sistersinlaw. Calling at Casa Touchett the visitor had not

found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been ushered into the Countess's drawingroom 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.

"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 heor 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 agitationtoday

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."

"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 papahe 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

"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 suggestor what penalties for nonperformance 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 carethrough being so cleverfor 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 lampshadesI 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 brilliantyou know that's the way you're always spoken of;

you're an heiress and very goodlooking 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

distinguishedshe 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 forto 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!"

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 drawingroom and requested the favour of his name. "Mr. Edward Rosier,"

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 partedthe 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 Dresdenchina 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 drawingroom,

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 knickknacks 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

His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. "You've some very good things."

"I love my things," said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his recognitions. "But it's not

He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: "I care more for Miss Osmond than for all the

She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large white hand. "A man in

"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 timereally never so much. I should like particularly to know

what you think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Osmond I'm notwell, a real collector's piece."

"Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms folded and her handsome

"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 offhand way that I

"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 lefthand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression

But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently strenuous. "Ah, I thought you

"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyze. Pardon me if I seem patronizing, 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

"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

"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves her as if she were her own

"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor child," said Madame Merle.

"Never!" cried Rosier, lifting his neatlygloved hand. "Never till I've assured myself of those of

"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

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 heronly to agitate her; I love her too much for that," said Ned Rosier.

"You were very clever," Madame Merle returned more dryly. "When I say I can help you I mean

"I'm awfully decent, you know," said Rosier earnestly. "I won't say I've no faults, but I'll say I've

"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 fortuneabout forty thousand francs a year. With the talent I have for

Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. "It wouldn't be famous; you'd have to make use of the

"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 affordwell, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but

"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

Rosier scarce demurred. "I don't in the least desire that he should. But I may remark, all the same,

"For a lovesick swain you have your eyes about you!" Madame Merle exclaimed with a laugh.

"Mrs. Osmond," Madame Merle went on, "will probably prefer to keep her money for her own

"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six months after his birth.

"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

"Pardon me, I think it may be," said Rosier quite lucidly. "You'll be a touching couple, living on

"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

"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

"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find out for you."

"Gardezvousen bien!" And Madame Merle was on her feet. "Don't set her going, or you'll spoil

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

"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

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

"No, but you should consider her. You say you're an old friend. Would you make her suffer?"

"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few soundings."

"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

Madame Merle gave a short laugh. "It has been said before. But his wife isn't easy either."

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 rashhe 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 likelythough she had appeared to

say it in jokeshe 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.

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 wellregulated 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 liveda 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, noblyarched 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, richlooking receptionrooms, which were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these

people were very strong in "good things." It was a taste of Osmond's ownnot 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

doctrinethe 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

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 satthough she was not in her most customary place

tonightand that a circle of more special intimates gathered about the fire. The room was flushed with

subdued, diffused brightness; it contained the larger things andalmost alwaysan 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

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

Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his bootsole, "I don't care a fig

Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. "You're not thinking of parting with aa

"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Rosier," said Osmond, with his eyes still

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 recognize. 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 exceptionshe 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.

"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in tender reminiscences. I

"Ah, please, what young lady?" Rosier was immensely obliging; but this was not what he had

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 be doesn't like dull people."

"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple truth is I'm dying to have a little

Five minutes later, while he handed a teacup 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 becamecomparatively speakingreckless; 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 companionPansy was as

fond as ever of making teapresently 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 itvery 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 ownsome of which indeed were happy enough. "No, she's uniqueshe'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 oldfashioned. 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 hima 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 ofa 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 fillewhat 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

himyes; 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

rosecolour 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 stooda 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 authorized 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 frightenedtoo 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

"Certainly, you may go," said Pansy; "and if you like I'll show you." She was not in the least

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 for summer," she said. "It's papa's taste;

He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He looked about him; he hardly

"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature," said Pansy"and for conversation. But papa

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

"To see you; that's what I come for," Rosier repeated, feeling the intoxication of a rupture with

Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not needed to make her face

"You don't offend me," the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel had kissed her.

They had walked to the chimneypiece 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 himshe had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! She was

readyshe 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

She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. "Did you say papa knows?"

"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

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 around 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 twothey always paid, in public, a certain formal

tribute to the commonplaceand then Madame Merle, whose eyes had been wandering, asked if little Mr.

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 morewhich is exactly what I don't want. Tell him I

"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this evening; I was rude to him on

"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explainwhich 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

Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. "He's a gentleman, he has a charming

"It's misery'genteel' misery," Osmond broke in. "It's not what I've dreamed of for Pansy."

"Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't suppose you consider that that

"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has thought of 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 familiarlyhis long, fine forefinger and thumb could make a ring for itand 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 thisthat when

"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 blanklooking 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.

Her companion never turned his head. "So much for your belief in his promises. He ought to be

Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. "It doesn't matter," he murmured,

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

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.

"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come and see me tomorrow at

a quarter past five." She was severe, and in the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a

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 knowwhen you

Poor Rosier gazed at her halfpleadingly, halfangrily; 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

"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."

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 herthe only point that would now justify a low view of

"I referred to Mr. Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago," he began. "But you must

She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: "It's not that I won't; I simply can't!" Her

"If you could, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save as an angel."

"The inducement's great," said Isabel gravelyinscrutably, 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.

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

itselfit 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 Mad 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

"He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy. Ah, he doesn't like it at all," said Madame Merle.

"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the house, for the next month, as

"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

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.

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 youto the

effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes to you."

"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to Madame Merle?"

