THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY


By Henry James


Chapter 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 country-house, 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 wicker-chair 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 I have attempted to sketch.
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 entrance-front; this 
was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide 
carpet of turf that covered the level hill-top 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 rich-coloured 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 speaking, ceased. But it was none 
the less a charming walk down to the water.
The old gentleman at the tea-table, 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, clean-shaven 
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 tea-cup upon the 
table. He was neatly dressed, in well-brushed 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 well-made man of five-and-thirty, with a face 
as English as that of the old gentleman I have just sketched was something 
else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-coloured, 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 fertilised by a high civilisation - 
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, well-shaped fist - was crumpled a 
pair of soiled dog-skin gloves.
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 him a mild, responsive smile.
'I'm getting on very well,' he said.
'Have you drunk your tea?' asked the son.
'Yes, and enjoyed it.'
'Shall I give you some more?'
The old man considered, placidly. 'Well, I guess I'll wait and see.' He 
had, in speaking, the American tone.
'Are you cold?' the son enquired.
The father slowly rubbed his legs. 'Well, I don't know. I can't tell till I 
feel.'
'Perhaps some one might feel for you,' said the younger man, laughing.
'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 say you look wonderfully comfortable.'
'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 it I don't 
know it.'
'Yes, that's the bore of comfort,' said Lord Warburton. 'We only know when 
we're uncomfortable.'
'It strikes me we're rather particular,' his companion remarked.
'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 companion filled the old man's cup again.
'Oh no, he must have the shawl!' cried the gentleman in the velvet coat. 
'Don't put such ideas as that into his head.'
'It belongs to my wife,' said the old man simply.
'Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons-' And Lord Warburton made a gesture of 
apology.
'I suppose I must give it to her when she comes,' the old man went on.
'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.'
'Oh, you're perfectly free to abuse mine,' his son replied, giving him his 
tea.
'Well, we're two lame ducks; I don't think there's much difference.'
'I'm much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How's your tea?'
'Well, it's rather hot.'
'That's intended to be a merit.'
'Ah, there's a great deal of merit,' murmured the old man, kindly. 'He's a 
very good nurse, Lord Warburton.'
'Isn't he a bit clumsy?' asked his lordship.
'Oh no, he's not clumsy - considering that he's an invalid himself. He's a 
very good nurse - for a sick-nurse. I call him my sick-nurse because he's 
sick himself.'
'Oh, come, daddy!' the ugly young man exclaimed.
'Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you can't help it.'
'I might try: that's an idea,' said the young man.
'Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton?' his father asked.
Lord Warburton considered a moment. 'Yes, sir, once, in the Persian Gulf.'
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 been sick, any way, Lord Warburton.'
'He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully about 
it,' said Lord Warburton's friend.
'Is that true, sir?' asked the old man gravely.
'If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched fellow to talk 
to - a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe in anything.'
'That's another sort of joke,' said the person accused of cynicism.
'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 - about as he is at present. He often 
cheers me up.'
The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and laughed. 'Is it a 
glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity? Should you like me to carry out 
my theories, daddy?'
'By Jove, we should see some queer things!' cried Lord Warburton.
'I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone,' said the old man.
'Warburton's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored. I'm not in 
the least bored; I find life only too interesting.'
'Ah, too interesting; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you know!'
'I'm never bored when I come here,' said Lord Warburton. 'One gets such 
uncommonly good talk.'
'Is that another sort of joke?' asked the old man. 'You've no excuse for 
being bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never heard of such a 
thing.'
'You must have developed very late.'
'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 indolent, and too rich.'
'Oh, I say,' cried Lord Warburton, 'you're hardly the person to accuse a 
fellow-creature of being too rich!'
'Do you mean because I'm a banker?' asked the old man.
'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 of money.'
'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.'
'Daddy's very fond of pleasure - of other people's.'
The old man shook his head. 'I don't pretend to have contributed anything 
to the amusement of my contemporaries.'
'My dear father, you're too modest!'
'That's a kind of joke, sir,' said Lord Warburton.
'You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing 
left.'
'Fortunately there are always more jokes,' the ugly young man remarked.
'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 not all for the better.'
'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 thing that may the next moment be knocked 
sky-high.'
'You ought to take hold of a pretty woman,' said his companion. 'He's 
trying hard to fall in love,' he added, by way of explanation, to his 
father.
'The pretty women themselves may be sent flying!' Lord Warburton exclaimed.
'No, no, they'll be firm,' the old man rejoined; 'they'll not be affected 
by the social and political changes I just referred to.'
'You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I'll lay my hands on 
one as soon as possible and tie her round my neck as a life-preserver.'
'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 apparently the 
lady of his choice had not been one of the best.
'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 interesting woman might 
do with me.'
'I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman,' said his friend.
'My dear fellow, you can't see ideas - especially such highly ethereal ones 
as mine. If I could only see myself - that would be a great step in 
advance.'
'Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; but you mustn't 
fall in love with my niece,' said the old man.
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 never learned the 
things they don't say!'
'I say what I please,' the old man returned with all his serenity.
'I haven't the honour of knowing your niece,' Lord Warburton said. 'I think 
it's the first time I've heard of her.'
'She's a niece of my wife's; Mrs Touchett brings her to England.'
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 to come out with her.'
'I see - very kind of her,' said Lord Warburton. 'Is the young lady 
interesting?'
'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; it 
seems to admit of so many interpretations.'
'There's one thing very clear in it,' said the old man; 'she has given the 
hotel-clerk 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 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 characterise 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 they're fond of their own way?'
'Whatever else it means, it's pretty sure to mean that,' Mr Touchett 
remarked.
'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 the other hand she may already have disembarked 
in England.'
'In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you.'
'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, but she's not 
discouraged.'
'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 postage-stamp without gum, and she 
would never forgive me if I should presume to go to Liverpool to meet her.'
'Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives?' Lord Warburton 
asked.
'Only on the condition I've mentioned - that you don't fall in love with 
her!' Mr Touchett replied.
'That strikes me as hard. Don't you think me good enough?'
'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 be a remarkable husband.'
'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 visitor pursued, 'I'm 
not sure of that either. One can but try!'
'Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece,' smiled the old man, 
whose opposition to the idea was broadly humorous.
'Ah, well,' said Lord Warburton with a humour broader still, 'perhaps after 
all, she's not worth trying on!'