"I asked her for an opinionfor nothing more. I did so because she had seemed to me to know you

"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,

"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't marry a man who loves her

"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves"and Osmond looked up

"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping his eyes to his

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

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

gentlemana strangerhad 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

"You apparently don't recognize me," he said with a smile that expressed more than Osmond's.

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 greetinghe was too

righteously indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your husband's awfully coldblooded."

She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. "You can't expect every one to be as hot

"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his daughter?"

"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

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

"She has not given you up," Isabel said in a low tone and without looking at him.

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

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.

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

"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

"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 goodbye?" his

"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Romeso sorry that, somehow or other, it

became almost a dismal memory, and I've never cared to come back till today. 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

"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

"I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had already, with her rare capacity for such

"Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared to think his duties as a host

now terminatedhe 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 naturala 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

"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

"Ah well, for meit'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 sawor believed she sawthat 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

"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 aa little more formal. That's why I hesitatedlike an awkward

"I'm as fond of Ralph as ever," Isabel answered. "But why has he come to Rome?" The declaration

"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 itneither

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 aswhat

do you call it in America? 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

He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his words. "I don't mean I

thought so tonight. On the contrary, today, in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our

reaching Romehe's very fond of Rome, you knowgave 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 myself," her visitor

"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

"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 Gothssays I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, every sign of the brute.

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 subjecthe

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 goodnatured 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 acquaintancesince 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 apologize

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

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."

"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."

"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small ways a certain initiative. I should

"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady in the blue dress. She has a

"In a momentwith 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."

"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't gone in for that."

"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, risingafter 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 teatable. He

pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with

"They won't hear if you continue to look that way; as if your only thought in life was the wish the

"It has just been filled; the servants never know!"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

"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean what I say to you."

"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he forbade me to marry

She raised the lid of the teapot, gazing into this vessel for a moment; then she dropped six words

She was silent a little; she handed a teacup to a servant. "Please don't talk any more."

"I wish you'd wait a little," said the girl in a voice just distinct enough to betray a quaver.

She hesitated again. "I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help us." It was in this manner that she

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 curtseyit was still her little curtsey of the conventto the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond

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 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 differencethe 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 himselfthere 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 indulgedperhaps a trifle too freelyher 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

marriedit 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 newspaperwoman, 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 funnywhich 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

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 bankan 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 minimize 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 irritationMadame 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 hilltop 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 eventshe 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

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 saidit 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 criticize, nothing even to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs.

Osmond. Ralph, in all this, recognized 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 exaggerationsshe who used to care so much for the pure truth; and

whereas of old she had a great delight in goodhumoured 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 humanhearted Isabel, what perversity had bitten her? Her light step drew a

mas 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

He recognized Osmond, as I say; he recognized 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 tantalize 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

originalitythis 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 neverto his own sensebeen 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 posepose 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 hilltop 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

theoryeven the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this period the husband of the woman he

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 illit 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 jealoushe had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But he

made Isabel pay for her oldtime 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 chairalmost 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 husbandor 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 emotionthe excitement of wondering in what

state she should find himthat Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after Lord Warburton had notified her

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

"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa, all shamelessly.

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

"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 plainsto be snatched away, like

"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

"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

"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."

"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

"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here a while."

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 recognized place in their

attention, and even after their arrival in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same

"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," Lord Warburton went on, abruptly,

"I've not told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go with me to Catania.

"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to mind his likings. They're his

"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the explosion. Osmond

"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and then I thought it my duty

"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers!" Lord Warburton began with a smile. But he saw

"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 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

"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

"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."

"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 itwhat she has doneand she knows it. She'll

"Permit me to ask," Ralph went on, "whether it's to bring out the fact that you don't mean to make

Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire, looking at it hard. "Does

"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of that age has pleased me more."

"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how cheeredup old Osmond will be!"

His companion frowned. "I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose for his daughter to please him."

"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

Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general axiomshe was thinking

"Very truevery true." And Ralph slowly got up. "It's an interesting questionhow 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 veryvery sure. The deuce!" he broke off. "I don't know how to say it."

"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's merits her beingaso near her

"Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton angrily, "for what do you take me?"

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 emptythis 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 selfcontrol her

highlycultivated 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 itas 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

suddenlyperceived 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 nowadays 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 thatof 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 shewould she beof use to others in periods of refined

embarrassment? The best way to profit by her friendthis indeed Isabel had always thoughtwas to imitate

her, to be as firm and bright as she. She recognized 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 detachedpushing 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 notewas apt, in the vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had

never admitted this chargehad 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 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

"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 today, 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 jealousthat's the form it

would takeI 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 ofIsabel

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

"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 today. 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 relaxationfor a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much; it seems to bring her back. She'll

Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too latetoo 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 irritatingthere was almost an air of mockeryin her neat discriminations and clear convictions. In

Isabel's mind today 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

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 resolutionsmany of them of an elevated character; but at no period had they flourished

(in the privacy of her heart) more richly than today. 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 justicenot to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate

Madame Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revengeespecially 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 itjust 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

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

Pansyit 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 presencelike a small hand in her own; on Pansy's part it was

more than an affectionit 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 muchso

extraordinarily muchto 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 creatureit 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 herthis 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

troublea 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 wistfullyan 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 partsthe heat of ballrooms, 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

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 drawingroom, the

one she herself usually occupied, the second in order from the large antechamber 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 drawingroom 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,

"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I waited for you,"

"I've told you that before," Isabel said"that it takes something extraordinary to bring you to this

"And you know what I've told you; that whether I come or whether I stay away, I've always the

"Ah," Isabel answered, "the profundity of your motives, that's the last thing I doubt!"

"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 today; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of

"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I suppose. At any rate, whether

"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a week, to talk about

"Ah," said Isabel, "for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me dry, I wonder what he

"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."

"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 pockethandkerchiefthe 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;

"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 loveaffairs 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

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'tyou'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

"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him know that he's not

"Ah yes," said Madame Merle, "I forgot thatthough 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

"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

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

"Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord Warburton's falling in love with

"It's truethere's nothing impossible," she returned at last, gravely and more gently.

"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course," Madame Merle added, "you've had

"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 meanMr. Rosier means?"

"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know that he's charmed with

"And you've never told Osmond?" This observation was immediate, precipitate; it almost burst

Isabel's eyes rested on her. "I suppose he'll know in time; Lord Warburton has a tongue and knows

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."

"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really very kind of him."

"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

"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."

"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

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

"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially," said Madame Merle in a moment, "if you make

"You might have done far as opportunity wentwhen we were by way of being confidential with

Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But she didn't admit it

nowperhaps because she wished not to appear to exult in it. "You seem to have had an excellent informant

"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.

Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very late into the

drawingroom, 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 herpartly from impulse and partly by theoryfor some form of positive exertion.

She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of diseaseof suffering as opposed to

doing. To "do"it hardly mattered whatwould 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 shouldbeing what he was; but there was no accounting for such

impressions. Pansy might captivate any oneany 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 today 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

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

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,

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 deprecationsince 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. Rosierespecially 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 interestinghe had told her all about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the rightest and

easiestIsabel noticed that for herself, as she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a

patronizing 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 kindhe 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 gristtax, 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 herthe idea of

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 interposeda sense that

she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawingroom, 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 pronouncedalways mentallythat 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 selfdefence, 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 cautionlearned 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

"I don't call it anything," said Isabel; "I've waited for you to give it a name."

"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?"

"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

"Noit's not good." She pushed away the book she had been reading and took up the band of

"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

oppositionthat 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

"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these days. I know he was an old

"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

"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

"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit perfectly quiet to become Lady

"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 recognize 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 herall 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

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

"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

"Pansy would like to be a great lady," he remarked in a moment with a certain tenderness of tone.

"He has spokento me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to him to believe she could

Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first chance that has offered."

She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to her. "I beg your pardon;

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

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 goodwill 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

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 drawingroom, 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 Warburtonthis 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 Pansya 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

somethingsomething 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

ownwas this the service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty with which she found

herself confrontedfrom 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

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 dreamedan opposition in which the vital principle of

the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It was not her faultshe 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 husbandthis 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, howeverthat no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there

were times when she thought he enjoyed it. It had come graduallyit 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 nothingthat 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, herselfshe

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 illwill 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 nowshe 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

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 herhe

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 noblethat was what had interested her and seemed to

give her opportunity. There had been an indefinable beauty about himin 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 herselfa 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 strainthe happiness of a woman who felt

that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her money, as she saw today, 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 portionin that there would be

delicacy for her as well. There would be less for himthat 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 hera 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 finestin the sense of being the subtlestmanly 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 almostit 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 itit 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 ithe 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 opinionsnone 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 thingher 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 himselfwith the door closed behind, as it wereset 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 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

goodnature, 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 sheespecially 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, ignoble world, it appeared, was after all what one was to live for; one was to keep it for ever 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

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

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 herdid he think of herthat 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 hisattached to his own like a small gardenplot to a

deerpark. 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 farreaching. 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 parloura scorn that kept its freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint

of her sisterinlaw: 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 traditionsit 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 thingsthis 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

comingwhat was before them? That was her constant question. What would he dowhat 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 burnedout 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 cousinhe 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 clockface; 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

roomwhich 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 heartthere 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 today 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 himit 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 Osmondquite 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 arranging screens. It lived before her againit had never had time to diethat

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 intelligentto 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 had 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

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 postoffice? 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

visionthat of her husband and Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.

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; was not of a generalizing 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

"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Osmond!" Rosier exclaimed with his glass in one eye,

"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I wish to show her that I believe

"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

"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 farquite into the days of our

"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

"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

"Very good; I see. You pity methat'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

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 recognizable, if not in romantic form, was the most affecting thing in the worldyoung 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

"It will depend on what you call life!" Mr. Rosier effectively said. "She won't enjoy being

"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming back to me," Isabel added,

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 recognized. 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 goodevening; 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

He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. "She sees me, but she won't notice

"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She dances very hard, and you'll

"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 goodnature, 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;

"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen oughtn't to waltz."

"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like a piece of kindnessas 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."

"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 tonight. Will you absolutely not dance?"

"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

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

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 goodwill 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 connecteda 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 the less impossible. The

sooner he should get back into right relations with things the better. He immediately began to talk to

Pansyon 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

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

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

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

"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to write, you know. But I shall send it

"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

"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner where we may sit down and

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

"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 fora 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 ballroom 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 ballroom 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.

"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

"What's the matter with him?" Lord Warburton enquired. "He seems very harmless."

Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account of Edward Rosier. "Dear

"Oh, I see." And Lord Warburton paused a moment. "How much money has he got?" he then

"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

"He doesn't look much more than twelve today," Lord Warburton rejoined vaguely, looking about

"Wherever you please." The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a subdued, rosecoloured

"He seems to me rather illtreated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered what ailed him."

Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. "A rival! Do you call him my rival?"

"I like you, however that may be, for putting yourself 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

"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you suppose one could do for

"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine that yourself," Isabel said.

He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. "Well then, I don't understand you. You don't

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?"