Chapter 2

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 towards the house, but his eyes were bent, musingly, upon the lawn; 
so that he had been an object of observation to a person who had just made 
her appearance in the doorway of the dwelling 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 little terrier. 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 joyous demonstration. 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 bare-headed, 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 ill health. Meantime the 
two other gentlemen had also taken note of the new-comer.
'Dear me, who is that strange woman?' Mr Touchett had asked.
'Perhaps it is Mrs Touchett's niece-the independent young lady,' Lord 
Warburton suggested. 'I think she must be, from the way she handles the 
dog.'
The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he 
trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly setting his tail in 
motion as he went.
'But where is my wife, then?' murmured the old man.
'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 have 
suddenly acquired a remarkable air of property in him.'
'Couldn't we share him?' asked the girl. 'He's such a little darling.'
Ralph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. 'You may have 
him altogether,' he said.
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 am probably your cousin,' she murmured, putting down the dog. 
'And here's another!' she added quickly, as the collie came up.
'Probably?' the young man exclaimed, laughing. 'I supposed it was quite 
settled! Have you come with my mother?'
'Yes, half an hour ago.'
'And has she deposited you and departed again?'
'No, she went straight to her room; and she told me that, if I should see 
you, I was to say to you that you must come to her there at a quarter to 
seven.'
The young man looked at his watch. 'Thank you very much; I shall be 
punctual.' And then he looked at his cousin. 'You are very welcome here,' 
he went on. 'I am delighted to see you.'
She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted quick perception-at 
her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at 
the beautiful scene that surrounded her. 'I have never seen anything so 
lovely as this place,' she said. 'I have been all over the house; it's too 
enchanting.'
'I am sorry you should have been here so long without our knowing it.'
'Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I 
thought it was all right Is one of those gentlemen your father?'
'Yes, the elder one-the one sitting down,' said Ralph.
The young girl gave a laugh. 'I don't suppose it's the other. Who is the 
other?'
'He is a friend of ours-Lord Warburton.'
'Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it's just like a novel!' And then-'Oh 
you adorable creature!' she suddenly cried, stooping down and picking up 
the little terrier again.
She remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or to 
speak to Mr Touchett, and while she lingered in the doorway, slim and 
charming, her interlocutor wondered whether 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 is old and infirm-he doesn't leave his chair.'
'Ah, poor man, I am very sorry!' the girl exclaimed, immediately moving 
forward. 'I got the impression from your mother that he was rather-rather 
strong.'
Ralph Touchett was silent a moment.
'She has not seen him for a year.'
'Well, he has got a lovely place to sit. Come along, little dogs.'
'It's a dear old place,' said the young man, looking sidewise at his 
neighbour.
'What's his name?' she asked, her attention having reverted to the terrier 
again.
'My father's name?'
'Yes,' said the young lady, humorously; 'but don't tell him I asked you.'
They had come by this time to where old Mr Touchett was sitting, and he 
slowly got up from his chair to introduce himself.
'My mother has arrived,' said Ralph, 'and this is Miss Archer.'
The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a moment 
with extreme benevolence, and then gallantly kissed her.
'It is a great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had given us 
a chance to receive you.'
'Oh, we were received,' said the girl. 'There were about a dozen servants 
in the hall. And there was an old woman curtsying at the gate.'
'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.'
'She went straight to her room.'
'Yes-and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall 
see her next week.' And Mrs Touchett's husband slowly resumed his former 
posture.
'Before that,' said Miss Archer. 'She is coming down to dinner-at eight 
o'clock. Don't you forget a quarter to seven,' she added, turning with a 
smile to Ralph.
'What is to happen at a quarter to seven?'
'I am to see my mother,' said Ralph.
'Ah, happy boy!' the old man murmured. 'You must sit down -you must have 
some tea,' he went on, addressing his wife's niece.
'They gave me some tea in my room the moment I arrived,' this young lady 
answered. 'I am sorry you are out of health,' she added, resting her eyes 
upon her venerable host.
'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 here.'
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 also narrowly scrutinised 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 brilliant, her 
flexible figure turned itself lightly 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 have 
never seen anything so beautiful as this,' she declared.
'It's looking very well,' said Mr Touchett. 'I know the way it strikes you. 
I have been through all that. But you are 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 girls who might possibly take alarm at them.
What degree of alarm this young gid 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 exclaimed quickly, with a little 
laugh. 'How old is your house? Is it Elizabethan?'
'It's early Tudor,' said Ralph Touchett.
She turned toward him, watching his face a little. 'Early Tudor? How very 
delightful! And I suppose there are a great many others.'
'There are many much better ones.' 'Don't say that, my son!' the old man 
protested. 'There is nothing better than this.'
'I have 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 bent towards her a little, 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 compared with this.'
'I don't know - I can't judge,' said the girl, smiling at Lord Warburton.
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 new-found cousin.
'Are you very fond of dogs?' he inquired, by way of beginning; and it was 
an awkward beginning for a clever man.
'Very fond of them indeed.'
'You must keep the terrier, you know,' he went on, still awkwardly.
'I will keep him while I am here, with pleasure.'
'That will be for a long time, I hope.'
'You are very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle that.'
'I will settle it with her - at a quarter to seven.' And Ralph looked at 
his watch again.
'I am glad to be here at all,' said the girl.
'I don't believe you allow things to be settled for you.'
'Oh yes; if they are settled as I like them.'
'I shall settle this as I like it,' said Ralph. 'It's most unaccountable 
that we should never have known you.'
'I was there - you had only to come and see me.'
'There? Where do you mean?'
'In the United States: in New York, and Albany, and other places.'
'I have been there - all over, but I never saw you. I can't make it out.'
Miss Archer hesitated a moment.
'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 never expected to see you.'
'Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels - Heaven forbid!' the 
young man cried. 'You have lately lost your father?' he went on, more 
gravely.
'Yes; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she 
came to see me, and proposed that I should come to Europe.'
'I see,' said Ralph. 'She has adopted you.'
'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 under-estimated 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 startled eyes 
upon him. 'Oh, no; she has not adopted me,' she said. 'I am not a candidate 
for adoption.'
'I beg a thousand pardons,' Ralph murmured. 'I meant - I meant - ' He 
hardly knew what he meant.
'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 am very fond of my liberty.'
'Are you talking about Mrs Touchett?' the old man called out from his 
chair. 'Come here, my dear, and tell me about her. I am always thankful for 
information.'
The girl hesitated a moment, smiling.
'She is really very benevolent,' she answered; and then she went over to 
her uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words.
Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a moment 
he said: 'You wished awhile ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. 
There it is!'



Chapter 3

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 it was by 
no means without benevolence, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of 
softness. 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 simply very sharply distinguished from the 
ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for 
susceptible persons it sometimes had a wounding effect. This purity of 
outline was visible 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 achieved a toilet which had the less reason to be of 
high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was 
a plain-faced old woman, without coquetry 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 apparent, at an 
early stage of their relations, that they should never desire the same 
thing at the same moment, and this fact 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; leaving her 
husband in England to take care of his bank. This arrangement greatly 
pleased her; it was so extremely 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 discomfort 
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 England, and had three or four reasons for it 
to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of British 
civilisation, but for Mrs Touchett they amply justified non-residence. She 
detested bread-sauce, 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 one had been 
longer than any of its predecessors.
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 that she had a 
book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of 
knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was strong. There 
was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the 
arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel. The visitor had not 
been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about the adjoining 
room. It was an old house at Albany - a large, square, double house, with a 
notice of sale in the windows of the parlour. 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 side-
lights, 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 party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed in 
communication. These rooms, above-stairs, 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 well-
lighted, 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, more sociable; 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 highly valued 
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 stay with her, 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 dwelling picturesque. 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 certain capital peach-trees. Isabel had stayed with her 
grandmother at various seasons; but, somehow, all her visits had a flavour 
of peaches. On the other side, opposite, 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 in an 
amateurish manner by a demonstrative lady, of whom Isabel's chief 
recollection was that her hair was puffed out very much 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 expressed great 
disgust with the place, 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 multiplication table - 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, or 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 was fastened 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 side-lights had not been 
filled with green paper, she might have looked out upon the little brown 
stoop and the well-worn 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 or 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 joyless chamber it contained. She had never opened 
the bolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) from 
its side-lights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street lay 
beyond it. A crude, cold rain was falling heavily; the spring-time 
presented itself as a questionable improvement. Isabel, however, gave as 
little attention as possible to the incongruities of the season; 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 walking about the 
library, which communicated with the office. It struck her first as the 
step of a person from whom she had reason to expect 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 sharp, but not an unpleasant, face.
'Oh,' she said, 'is that where you usually sit?' And she looked about at 
the heterogeneous chairs and tables.
'Not when I have visitors,' said Isabel, getting up to receive the 
intruder.
She directed their course back to the library, and the visitor continued to 
look about her. 'You seem to have plenty of other rooms; they are in rather 
better condition. But everything is 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 is no matter.' And then, while the girl stood 
there, hesitating and wondering, this unexpected critic said to her 
abruptly, 'I suppose you are one of the daughters?'
Isabel thought she had very strange manners. 'It depends upon whose 
daughters you mean.'
'The late Mr Archer's - and my poor sister's.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, slowly, 'you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!'
'Is that what your father told you to call me? I am your Aunt Lydia, but I 
am not crazy. And which of the daughters are you?'
'I am the youngest of the three, and my name is Isabel.'
'Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the prettiest?'
'I have not the least idea,' said the girl.
'I think you must be.' And in this way the aunt and the niece made friends. 
The aunt had quarrelled, years before, with her brother-in-law 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 she 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 inquire into the condition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, 
for she should attach no importance to any account of them that 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 mansion.
'How much money do you expect to get for it?' Mrs Touchett asked of the 
girl, who had brought her to sit in the front parlour, which she had 
inspected without enthusiasm.
'I haven't the least idea,' said the girl.
'That's the second time you have said that to me,' her aunt rejoined. 'And 
yet you don't look at all stupid.'
'I am not stupid; but I don't know anything about money.'
'Yes, that's the way you were brought up - as if you were to inherit a 
million. In point of fact, what have you inherited?'
'I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they will be back 
in half an hour.'
'In Florence we should call it a very bad house,' said Mrs Touchett; 'but 
here, I suspect, 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 is of value, and 
they will 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 advantage.' Isabel 
stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her.
'I hope they won't pull it down,' she said; 'I am extremely fond of it.'
'I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died here.'
'Yes; but I don't dislike it for that,' said the girl, rather strangely. 'I 
like places in which things have happened - even if they are sad things. A 
great many people have died here; the place has been full of life.'
'Is that what you call being full of life?'
'I mean full of experience - of people's feelings and sorrows. And not of 
their sorrows only, for I have been very happy here as a child.'
'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 many more 
besides.'
'In an old palace?' Isabel repeated.
'Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very bourgeois.'
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 will be very good, and do everything I tell you, I will take 
you there,' Mrs Touchett rejoined.
The girl's emotion deepened; she flushed a little, and smiled at her aunt 
in silence.
'Do everything you tell me? I don't think I can promise that.'
'No, you don't look like a young lady of that sort. You are fond of your 
own way; but it's not for me to blame you.'
'And yet, to go to Florence,' the girl exclaimed in a moment, 'I would 
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 
person. 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 disagreeable. To her imagination the term had always suggested 
something grotesque and inharmonious. But her aunt infused a new vividness 
into the idea, and gave her so many fresh impressions that it seemed to her 
she had over-estimated the charms of conformity. She had never met any one 
so entertaining as this little thin-lipped, bright-eyed foreign-looking 
woman, who retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner, 
and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking 
familiarity of European courts. There was nothing flighty about Mrs 
Touchett, but she was fond of social grandeur, and she 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 they were, struck her as deeply interesting. Mrs Touchett 
waited for the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, 
but as at six o'clock Mrs Ludlow had not come in, she prepared to take her 
departure.
'Your sister must be a great gossip,' she said. 'Is she accustomed to 
staying out for hours?'
'You have been out almost as long as she,' Isabel answered; 'she can have 
left the house but a short time before you came in.'
Mrs Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared to enjoy a 
bold retort, and to be disposed to be gracious to her niece.
'Perhaps she has not had so good an excuse as 1. 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 bring you. I shall see 
plenty of you later.'



Chapter 4

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' one. Mrs 
Keyes, the second sister, was the wife of an officer in the United States 
Engineers, and as our history is not further concerned with her, it will be 
enough to say 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 had been, 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 house which 
presented a narrowness of new brown stone to Fifty-third Street, she had 
quite justified her claim to matrimony. She was short and plump, and, as 
people said, had improved since her marriage; 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 have never felt like 
Isabel's sister, and I am sure I never shall,' she had said to an intimate 
friend; a declaration which made it all the more creditable that she had 
been prolific in sisterly offices.
'I want to see her safely married - that's what I want to see,' she 
frequently remarked to her husband.
'Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,' Edmund 
Ludlow was accustomed to answer, in an extremely audible tone.
'I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground. I 
don't see what you have against her, except that she is so original.'
'Well, I don't like originals; I like translations,' Mr Ludlow had more 
than once replied. 'Isabel is 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 am afraid she will do!' cried Lilian, who thought 
Isabel capable of anything.
She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs Touchett's 
visit, and in the evening prepared to comply with her commands. Of what 
Isabel said to her no report has remained, but her sister's words must have 
prompted a remark that she made to her husband in the conjugal chamber as 
the two were getting ready to go to the hotel.
'I do hope immensely she will do something handsome for Isabel; she has 
evidently taken a great fancy to her.'
'What is it you wish her to do?' Edmund Ludlow asked; 'make her a big 
present?' 'No, indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her - 
sympathise with her. She is evidently just the sort of person to appreciate 
Isabel. She has lived so much in foreign society; she told Isabel all about 
it. You know you have always thought Isabel rather foreign.'
'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.'
'And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?' her husband asked.
'She has offered to take her - she is 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 
am sure that all we have got to do,' said Mrs Ludlow, 'is to give her a 
chance!'
'A chance for what?'
'A chance to develop.'
'Oh Jupiter!' 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 you know you love her.'
'Do you know I love you?' the young man said, jocosely, to Isabel a little 
later, while he brushed his hat.
'I am sure I don't care whether you do or not!' exclaimed the girl, whose 
voice and smile, however, were sweeter than the words she uttered.
'Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs Touchett's visit,' said her sister.
But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of seriousness.
'You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at all.'
'I am sure there is no harm,' said the conciliatory Lily.
'Ah, but there is nothing in Mrs Touchett's visit to make one feel grand.'
'Oh,' exclaimed Ludlow, 'she is grander than ever!'
'Whenever I feel grand,' said the girl, 'it will be for a better reason.'
Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt busy; busy, I mean, with 
her thoughts. Left to herself for the evening, she sat awhile under the 
lamp, with empty hands, heedless of her usual avocations. 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 excited; at 
moments she trembled a little. She felt that something had happened to her 
of which the importance 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 which 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 to take a nap. On the contrary, it 
was because she felt too wide awake, and wished to check the sense of 
seeing too many things at once. Her imagination was by habit ridiculously 
active; if the door were not opened to it, 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 girl - 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 disagreeable. It 
appeared to Isabel that the disagreeable 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, much-loved father, who always had 
such an aversion to it. It was a great good fortune to have been his 
daughter; Isabel was even proud of her parentage. Since his death she had 
gathered a vague impression that he turned his brighter side to his 
children, and that he had not eluded discomfort 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 think that he was too generous, too good-
natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many persons thought 
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 admitted that the late Mr Archer had a remarkably handsome head and a 
very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said, he was always taking 
something), they declared that he had made 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 strange schools kept by foreigners, 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 abundant. Even when her father had left his 
daughters for three months at Neufchatel with a French bonne, who 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 picturesque 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 foreign lands; 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 among his 
three daughters she was quite his favourite, and 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 was 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 money matters, 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 
choreographic circle; her sister Edith was, as every one said, so very much 
more popular. Edith was so striking an example of success that Isabel could 
have no illusions as to what constituted this advantage, or as to the 
moderate character of her own triumphs. 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 a parcel of fools. 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 out-of-
the-way 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 quotation. 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 heart 
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 to which 
she had often gone so far as to forgive 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 the local youth had never gone the length of making her a 
social proscript; for the proportion of those whose hearts, as they 
approached her, beat only just fast enough to make it a sensible pleasure, 
was sufficient to redeem her maidenly career from failure. She had had 
everything that a girl could have: kindness, admiration, flattery, 
bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world 
she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, the latest publications, 
plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, and a glimpse of contemporary 
aesthetics.
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 Isabel, and he had lately written to her from New 
York. She had thought it very possible he would come in - had, indeed, all 
the rainy day been vaguely expecting him. Nevertheless, now that she 
learned he was there, she felt no eagerness to receive him. He was the 
finest young man she had ever seen, was, indeed, quite a magnificent young 
man; he filled her with a certain feeling of respect which she had never 
entertained for any one else. 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 capital. 
Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved about the room with 
a certain feeling of embarrassment. 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 especially good-looking, but his 
physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or 
not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness 
and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould, which is supposed to bespeak 
resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke resolution tonight; but, 
nevertheless, an hour later, 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, however, a man to be discouraged by a defeat.