"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her

"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

"No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don't know who should

Isabel shook her head. "You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that's not how

"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could

"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw for them."

"Ah, really in lovereally in love!" Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his

head and stretching himself a little. "You must remember that I'm fortytwo years old. I won't pretend I'm as

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 accountthat 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 stepdaughter 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

"My dear Lord Warburton," she said, smiling, "you may do, as far as I'm concerned, whatever

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 awayall 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

ballroom, she found Edward Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. "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

The Countess Gemini was often extremely boredbored, 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 Romenot 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 sisterinlaw 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 herthat

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 sisterinlaw 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 onesthe really

clever onesalways 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 fireworks, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but

she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sisterinlaw 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

speciesa 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 awayin small pieces, like a frosted weddingcake. 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 thoughtsif any of the Countess's thoughts were

seriousof 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

Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the card of a visitora card

with the simple superscription "Henrietta C. Stackpole." The Countess pressed her fingertips 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 recognize 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 encounteredthat is the

only modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognized Miss Stackpole

immediately, the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was

thoroughly goodnatured, 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 motherwhether 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

placechiefly in distant countriesin 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 laurelwreath 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 businesslike 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

"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

"It was about the position of woman in this city," Miss Stackpole remarked. "You threw a good

"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And you wrote it down and

"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like," Henrietta said. "I didn't mention your name; I

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 brotherI 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

"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

"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think what I knew about you."

quite willing to be known by that," Henrietta declared. "But that isn't what your brother likes to

"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you by name as my

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 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

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

"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't my brother like you?" the

"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

"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for." "Dear me, what a tiresome

"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

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."

"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited meI'm to stay in the house!" And the

Countess smiled almost fiercely; her exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's

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

"Rome's very good just now," said the Countess; "there are all sorts of brilliant people. Did you

"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."

"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

"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 stillshe 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."

"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?" Henrietta enquired with unprecedented

The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: "It's certain all the nice men do it. Get

"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 guiltyguilty?" And she paused a little, choosing

"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 scandalized."

"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 Isabelin

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.

"Ah, she may not tell methat's what I'm afraid of!" "Well, if Osmond isn't amusing himselfin his

"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

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

"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

Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an eagerlooking 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

"She's very happyshe'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 sheI'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

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

"Never mind," the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: only describe me in the

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 brightfaced 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 pocketbook, 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 Tribunethe 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 sceneshe 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

"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

He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. "I shall be very glad to hear what you wish to

"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

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

"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio," said Henrietta. "I came up on purpose to have a look at

"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't remember picturesespecially that

sort." She had pointed out her favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk

"No," said Henrietta, it's about something less harmonious!" They the small, brilliant room, a

splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus. "I

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

"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, indeedit seems a good timethat 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

"Yes, I amsome. I want you to consider whether it's better on the whole that you should go to

"I thought you were going to say that!" he answered rather artlessly. "You have considered it

"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise I shouldn't have come so far

"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you were so much

"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about in Paris."

"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

"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest," said Caspar Goodwood. "I shall

"Most women always are," said Henrietta with conscientious evasiveness and generalizing less

hopefully than usual. "If you go to Rome," she added, "I hope you'll be a true friendnot a selfish one!" And

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

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

"Just as you please. I shall see for myself," he said. Then inconsistently, for him, "You've heard

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 reflectionswhich show how widely different, in

effect, his illhumour was from Gilbert Osmond's. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would have

liked to go alone, in the nighttrain. He hated the European railwaycarriages, 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 salooncar. But he couldn't take a nighttrain

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 railwaycarriage 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 tomorrow I'll go too, as I may be

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 actthe single sacred actof 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 today, 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

She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. "I want you to answer me a question. It's

"I think I guess your question," Ralph answered from his armchair, out of which his thin legs

"You're intimate with him," she said; "you've a great deal of observation of him."

"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar," said Ralph with an air of private

Ralph looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with mystification. "You say that as if

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

"That would be very tiresome." She spoke, as she flattered herself, with much subtlety.

"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 hervery properly. He has let me know, of course, that he thinks she

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

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

He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her selfpossession, 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;

"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss Osmond capable of giving

"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he'll let the matter drop."

"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 perhapsthe one she cares for. But Warburton isn't obliged to mind

"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 meritfor Pansyof being in love with Pansy. She can see at a glance that Lord Warburton isn't."

"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a word to disturb her. He

"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain satisfaction himself."

"It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton'san older friend, that is, than GilbertI

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

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

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 husbandhear 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 itto 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

coldblooded, 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

"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 daughternot mine." And

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 drylynot discouraginglyand 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

She blushed red and threw back her head. "You're not kind," she said in a voice that he had never

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 bedroom 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, heavilytimbered 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 taskthe 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

At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. "I think I should like your advice

"That's not as it should be," said Isabel coldly. "I love you very much, but your father loves you

"It isn't because you love meit's because you're a lady," Pansy answered with the air of saying

"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

Pansy stared, and then very quickly, "Will you do everything I want?" she asked.

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.

"Yes, it's impossible," said Pansy without a sigh and with the same extreme attention in her clear

"You must think of something else then," Isabel went on; but Pansy, sighing at this, told her that

"You think of those who think of you," she said with a faint smile. "I know Mr. Rosier thinks of

"He ought not to," said Isabel loftily. "Your father has expressly requested he shouldn't."

"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

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

"How do you mean betterif that would be good enough? And I have myself so little money; why

"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

The question was a terrible one, and Isabel took refuge in timorous vagueness. "To remember all

For a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she heard herself utter it in the

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

"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready to ask you."