Chapter 5

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 his turn always came after the 
care of her house and her conservatory (she was extremely fond of flowers). 
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 inquired 
scrupulously about her husband's health and about the young man's own, and 
receiving no very brilliant account of either, she 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 broken down. Ralph smiled 
at the idea of his mother breaking down, but made no point of reminding her 
that his own enfeebled condition was not the result of the English climate, 
from which he absented himself for a considerable part of each year.
He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett, who 
was a native of Rutland, in the state of Vermont, came to England as 
subordinate partner in a banking-house, in which some ten years later he 
acquired a preponderant interest. Daniel Touchett saw before him a lifelong 
residence in his adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a 
simple, cheerful, and eminently practical view. But, as he said to himself, 
he had no intention of turning Englishman, nor had he any desire to convert 
his only son to the same sturdy faith. It had been for himself so very 
soluble a problem to live in England, and yet not be of it, that it seemed 
to him equally simple that after his death his lawful heir should carry on 
the bank in a pure American spirit. He took pains to cultivate this spirit, 
however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph spent several 
terms in an American school, and took a degree at an American college, 
after which, as he struck his father on his return as even redundantly 
national, 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 jocosity 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 the ocean 
(which he detested) permanently between himself and the old man whom he 
regarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only fond of his father, but 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 great 
fancy for the banking business, 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 old man's effective simplicity. Daniel 
Touchett had been neither at Harvard nor at Oxford, and it was his own 
fault if he had put into 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 adopt themselves to foreign 
conditions; but Mr Touchett had given evidence of this talent only up to a 
certain point. He had made himself thoroughly comfortable in England, but 
he had never attempted to pitch his thoughts in the English key. He had 
retained many characteristics of Rutland, Vermont; 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, especially, he was a gentle, refined, 
fastidious old man, who combined consummate shrewdness with a sort of 
fraternising good humour, and whose feeling about his own position in the 
world was quite of the democratic sort. 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 
never perceived, certain habits he never formed, certain mysteries he never 
understood. As regards these latter, on the day that he had understood them 
his son would have thought less well of him.
Ralph, on leaving Oxford, spent a couple of years in travelling; after 
which he found himself mounted 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 became 
conscious that he was seriously out of health. He had caught a violent 
cold, which fixed itself upon his lungs and threw them into extreme 
embarrassment. He had to give up work and embrace the sorry occupation 
known as taking care of one's self. At first he was greatly disgusted; it 
appeared to him that it was not himself in the least that 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, and even 
undemonstrative respect for him. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and 
our young man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter - it 
usually seemed to him to be his reputation for common sense - devoted to 
his unattractive protege 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 that he might outweather a dozen winters if he would 
betake himself to one of those climates in which comsumptives chiefly 
congregate. He had grown extremely fond of London, and cursed this 
immitigable necessity; but at the same time that he cursed, he conformed, 
and gradually, when he found that his sensitive organ was really grateful 
for such grim favours, he conferred them with a better grace. 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 snowed, almost 
never got up again. A certain fund of indolence that he possessed came to 
his aid and helped to reconcile him to doing nothing; for at the best he 
was too ill for anything but a passive life. As he said to himself, there 
was really nothing he had wanted very much to do, so that he had given up 
nothing. At present, however, the perfume of forbidden fruit seemed 
occasionally to float past him, to remind him that the finest pleasures of 
life are to be found in the world 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 this occasion remained later than usual in 
England, and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He 
reached it 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, but 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 that the delights of observation had 
never been suspected. 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 to struggle with a good deal of native indifference. 
His friends at present found him much more cheerful, and attributed it to a 
theory, over which they shook their heads knowingly, that he would recover 
his health. The truth was that he had simply accepted the situation. It was 
very probably this sweet-tasting property of observation to which I allude 
(for he found himself in these last years much more inclined to notice the 
pleasant things of the world than the others) that was mainly concerned in 
Ralph's quickly stirred interest in the arrival of a young lady who was 
evidently not insipid. If he were observantly disposed, something told him, 
here was occupation enough for a succession of days. It may be added, 
somewhat crudely, that the liberty of falling in love had a place in Ralph 
Touchett's program. This was of course a liberty to be very temperately 
used; for though the safest form of any sentiment is that which is 
conditioned upon silence, it is not al ways the most comfortable, and Ralph 
had forbidden himself the arts of demonstration. But conscious observation 
of a lovely woman had struck him as the finest entertainment that the world 
now had to offer him, and if the interest should become poignant, he 
flattered himself that he could carry it off quietly, as he had carried 
other discomforts. He speedily acquired a conviction, however, that he was 
not destined to fall in love with his cousin.
'And now tell me about the young lady,' he said to his mother. 'What do you 
mean to do with her?'
Mrs Touchett hesitated a little. 'I mean to ask your father to invite her 
to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.'
'You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that,' said Ralph. 'My father 
will ask her as a matter of course.'
'I don't know about that. She is my niece; she is not his.'
'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 paltry 
weeks) - what do you mean to do with her?'
'I mean to take her to Paris, to get her some clothes.'
'Ah yes, that's of course. But independently of that?'
'I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.'
'You don't rise above detail, dear mother,' said Ralph. 'I should like to 
know what you mean to do with her in a general way.'
'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 a girl that 
suggests compassion. I think I envy her. Before being sure, however, give 
me a hint of what your duty will direct you to do.'
'It will direct me to show her four European countries - I shall leave her 
the choice of two of them - and to give her the opportunity of perfecting 
herself in French, which she already knows very well.'
Ralph frowned a little. 'That sounds rather dry - even giving her the 
choice of two of the countries.'
'If it's dry,' said his mother with a laugh, 'you can leave Isabel alone to 
water it! She is as good as a summer rain, any day.'
'Do you mean that she is a gifted being?'
'I don't know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with 
a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored.'
'I can imagine that,' said Ralph; and then he added, abruptly, 'how do you 
two get on?'
'Do you mean by that that I am a bore? I don't think Isabel finds me one. 
Some girls might, I know; but this one is too clever for that. I think I 
amuse her a good deal. We get on very well, because I understand her; I 
know the sort of girl she is. She is very frank, and I am 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 have never surprised me but once, and that is to-day - in 
presenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence I had never suspected.'
'Do you think her very pretty?'
'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 
acquaintance?'
'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 told her, she seemed very grateful for the hint. You 
may say I shouldn't have told her - I should have let her alone. There is 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 is very 
much 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 is no more 
becoming ornament 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 other sisters, 
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 is a genius; but in that case I have 
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 sort of land 
of emigration, 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 money question, as she seemed averse to being 
under pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income, and she supposes 
herself to be travelling at her own expense.'
Ralph had listened attentively to this judicious account of his pretty 
cousin, by which his interest in her was not impaired. 'Ah, if she is 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 will be wrong.'
'Warburton is wrong, then!' Ralph Touchett exclaimed. 'He flatters himself 
he has made that discovery.'
His mother shook her head. 'Lord Warburton won't understand her; he needn't 
try.'
'He is very intelligent,' said Ralph; 'but it's right he should be puzzled 
once in a while.'
'Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord,' Mrs Touchett remarked.
Her son frowned a little. 'What does she know about lords?'
'Nothing at all; that will puzzle him all the more.'
Ralph greeted these words with a laugh, and looked out of the window a 
little. Then - 'Are you not going down to see my father?' he asked.
'At a quarter to eight,' said Mrs Touchett. Her son looked at his watch. 
'You have another quarter of an hour, then; tell me some more about 
Isabel.'
But Mrs Touchett declined his invitation, declaring that he must find out 
for himself.
'Well,' said Ralph, 'she will certainly do you credit. But won't she also 
give you trouble?'
'I hope not; but if she does, I shall not shrink from it. I never do that.'
'She strikes me as very natural,' said Ralph.
'Natural people are not the most trouble.'
'No,' said Ralph; 'you yourself are a proof of that. You are extremely 
natural, and I am sure you have never troubled any one. But tell me this; 
it just occurs to me. Is Isabel capable of making herself disagreeable?'
'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 
have not told me what you intend to do with her.'
'Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do 
absolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do everything that she 
chooses. She gave me notice of that.'
'What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character was 
independent.'
'I never know what I mean by my telegrams - especially those I send from 
America. Clearness is too expensive. Come down to your father.'
'It is not yet a quarter to eight,' said Ralph.
'I must allow for his impatience,' Mrs Touchett answered.
Ralph knew what to think of his father's impatience; but making no 
rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put it into his power, as 
they descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the 
staircase - the broad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-stained oak which 
was one of the most striking ornaments of Gardencourt.
'You have no plan of marrying her?' he said, smiling.
'Marry her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart from 
that, she is perfectly able to marry herself; she has every facility.'
'Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?' 'I don't know about a 
husband, but there is a young man in Boston - '
Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston. 'As 
my father says,' he exclaimed, 'they are always engaged!'
His mother had told him that he must extract his information about his 
cousin from the girl herself, and it soon became evident to him that he 
should not want for opportunity. He had, for instance, a good deal of talk 
with her that same evening, when the two had been left alone together in 
the drawing-room. 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 concluded, Mr and Mrs Touchett, who appeared to 
have exhausted each other's conversation, with drew, 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 to have no sense of weariness. She was really tired; she knew it, 
and knew that she should pay for it on the morrow; but it was her habit at 
this period to carry fatigue to the furthest point, and confess to it only 
when dissimulation had become impossible. For the present it was perfectly 
possible; she was interested and excited. She asked Ralph to show her the 
pictures; there were a great many of them in the house, most of them of his 
own choosing. The best of them were arranged in an oaken gallery of 
charming proportions, which had a sitting-room 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 been deferred till 
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 that she was eager 
and that she seemed so; but she could not help it. 'She doesn't take 
suggestions,' Ralph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her 
eagerness 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 shining on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a 
candlestick and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, 
bending toward 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 gallery and bending his eyes much less upon the 
pictures than on her figure. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering 
glances; for she was better worth looking at than most works of art. She 
was thin, and light, and middling tall; when people had wished to 
distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers, they always called her the 
thin one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, had been an object of 
envy to many women; her light grey eye, a little too keen perhaps in her 
graver moments, had an enchanting softness when she smiled. They walked 
slowly up one side of the gallery and down the other, and then she said: 
'Well, now I know more than I did when I began!'
'You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,' her cousin answered, 
laughing.
'I think I have; most girls seem to me so ignorant,' said Isabel.
'You strike me as different from most girls.'
'Ah, some girls are so nice,' murmured Isabel, who preferred not to talk 
about herself. Then, in a moment, to change the subject, she went on, 
'Please tell me - isn't there a ghost?'
'A ghost?'
'A spectre, a phantom; we call them ghosts in America.'
'So we do here, when we see them.'
'You do see them, then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.'
'It's not a romantic house,' said Ralph. 'You will be disappointed if you 
count on that. It's dismally prosaic; there is no romance here but what you 
may have brought with you.'
'I have brought a great deal; but it seems to me I have 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?'
'My mother, of course.'
'Oh, I know your mother; she is not romantic. Haven't you other people?'
'Very few.' 'I am sorry for that; I like so much to see people.'
'Oh, we will invite all the county to amuse you,' said Ralph.
'Now you are making fun of me,' the girl answered, rather gravely. 'Who was 
the gentleman that was on the lawn when I arrived?'
'A county neighbour; he doesn't come very often.'
'I am sorry for that; I liked him,' said Isabel.
'Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,' Ralph objected.
'Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father, too, immensely.'
'You can't do better than that; he is a dear old man.'
'I am so sorry he is ill,' said Isabel.
'You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.'
'I don't think I am; I have been told I am not; I am said to be too 
theoretic. But you haven't told me about the ghost,' she added.
Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation.
'You like my father, and you like Lord Warburton. I infer also that you 
like my mother.'
'I like your mother very much, because - because - ' And Isabel found 
herself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs Touchett.
'Ah, we never know why!' said her companion, laughing.
'I always know why,' the girl answered. 'It's because she doesn't expect 
one to like her; she doesn't care whether one does or not.'
'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!' cried Ralph, 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 the ghost.'
Ralph shook his head sadly. 'I might show it to you, but you would 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 are opened to it. I saw it long ago,' said 
Ralph, smiling. 'I told you just now I was very fond of knowledge,' the 
girl answered.
'Yes, of happy knowledge - of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't suffered, 
and you are not made to suffer. I hope you will never see the ghost!'
Isabel 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 am not afraid,' she said; which seemed quite presumptuous enough.
'You are not afraid of suffering?'
'Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. And I think 
people suffer too easily,' she added.
'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 is not absolutely 
necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.'
'You were not, certainly.'
'I am not speaking of myself.' And she turned away a little.
'No, it isn't a fault,' said her cousin. 'It's a merit to be strong.'
'Only, if you don't suffer, they call you hard,' Isabel remarked. They 
passed out of the smaller drawing-room, 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,' he said. 'When you do 
suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be as happy as 
possible.'
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. Good night.'
'Good night! 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 pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.