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

"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean that he'll propose for me

Pansy shook her head with a little wise smile. "Lord Warburton won't propose simply to please

Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if she were in possession of a

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

selfrespect 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 saidin her embarrassment rather wide of the markthat he surely had been most

"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't wantwhat 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 wisdombegan almost to retreat before it. "You must tell your father

"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,"

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 retireda 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

Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for Isabel to pass. "I think Mr.

Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs. Osmond's drawingroom 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

"What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a tradesman with a

"I know nothing about him," Isabel said. "I saw him last Friday at the German ball. He 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

"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 drawingroom 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.

"Apparently he has forgotten it," said Osmond. "Be so good as to remind "Should you like me to

"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself! If you really wish hands laid

For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: "That won't be easy, with you

Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of looking at her through

halfclosed 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 recognize 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

"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

It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him beautiful. "How much you

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 hera 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

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

himthey 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

"He had better wait for warmer weather," Lord Warburton answered. "I shouldn't advise him to

He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see them againunless 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

themto 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 himhe 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 illmannered 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 admiredthat 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 goodbye? Not that he liked goodbyeshe always funked

them. When he left England the other day he hadn't said goodbye to a twolegged 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 wantedone 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

callingbut 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 occasionnot 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 soninlaw as he treated every onewith 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 gainnot 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 goodthat of not attempting. As he leaned back in his place, listening but vaguely to the other's

friendly offers and suppressed explanations if it were only proper to assume that they were addressed

essentially to his wifehe 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 leavetaker'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 goodbye 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 alonehe 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 nod with which, instead of a handshake, 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

It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend showed a certain vague

awkwardnesssitting 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."

"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come to Lockleigh once, and

"Not changed for the worse, surelyas far as we're concerned. To see you under my roof"and he

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 smilea smile

that Isabel knew, though his lordship probably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.

He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. "You ought to be very happyyou've got a

"I'm sure I shall be happy," said Pansy in the tone of a person whose certainties were always

"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should ever fail you,

rememberremember" 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

Isabel shook her head. "I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most your good friend."

"He told me just now to come to the drawingroom, and then he gave me a very kind kiss."

She recognized 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 drawingroom 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 knowso that I

"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not theretake 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

"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.

"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't mean he'll come from a

"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."

"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.

"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 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."

She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that this ceased to be a pain. He

was going downdown; 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 hearingto 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 methat I think was what you saidI 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.

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!"

"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 methat of a

"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

presumptuousthat 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."

"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.

"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another opportunity to try to

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 mg I some importance to Isabelthe 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 friendhis friendin 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 timethe 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, andto complete the metaphorhad 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, atshe 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

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 cottonfactory was not a compensation for anythingleast of all for having failed to

marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he hadsave of course his intrinsic

qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended

his businessthat, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion could take with himit 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 Bostonher

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 himnever 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 worldto 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 today 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 outsince he would make it out, as over a

falsified balancesheet or something of that sortthe 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

Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was much 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 superficialthe more so as the

years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously

criticized 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 railwaystations, 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 civilizations 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 recognized 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

"Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say it; she tried to say it as

"What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were enquiring into the operations

"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a mistake. You're too

"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

"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

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

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 sittingroom, 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 wrongit 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 objectionsall 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

"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 assbesides his being

the most illfavoured 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 doorhandles 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 penthe 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 meI 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

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 simplemore 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' daughtersor all

the farmers' daughters were chambermaidsshe 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 everythinga 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 geographyhad 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 recognize 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 palacecars; he was

always ordering icecream from the coloured man. He could never get used to that ideathat you could get

icecream 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

They didn't agree about that, but that was what she liked Versailles for, that you could see the

ancient rigime 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

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 forwhat 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 sidelight

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

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

lighthearted 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 portmanteauhe 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

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 visitalways under the conviction that they were great enemies.

"Oh yes, we're intimate enemies," Ralph used to say; and he accused her freelyas freely as the humour of it

would allowof 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 Isabela 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

viewRalph having amused himself with taking the ground that the genial exguardsman 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.

Osmonda 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

Florencearrived 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 somewhereno one, not even

Pansy, knew wherereappeared 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

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 forebore to express them,

"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."

"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It would be better for your health

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

Before she left him, Ralph said to her: "Do you really mean to take care of me?"

"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

leftto extend himself in the large quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his eyes upon

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

"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 as far as to say that I would much rather

"And you'd rather stay here than do either," said Ralph. "There's really no need of your coming.

"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you, but that isn't the principal

"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

"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

"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?" Ralph rejoined. And this was the only

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

"You were very wrong about Lord Warburton," she remarked to the Countess. "I think it right you

"About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house three times a day. He has left

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

"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 pointthat 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

"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

"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."

"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

"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come on purpose, to leave you just

"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a solemn one four years ago, and

"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the greatest. Leave your husband

"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 offhand way in which you speak

"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

For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low tone, with a quick smile:

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

"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other people speak of you. They

"I might have seen more of you certainly," Isabel said. "But when one's married one has so much

"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 fingerposts 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

"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that she goes with me. There's a

"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause of disagreement

Ralph understood well enough, however. "I should think so, with all those occupations you speak

"It isn't that. I'm afraid," said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as if to make herself, rather than

Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely deliberateapparently 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 selfanalysis? However this might be, Ralph could not resist so easy

"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

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;

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.

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 menthey 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 newnot 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 fight. 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 today the air has grown so dense that delicate things are

literally not recognized. 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 patronizing, but you must let me have the satisfaction of it. We've liked

you becausebecause you've reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain number of people

like youa 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

beenacommercial? 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 beenawhat 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 perfectlypitched 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 wellinformed 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

today 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

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 authorized to think Mrs. Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of

authorization operated as an irritant, ministered to the harshness with which, in spite of his theory that he had

ceased to care, he now recognized 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

Tonight what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leaveher tomorrow 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

"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 toto my wife and me. Other people inevitably have to look after

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 drivewe 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 yourselfalways have a subject

"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 caretakersI 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

"Free to come back to Rome I hope," said Osmond as he saw a group of new visitors enter the

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 selfcontradictory. 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 herself absolutely prevented. "I'm afraid it's impossible. People are

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 goodbye to

people; and as the Countess was extending her range, according to her custom at this period of the evening,

Isabel sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sisterinlaw would sound a

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 forcedthat she was frightened at what she saw in his own face. "I suppose you

"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."

"You must come back some day," she brightly returned. "Some day? You mean as long a time

"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

believewhat 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."

"YesI'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 hurtif he hurts younothing 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 timelet 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 businessvery 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 can't help itof course not. You would if you could, but you can't, unfortunately.

Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothingnothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole satisfaction:

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

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

"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

"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?" Madame Merle asked with a great

Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be goodhumoured too. "You shouldn't have

These words seemed to justify the impulse of selfdefence 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 criticized; 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 surpriseour 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

I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the situation. Do you consider that

"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

"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't apply to me for

"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my heart on that marriage; the idea

"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

"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your husband judges you

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?"

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

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

"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 pleasedto simply seeing your stepdaughter married. Let him offlet us have

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 youwhat 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."

Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes from Isabel's face.

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 highsurging 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 sunwarmed 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 longunanswered prayers. There was no gentler nor

less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altarpictures 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

fartrailing 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 flowerfreckled 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

sceneat the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in

lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloudshadows 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 wickedin the historic senseto 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 stifflyreasoning 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 matchmaking 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 today 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 today 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:

Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same afternoon she had been

concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of timesoftened damask which dressed the interesting little

salon of the lady to whom it referred; the carefullyarranged 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.

"Did I say I was unhappy?" Osmond asked with a face grave enough to suggest that he might have

"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."

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

"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's a great gift."

"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

"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself more too."

"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

"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means to carry out her ideas."

"She was unable to show me any this morning," said Madame Merle. "She seemed in a very

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 matterthe 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

"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

"If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably didn't perceive it," Osmond

"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

"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.

"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did! How do bad people end?especially as to their

"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough," said Osmond, his conscious

Madame Merle's selfpossession 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 turned sombre;

her smile betrayed a painful effort. "Good enough for anything that I've done with myself? I suppose that's

"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

"Are you going to weep after all?" Osmond asked; and on her remaining motionless he went on:

She dropped her hand quickly. "No, you've taken your revenge otherwiseyou have taken it on

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

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

"I've thought over all the harm you can do me," Madame Merle answered. "Your wife was afraid

"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

"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

"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should adore me, if you will.

"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit," Madame Merle went on.

"My wife has declineddeclined to do anything of the sort," said Osmond. "If you're determined to

"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 mantelshelf. "It appears that I'm to be severely taught the

"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.

Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, "The children of others may be a great interest!"

"You're more like a copybook than I. There's something after all that holds us together."

"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,

Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former article two or three strokes

with his coatcuff, "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 mantelshelf the attenuated

coffeecup in which he had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly.

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 sisterinlaw 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 loveaffairs 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, whowith all the respect that she owed hercould

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 feata 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 today 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 travertinethe 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

skyline 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, today, 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

"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

"I have the money insteadfifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think me rich enough now?"

"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

"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

"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."

"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 sisterinlaw to be engaged

"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

"Yes, it's getting late," Pansy returned more gently still. And she went on without a murmur,

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 raya 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

And then there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. "Did you show your aunt

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

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

Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited, frightened look. "You're not

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

"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

seclusiona little reflexion." Pansy spoke in short detached sentences, as if she could scarce trust herself; and

then she added with a triumph of selfcontrol: "I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world this

Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a larger meaning than the girl

"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

"Ah, come and see me soon!" cried Pansy; and the cry was very different from the heroic remarks

Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how little she yet knew her

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 drawingroom before dinner she found the Countess

Gemini alone, and this lady characterized 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,

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 societyone 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 wordsalmost into picturesto 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

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 goingto the point of playing

theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not understand his purpose, nonot

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 geniusshe sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowerspoor 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 sisterinlaw. The Countess too, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a

"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

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."

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 watercolours and fine brushes lay

before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finelytinted disk. His

back was turned toward the door, but he recognized his wife without looking round.

"Ah, I don't believe that," said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. "He

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

"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.

To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work,

"I don't see the need of it," he said at last. "He came to see you here. 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

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

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.

"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing do or don't do. You pretend

Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why you must go then? Not to see your

"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit some folly."

"If I disobeyed you?" said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of mildness.

"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome today it will be a piece of the most deliberate, the most

"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

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 recognized 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 himbecause 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, 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, becausebecause" 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,

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 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 preciousthe 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 actiona 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

unionhow 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?"

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

He turned quickly around, and she could see this movement at least was not designed. He looked at

"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,"

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

"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing book to read!

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."

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 sisterinlaw, 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

"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say he was glad poor Mr.

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 dinnerparties. 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 sisterinlaw'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

"Nothing's impossible for you, my dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are you rich and clever

"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a tone which sufficiently declared

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.