Chapter 6

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 with held their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they 
themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy of 
learning, a young lady reputed 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 Isabel 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 no time for anything else. Her tendency, 
however, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of her 
daughters; she was determined to bring them up seriously, and they read 
nothing at all. Her impression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite 
illusory; the girl never attempted to write a book, and had no desire to be 
an authoress. She had no talent for expression, and had none 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 self-esteem; 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; impulsively, she often 
admired herself. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were frequently such as 
a biographer interested in preserving the dignity of his heroine must 
shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines, which 
had never been corrected by the judgement of people who seemed to her to 
speak with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own way, and it 
had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. Every now and then she 
found out she was 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 on this condition that life was 
worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a 
fine organisation (she could not help knowing her organisation 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 thought it 
would 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 seemed to her the worst thing that could 
happen to one. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about 
the things that were wrong. She had no taste for thinking of them, but 
whenever she looked at them fixedly she recognised 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 right to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit is the 
danger of inconsistency - the danger of keeping up the flag after the place 
has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so anomalous as to be almost a 
dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of 
artillery to which young ladies are exposed, flattered herself that such 
contradictions would never be observed 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 should find herself some day 
in a difficult position, so that she might 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 young girl; 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 and more purely expectant.
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 her 
independence. She never called it loneliness; she thought that weak; and 
besides, her sister Lily constantly urged her to come and stay with her. 
She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her 
father's death, who offered so laudable an example of useful activity that 
Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the 
advantage - of a remarkable talent; she was thoroughly launched in 
journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from Washington, Newport, 
the White Mountains, and other places, were universally admired. Isabel did 
not accept them unrestrictedly, but she esteemed the courage, energy, and 
good humour of her friend, who, without parents and without property, had 
adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister, and was 
paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. 
Henrietta was a great radical, and had clear-cut 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 reader 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 trivial and superficial. Isabel was resolutely 
determined not to be superficial. If one should wait expectantly and 
trustfully, one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course, among 
her theories, this young lady was not without a collection of opinions on 
the question of marriage. The fist on the list was a conviction that it was 
very vulgar to think too much about it. From lapsing into a state of 
eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed that she might be delivered; 
she held that a woman ought to be able to make up her life in singleness, 
and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a 
more or less coarse-minded person of another sex. The girl's prayer was 
very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there was in her 
- something cold and stiff, an unappreciated suitor with a taste for 
analysis might have called it - had hitherto kept her from any great vanity 
of conjecture on the subject of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw 
seemed worth an expenditure of imagination, 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 by frightening her. It often seemed to her 
that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her blush, any 
day in the year, by telling her that she was selfish. She was always 
planning out her own development, desiring her own perfection, observing 
her own progress. Her nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-
like 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 
mind 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 virginal soul, and that there were, moreover, a great many places that 
were not gardens at all - only dusky, pestiferous tracts, planted thick 
with ugliness and misery. In the current of that easy eagerness 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 absorbing happiness 
appear to her 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 was necessary to prevent mistakes, and 
after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of 
others an object of special attention.
England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as entertained 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. The impressions of that time, moreover, had become 
faint and remote, and the old-world 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 comers, 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 
well-ordered 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 shrillness dropped out of 
conversation - 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 placidly 
with folded hands, like a good old man who had done his work and received 
his wages, and was trying to grow used to weeks and months made up only of 
off-days. 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 vivacity 
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 majority 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 
artless 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, quickly moving, clear-voiced 
heroine was as agreeable to his sense as the sound of flowing water. He 
wished to do something for her, he wished she would ask something of him. 
But Isabel asked nothing but questions; it is true that of these she asked 
a great many. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though interrogation 
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 asking to be enlightened on these points she usually 
inquired 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 that was 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 have 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 have had very good opportunities - 
better than what a young lady would naturally have. I am 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 have been 
watching these people for upwards of thirty-five years, and I don't 
hesitate to say that I have 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 that 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 have had a considerable degree 
of success. When you are successful you naturally feel more at home.'
'Do you suppose that if I am successful I shall feel at home?' Isabel 
asked.
'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, you know.'
'Oh, I am by no means sure I shall like it,' said Isabel, somewhat 
judicially. 'I like the place very much, but I am not sure I shall like the 
people.'
'The people are very good people; especially if you like them.'
'I have no doubt they are 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 are very nice to 
girls; they are not nice to them in the novels.'
'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 are 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, very positive; but 
she was not the sort of person that you could depend on her testimony. Too 
much imagination - 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 have 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! I 
just mention that fact to show you that they are not always accurate. Of 
course, as I have 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 better in the upper class.'
'Dear me!' 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 advantage of being an American here; you don't 
belong to any class.'
'I hope so,' said Isabel. 'Imagine one's belonging to an English class!'
'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 first.' 'I 
am much obliged to you,' said the young 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 am sure 
the English are very conventional,' she added.
'They have got everything pretty well fixed,' Mr Touchett admitted. 'It's 
all settled beforehand - they don't leave it to the last moment.'
'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 will have great success,' he rejoined. 'I 
suppose you will like that.'
'I shall not have success if they are conventional. I am not in the least 
conventional. I am just the contrary. That's what they won't like.'
'No, no, you are all wrong,' said the old man. 'You can't tell what they 
will like. They are very inconsistent; that's their principal interest.'
'Ah well,' said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her hands clasped 
about the belt of her black dress, and looking up and down the lawn, ' - 
that will suit me perfectly'




Chapter 7

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 hall-table 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 Touchett's dryness that set her own moral fountains 
flowing.
'Now what's your point of view?' she asked of her aunt. 'When you criticise 
everything here you should have a point of view. Yours doesn't seem to be 
American - you thought everything over there so disagreeable. When I 
criticise I have mine; it's thoroughly American!'
'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 the world; that's 
shockingly narrow. My point of view, thank God, is personal!'
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 new-found cousin. 'I keep a band of music in 
my ante-room,' 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 dance-music indeed that you usually 
heard when you came within ear-shot 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 ante-room, 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 half-
hospitality 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 self-defence, 
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 narrow-minded; 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 good-humour flagged at moments it was 
not because she thought herself ill-used, but because she suddenly felt 
sorry for Ralph. It seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had little 
heart in what he said.
'I don't know what's the matter with you,' she observed to him once; 'but I 
suspect you're a great humbug.'
'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.'
'I care for nothing but you, dear cousin,' said Ralph.
'If I could believe even that, I should be very glad.'
'Ah well, I should hope so!' the young man exclaimed.
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 open-handed 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 Touchett.
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 bas-relief, 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 bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. 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 
reflections 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, thick-wheeled 
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 
consider the movement of their needles.
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 illustrated by eminent cases.
'Well now, there's a specimen,' he said to her as they walked up from the 
riverside and he recognised Lord Warburton.
'A specimen of what?' asked the girl.
'A specimen of an English gentleman.'
'Do you mean they're all like him?'
'Oh no; they're not all like him.'
'He's a favourable specimen then,' said Isabel; 'because I'm sure he's 
nice.'
'Yes, he's very nice. And he's very fortunate.'
The fortunate Lord Warburton exchanged a handshake with our heroine and 
hoped she was very well. 'But I needn't ask that,' he said, 'since you've 
been handling the oars.'
'I've been rowing a little,' Isabel answered; 'but how should you know it?'
'Oh, I know he doesn't row; he's too lazy,' said his lordship, indicating 
Ralph Touchett with a laugh.
'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. She touches nothing that she doesn't adorn!'
'It makes one want to be touched, Miss Archer,' Lord Warburton declared.
'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 supported 
by proof.
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 upon her was pleasant, but at the end of 
an evening spent in his society she thought him quite one of the most 
delectable persons she had met. 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 good-humour to 
the test. Mr Touchett went to bed at half-past nine o'clock, but his wife 
remained in the drawing-room 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 good-
night. 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, very simply -
'Need I go, dear aunt? I'll come up in half an hour.'
'It's impossible I should wait for you,' Mrs Touchett answered.
'Ah, you needn't wait! Ralph will light my candle,' Isabel gaily engaged.
'I'll light your candle; do let me light your candle, Miss Archer!' Lord 
Warburton exclaimed. 'Only I beg it shall not be before midnight.'
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.'
Isabel rose, blushing. 'I wish I were,' she said.
'Oh, I say, mother!' Ralph broke out.
'My dear Mrs Touchett!' Lord Warburton murmured.
'I didn't make your country, my lord,' Mrs Touchett said majestically. 'I 
must take it as I find it.'
'Can't I stay with my own cousin?' Isabel enquired.
'I'm not aware that Lord Warburton is your cousin.'
'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 midnight.'
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 good-night and 
withdrew accompanied by her aunt. For himself he was annoyed at his mother, 
though he thought she was right. Above-stairs the two ladies separated at 
Mrs Touchett's door. Isabel had said nothing on her way up.
'Of course you're vexed at my interfering with you,' said Mrs Touchett.
Isabel considered. 'I'm not vexed, but I'm surprised - and a good deal 
mystified. Wasn't it proper I should remain in the drawing-room?'
'Not in the least. Young girls here - in decent houses - don't sit alone 
with the gentlemen late at night.'
'You were very right to tell me then,' said Isabel. 'I don't understand it, 
but I'm very glad to know it.'
'I shall always tell you,' her aunt answered, 'whenever I see you taking 
what seems to me too much liberty.'
'Pray do; but I don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just.'
'Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways.'
'Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things 
one shouldn't do.'
'So as to do them?' asked her aunt.
'So as to choose,' said Isabel.