"Ah," cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, "when I want to make a journey my husband

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 afraidyes, I'm afraid," she said to herself more than once, stopping short in

her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her husbandhis displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not

even her own later judgement of her conducta 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 last five

"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 sisterinlaw 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 aloneah, it was a wonderful simplification! My

"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

"What do you wish me to know?" Isabel felt a foreboding that made her heart beat faster. The

But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject. "In your place I should have

"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!"

"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 sisterinlaw had no children."

Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. "Your first sisterinlaw?"

"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

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'sin perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one else's wife's. Ah, my good

"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who diedhow long?a dozen, more than fifteen, years ago. He

never recognized 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

worsefatally 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 knewwithout researches," the Countess lucidly proceeded;

"as also, you'll understand, without a word said between usI 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 leftnever 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 niecefrom the moment she was my brother's daughter. As for her

veritable mother!" But with this Pansy's wonderful aunt dropped involuntarily, from the impression of her

sisterinlaw'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.

"Why have you told me this?" she asked in a voice the Countess hardly recognized.

"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

assistanceaid to innocent ignorancethat 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

"So I believedthough it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to you that he was for six or

"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

"Oh, no idea, for me," Isabel went on, "ever definitely took that form." She appeared to be making

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

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 recognize 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 countryI think to South America. If she had ever

had childrenwhich I'm not sure ofshe 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

deadvery true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain accommodation of dates out of the

questionfrom 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 life? With the aid of

a change of residenceOsmond had been living with her at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he

in due course left it for everthe whole history was successfully set going. My poor sisterinlaw, 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

"It's very kind of you to pity her!" she discordantly laughed. "Yes indeed, you have a way of your

"He must have been false to his wifeand so very soon!" said Isabel with a sudden check.

"That's all that's wantingthat 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 questionthough it was sufficiently there in her eyeswere 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 womansuch 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

waswhen he couldn't patch it on conveniently to any of those he goes in for! But the whole past was

"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say, they had kept it up."

"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because she believed you would

"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows it; she knows

"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

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.

"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 rejoinedI won't say his ancestors,

because he never had anyher 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

afterwardsshe 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 achievedexcept, of course,

getting to know every one and staying with them free of expensehas 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

everythingeverything. 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 about 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 irreproachablea kind of fullblown

lilythe 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 togetherwould even

see a resemblance. She has had a terror lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful;

"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 recognize 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

"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!" cried the Countess. "She has failed so dreadfully that she's

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

"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

"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at seeing me!" Isabel

"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

"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry," Isabel said. "I'm much obliged to

"Yes, you seem to be!" cried the Countess with a mocking laugh. "Perhaps you areperhaps you're

"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 offor 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

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

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

Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a moment had to lay her arm upon

the mantelshelf for support. She stood a minute so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with

"Ah, I must see Ralph!" Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in the quick passion her companion

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 door 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 wellused 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

today more than before the impression of a wellappointed 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

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 newlooking

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 today 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

"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 indiscreetI 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 cam 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 womanwhat's her name? Madame Catherinemade 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 toilettable, with something that looked uncommonly

like a bottle of eaudeCologne. 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 greatlyI must tell you thatand

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

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 discoverythe 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 persona 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

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 exposurethis 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 halfturned, 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 hungup 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 stillto 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

"I'm come to bid Pansy goodbye," our young woman said at last. "I go to England tonight."

"Go to England tonight!" Madame Merle repeated sitting there and looking up at her.

"Ah, you'll feel that." Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance to express sympathy.

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?"

"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

"Naturallyin 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;

When 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 recognized 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

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

"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

"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 methey think of everything!" she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to

"We think of you alwaysyou'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

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

"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 goodbye. I'm going

"Ah, I'm sorry," Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had no right to criticize; but her

"My cousin, Mr. Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see him," Isabel said.

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 criticize 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 conventchapel 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

"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter," Isabel explained; "since so long as you're

"I've not come because your father forbade it. Today I bring nothing with me. I can't amuse you."

"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to come out."

Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. "Will you come away with me now?" she

"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 onessuch charming children. Then my roomyou can

see for yourself. All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished me to think a littleand I've

"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anythingI'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 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

Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. "Goodbye then. I leave Rome tonight."

Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's face. "You look strange; you

Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. "My dear child, what can I do for you?" she asked.

"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it more easily."

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 thatthat you don't like Madame Merle."

Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a reason for

noncompliance. "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

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

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

"We think it's enough," Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she pushed open the door of

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

"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about poor Mr. Touchett,"

"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

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

"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

"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He brought his father over to it. Ah,

Isabel stood staring; she seemed today to live in a world illumined by lurid flashes. "I don't know

Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with her hand on the latch.

Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance. "You're very

Madame Merle raised her eyes. "I shall go to America," she quietly remarked while Isabel passed

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 wereor at any rate into the handsof 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 countriesstrangelooking, dimlylighted, 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 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 today. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the

single desire to reach her muchembracing 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 morethis idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble

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 nowthat 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 sowell, 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 greygreen England, but this privilege was evidently to

be denied her. Deep in her souldeeper than any appetite for renunciationwas 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 strengthit 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 sufferonly to feel the injury of life repeated and enlargedit 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 recognized, 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

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, fararching 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 today, and the incident

"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'tif you hadn't; well, I don't know,"

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 recognized 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 takenthat of abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their

"There's Mr. Bantling," said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring much now whether she

"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!" Henrietta exclaimed.

Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smilea smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the

"Isn't it lovely she has come?" Henrietta asked. "He knows all about it," she added; "we had quite a

"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 cousinthat he understood, that it was all right. Isabel gave him her

"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

"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough," she said, to her companion's obvious surprise. After

"I can't tell youexcept that you look like a person who has been to Gardencourt."

"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

"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

Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. "Was that late in the day?"

"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 today, 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 tomorrow. You must be

"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 tonight," 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."

Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. "I see you're in a great hurry to get your

"He'll come for mine," Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into a cab. And later, in a large

dusky parlour in Wimpole Streetto do her justice there had been dinner enoughshe asked those questions to

which she had alluded at the station. "Did your husband make you a scene about your coming?" That was

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

"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a complication, but what will going

"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!" said Henrietta with much

"He will, though," Isabel answered gravely. "It won't be the scene of a moment; it will be a scene

For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and then Miss Stackpole, to

"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

criticized 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

"Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact in the face. I'm going to

"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think I know what I'm doing; but I

"One can't explain one's marriage," Isabel answered. "And yours doesn't need to be explained. Mr.

"No, he isn't a bad punor 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

"Ah," said Isabel, "you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever heard you say anything

"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brainpower; that, after all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I

"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at lastover heresee 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 himthere 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

"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

"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 forjust to find out the mystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed ideaa kind of fascination."

"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 pointthat Miss

Stackpole would not be wanting in initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had been on his

"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.

"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked striking out a line," said Mr.

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 drawingroom 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 stillwith a

stillness that Isabel remembered; it had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She left the

drawingroom and wandered aboutstrolled into the library and along the gallery of pictures, where, in the

deep silence, her footstep made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognized 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 thenthat 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 picturea charming and precious Boningtonupon 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

Mrs. Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the big uninhabited drawingroom.

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 queenregent

"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 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

"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking everywhere," Isabel answered. And

"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that it's always sleep."

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

"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!" cried Mrs. Touchett as she preceded her niece up the

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

"Noit has only been a beautiful one." Isabel found herself already contradicting her aunt; she was

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 thembut they seemed to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less

"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them the truth," said Isabel. "Lily wrote

"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

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 diningroom. 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 today 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

tryingreaching 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 has something else to think of now," Mrs. Touchett returned. And she paused with a gaze like

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 yesthe 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

"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know. Poor Ralph can't go to the

"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

herlooking 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 thoughtfulshe presently forgot Mrs. Touchett's observationit 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."

"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

"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

"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm misinformed I'm as

"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing over you," Mrs. Touchett added. "Do

"She'll make a convenience of America," said Isabel, smiling again and glad that her aunt's

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 awaythe 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 he herself would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had

opened his eyes and recognized 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 timetill 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 recognized 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 somethingfor 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 laston the evening of the third day.

"I feel better tonight," 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 effortnot to tire himself. His face was of necessity seriousit 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

"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the angel of death. It's the

"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting forfor this. This is not death, dear Ralph."

"Not for youno. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see others die. That's the

sensation of lifethe sense that we remain. I've had iteven 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 faraway 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

"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 onceyou know

it. O Ralph, you've been everything! What have I done for youwhat can I do today? 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

"You won't lose meyou'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 goodbut there's no love."

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 today because there are

She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to pray to him.

"True that you've been stupid? Oh no," said Ralph with a sensible intention of wit.

He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last: "Ah, don't speak of

thatthat was not happy." Slowly he moved his face toward her again, and they once more saw each other.

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 anguishthe 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

He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he raised them

"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

"You don't hurt meyou 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 strangeso pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourselfbut

you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the

He listened to her a little, and then continued: "Was he very bad about your coming?"

"I don't knowI can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't want to thinkI 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 happynot 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

"As seems rightas seems right?" He repeated her words. "Yes, you think a great deal about that."

"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest thing. Nono. But it's very deep. If I

"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

"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believeI don't believe" But he stopped

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."

"And remember this," he continued, "that if you've been hated you've also been loved. Ah but,

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 therea vague, hovering figure in

the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white facehis 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 hallwindow. 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

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 burialplace 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 Maytime, 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,

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 herthough several spoke to

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 punctuallyit 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

"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 werethough 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

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

today, 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

"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

"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 suppose not, but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England sooner thanathan you

Mrs. Touchett turned away as if she was 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 husbandrather confusedlyand 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

"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were still hereif they had

thought you would see them," Lord Warburton went on. "Do kindly let them see you before you leave

"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 you say you're not to be very long in EnglandI would see that there should

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

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 thatM had happened before she felt sorry for him. "Take care you don't

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. "Goodbye, Mrs. Osmond; goodbye."

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

"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

She gave it up, but she still thought of itthought 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 recognized. 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 herthat 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

nowshe 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 likeshe 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 herbeside 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 some one, 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 youas 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 today for a purpose. It's very different. It was vain for me to

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

"By inducing you to trust me. Now I knowtoday I know. Do you remember what I asked you in

Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But today I know on good authority; everything's clear to me today. 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 youso long as you should be in Englandto 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 himas he lay there

where he died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let you.'"

"Why notwhy not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded, following her fast. "And he was

dyingwhen 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."

"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 heartbroken? You don't know what to doyou 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 toowhat 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

homewhen 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

"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

"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 backwhy should you

"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

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 happywhen it's here before us,

when it's so easy? I'm yours for everfor 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 isjustified in anything in lifein 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 ourselvesand to say that is to settle it! Were we born to rot in

our miserywere 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 usand 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

"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.

She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. "As you love me, as you pity me, leave

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 timefor the distance was considerablehe 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

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, goodmorning," 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

Again Miss Stackpole held himwith an intention of perfect kindnessin suspense. "She came here

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

Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out her hand and grasped his

On which he looked up at herbut 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.