Chapter 8

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 pig-headed 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 
unheard-of 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 so-so. 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 war-paint 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 
tasted - lost nothing from the addition of a tone of responsible kindness.
'I like your specimen English gentleman very much,' Isabel said to Ralph 
after Lord Warburton had gone.
'I like him too - I love him well,' Ralph returned. 'But I pity him more.'
Isabel looked at him askance. 'Why, that seems to me his only fault - that 
one can't pity him a little. He appears to have everything, to know 
everything, to be everything.'
'Oh, he's in a bad way!' Ralph insisted.
'I suppose you don't mean in health?'
'No, as to that he's detestably sound. What I mean is that he's a man with 
a great position who's playing all sorts of tricks with it. He doesn't take 
himself seriously.'
'Does he regard himself as a joke?'
'Much worse; he regards himself as an imposition - as an abuse.'
'Well, perhaps he is,' said Isabel.
'Perhaps he is - though on the whole I don't think so. But in that case 
what's more pitiable than a sentient, self-conscious 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 himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as 
an institution.'
'He doesn't look very wretched,' Isabel observed.
'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 believe he is.'
'I don't,' said Isabel.
'Well,' her cousin rejoined, 'if he isn't he ought to be!'
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 what 
she thought of their late visitor.
Isabel was prompt. 'I think he's charming.'
'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 added, 'my cousin gives me rather a sad 
account of Lord Warburton.'
'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 which,' said Isabel.
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 miss him sadly.'
'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 disappointed 
in that case.'
'Oh, I do hope they'll make a revolution!' Isabel exclaimed 'I should 
delight in seeing a revolution.'
'Let me see,' said her uncle, with a humorous intention; 'I forget whether 
you're on the side of the old or on the side of the new. I've heard you 
take such opposite views.'
'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 sympathises more with them, and they've a chance to 
behave so exquisitely. I mean so picturesquely.'
'I don't know that I understand what you mean by behaving picturesquely, 
but it seems to me that you do that always, my dear.'
'Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that!' the girl interrupted.
'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 you come to the 
point it wouldn't suit them to be taken at their word.'
'Of whom are you speaking?'
'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 realise. 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 own business; 
but I expect they won't try very hard.'
'Don't you think they're sincere?' Isabel asked.
'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 you'd be pulled up very short.'
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 Warburton put to the test.'
'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 
dinner-table. 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 leave him as he is: he's too much 
liked.'
'Ah, he couldn't be a martyr even if he wished!' Isabel sighed. 'That's a 
very poor position.'
'He'll never be a martyr unless you make him one,' said the old man.
Isabel shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the 
fact that she did it with a touch of melancholy. 'I shall never make any 
one a martyr.'
'You'll never be one, I hope.'
'I hope not. But you don't pity Lord Warburton then as Ralph does?
Her uncle looked at her a while with genial acuteness. 'Yes, I do, after 
all!'



Chapter 9

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 have a very original stamp. It is true that, when she spoke of them to 
her cousin as original, he declared that no epithet could be less 
applicable than this to the two Misses Molyneux, for that 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, the 
kindest eyes in the world. 
'They are 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 that it might become a fault 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. Their eyes, which Isabel admired so 
much, were quiet and contented, and their figures, 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 lunch at Lockleigh, where they lived with their brother, and 
then they might see her very, very often. They wondered whether she 
wouldn't come over some day and sleep; they were expecting some people on 
the twenty-ninth, and perhaps she would come while the people were there. 
'I'm afraid it isn't any one very remarkable,' said the elder sister; 'but 
I dare say you will take us as you find us.' 
'I shall find you delightful; I think you are enchanting just as you are,' 
replied Isabel, who often praised profusely. 
Her visitors blushed, and her cousin told her, after they were gone, that 
if she said such things to those poor girls, they would think she was 
quizzing them; he was sure it was the first time they had been called 
enchanting. 
'I can't help it,' Isabel answered. 'I think it's lovely to be so quiet, 
and reasonable, and satisfied. I should like to be like that.' 
'Heaven forbid!' cried Ralph, with ardour. 
'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 drawing-room (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 vivacity; but she presently saw that they were capable of deep 
emotion. Before lunch 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 that your brother is 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. 
'Oh dear, yes; he's immensely advanced,' said Mildred, the younger sister. 
'At the same time, Warburton is very reasonable,' Miss Molyneux observed. 
Isabel watched him a moment, at the other side of the room; he was 
evidently trying hard to make himself agreeable to Mrs Touchett. Ralph was 
playing with one of the dogs before the fire, which the temperature of an 
English August, in the ancient, spacious room, had not made an 
impertinence. 'Do you suppose your brother is sincere?' Isabel inquired 
with a smile. 
'Oh, he must be, you know!' Mildred exclaimed, quickly; while the elder 
sister gazed at our heroine in silence. 
'Do you think he would stand the test?' 
'The test?' 
'I mean, for instance, having to give up all this!' 
'Having to give up Lockleigh?' said Miss Molyneux, finding her voice.
'Yes, and the other places; what are they called?' 
The two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. 'Do you mean - do 
you mean on account of the expense?' the younger one asked. 
'I dare say he might let one or two of his houses,' said the other. 
'Let them for nothing?' Isabel inquired. 
'I can't fancy his giving up his property,' said Miss Molyneux. 
'Ah, I am afraid he is an imposter!' Isabel exclaimed. 'Don't you think 
it's a false position?' 
Her companions, evidently, were rapidly getting bewildered. 'My brother's 
position?' Miss Molyneux inquired. 
'It's thought a very good position,' said the younger sister. 'It's the 
first position in the county.' 
'I suspect you think me very irreverent,' Isabel took occasion to observe. 
'I suppose you revere your brother, and are rather afraid of him.' 
'Of course one looks up to one's brother,' said Miss Molyneux, simply. 
'If you do that, he must be very good - because you, evidently, are very 
good.' 
'He is most kind. It will never be known, the good he does.' 
'His ability is known,' Mildred added; 'every one thinks it's immense.' 
'Oh, I can see that,' said Isabel. 'But if I were he, I should wish to be a 
conservative. I should wish to keep everything.' 
'I think one ought to be liberal,' Mildred argued, gently. 'We have always 
been so, even from the earliest times.' 
'Ah well,' said Isabel, 'you have made a great success of it; I don't 
wonder you like it. I see you are very fond of crewels.' 
When Lord Warburton showed her the house, after lunch, it 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 weather-fretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it 
seemed to Isabel a castle in a fairy-tale. The day was cool and rather 
lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck; and the watery 
sushine 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 lunch, and Isabel had 
had five minutes' talk with him - time enough to institute a search for 
theological characteristics and give it up as vain. The characteristics of 
the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural 
countenance, a capacious appetite, and a tendency to abundant 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 engaging his youngest visitor in 
a stroll somewhat apart from the others. 
'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 am very 
glad indeed you like the old house. I wish you could see more of it - that 
you could stay here awhile. My sisters have taken an immense fancy to you - 
if that would be any inducement.' 
'There is no want of inducements,' Isabel answered; 'but I am afraid I 
can't make engagements. I am quite in my aunt's hands.' 
'Ah, excuse me if I say I don't exactly believe that. I am pretty sure you 
can do whatever you want.' 
'I am 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. 
'To hope what?' 
'That in future I may see you often.' 
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'to enjoy that pleasure, I needn't be so terribly 
emancipated.' 'Doubtless not; and yet, at the same time, I don't think your 
uncle likes me.' 
'You are very much mistaken. I have heard him speak very highly of you.' 
'I am glad you have talked about me,' said Lord Warburton. 'But, all the 
same, I don't think he would like me to keep coming to Gardencourt.' 
'I can't answer for my uncle's tastes,' the girl rejoined, 'though I ought, 
as far as possible, to take them into account. But, for myself, I shall be 
very glad to see you.' 
'Now that's what I like to hear you say. I am charmed when you say that.' 
'You are easily charmed, my lord,' said Isabel. 
'No, I am not easily charmed!' And then he stopped a moment. 'But you have 
charmed me, Miss Archer,' he added. 
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 recognised 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 am afraid there is no prospect of my being able to come here 
again.' 
'Never?' said Lord Warburton. 
'I won't say 'never'; I should feel very melodramatic.' 
'May I come and see you then some day next week?' 
'Most assuredly. What is there to prevent it?' 
'Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I have a sort of sense 
that you are always judging people.' 
'You don't of necessity lose by that.' 
'It is very kind of you to say so; but even if I gain, stern justice is not 
what I most love. Is Mrs Touchett going to take you abroad?' 
'I hope so.' 
'Is England not good enough for you?' 
'That's a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn't deserve an answer. I want 
very much to see foreign lands as well.' 
'Then you will go on judging, I suppose.' 
'Enjoying, I hope, too.' 
'Yes, that's what you enjoy most; I can't make out what you are up to,' 
said Lord Warburton. 'You strike me as having mysterious purposes - vast 
designs!' 
'You are 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 my fellow-
countrymen- the purpose of improving one's mind by foreign travel?' 
'You can't improve your mind, Miss Archer,' her companion declared. 'It's 
already a most formidable instrument. It looks down on us all; it despises 
us.' 
'Despises you? You are making fun of me,' said Isabel, seriously. 
'Well, you think us picturesque - that's the same thing. I won't be thought 
picturesque, to begin with; I am not so in the least. I protest.' 
'That protest is one of the most picturesque things I have ever heard,' 
Isabel answered with a smile. 
Lord Warburton was silent a moment. '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 were a highly eccentric people; and she had even read in 
some ingenious author that they were, at bottom, the most romantic of 
races. Was Lord Warburton suddenly turning romantic - was he going to make 
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 
afflictions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations!' 
'As regards that,' said Isabel, 'I should find in my own nation 
entertainment for a lifetime. But we have 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 week,' he said. 
She had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away she felt that 
she could not pretend to herself that it was altogether a painful one. 
Nevertheless, she made answer to this declaration, coldly enough, 'Just as 
you please.' And her coldness was not coquetry - a quality that she 
possessed in a much smaller degree than would have seemed probable to many 
critics; it came from a certain fear.


 
Chapter 10

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 quick-fingered 
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 street-car. 'Where are you, and where can we 
meet? I suppose you are 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 rose-
coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know that whatever 
I am, at least I am not superficial. I have 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 inner life.' 
Isabel did not 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 is a literary lady,' he said, 'I suppose that, 
being an American, she won't reproduce me, as that other one did. She has 
seen others like me.' 
'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 enterprising young woman lost no 
time in signifying her intention of arriving. She had gone up to London, 
and it was from the metropolis that she took the train for the station 
nearest to Gardencourt, where Isabel and Ralph were in waiting to receive 
the visitor. 
'Shall I love her, or shall I hate her?' asked Ralph, while they stood on 
the platform, before the advent of the train. 
'Whichever you do will matter very little to her,' said Isabel. 'She 
doesn't care a straw what men think of her.' 
'As a man I am bound to dislike her, then. She must be a kind of monster. 
Is she very ugly?' 
'No, she is decidedly pretty.' 
'A female interviewer - a reporter in petticoats? I am very curious to see 
her,' Ralph declared. 
'It is very easy to laugh at her, but it is not easy to be as brave as 
she.' 
'I should think not; interviewing requires bravery. Do you suppose she will 
interview me?' 
'Never in the world. She will not think you of enough importance.' 
'You will see,' said Ralph. 'She will send a description of us all, 
including Bunchie, to her newspaper.' 
'I shall ask her not to,' Isabel answered. 
'You think she is capable of it, then.' 
'Perfectly.' 
'And yet you have made her your bosom friend?' 
'I have not made her my bosom friend; but I like her, in spite of her 
faults.' 
'Ah, well,' said Ralph, 'I am afraid I shall dislike her, in spite of her 
merits.' 
'You will probably fall in love with her at the end of three days.'
 'And have my love-letters published in the Interviewer? Never!' cried the 
young man. 
The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly descending, 
proved to be, as Isabel had said, decidedly pretty. She was a fair, 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, surprised looking 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, who was somewhat disconcerted by Miss Stackpole's 
gracious and comfortable aspect, which seemed to indicate that it would not 
be so easy as he had assumed to disapprove of her. She was very well 
dressed, in fresh, dovecoloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that 
she was scrupulously, fastidiously neat. From top to toe she carried not an 
ink-stain. She spoke in a clear, high voice - a voice not rich, but loud, 
though after she had taken her place, with her companions, in Mr Touchett's 
carriage, she struck him, rather to his surprise, as not an abundant 
talker. She answered the inquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in 
which the young man ventured to join, with a great deal of precision and 
distinctness; 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 conversational powers. 
'Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American or 
English,' she said. 'If once I knew, I could talk to you accordingly.' 
'Talk to us anyhow, and we shall be thankful,' Ralph answered, liberally. 
She fixed her eyes upon him, and there was something in their character 
that reminded him of large, polished buttons; he seemed to see the 
reflection of surrounding objects upon 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 he was a very modest man, feel vaguely 
embarrassed and uncomfortable. This sensation, it must be added, after he 
had spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though it never 
wholly disappeared. 'I don't suppose that you are going to undertake to 
persuade me that you are an American,' she said. 
'To please you, I will be an Englishman, I will be a Turk!' 
'Well, if you can change about that way, you are very welcome,' Miss 
Stackpole rejoined. 
'I am sure you understand everything, and that differences of nationality 
are no barrier to you,' Ralph went on. 
Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. 'Do you mean the foreign languages?' 
'The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit - the genius.' 
'I am not sure that I understand you,' said the correspondent of the 
Interviewer; 'but I expect I shall before I leave.' 
'He is what is called a cosmopolitan,' Isabel suggested. 
'That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. I must say I 
think patriotism is like charity - it begins at home.' 
'Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole?' Ralph inquired. 
'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 mild, wise, 
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 felt it on the journey from Liverpool to 
London.' 
'Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage,' Ralph suggested. 
'Yes, but it was crowded with friends - a party of Americans whose 
acquaintance I had made upon the steamer; a most 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 sympathize with the atmosphere. But I suppose I shall 
make my own atmosphere. Your surroundings seem very attractive.' 
'Ah, we too are a lovely group!' said Ralph. 'Wait a little and you will 
see.' 
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, was of an eminently 
social tendency. 
Isabel speedily found occasion to request 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 upon a 
letter to the Interviewer, of which the title, in her exquisitely neat and 
legible hand (exactly that of the copy-books 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 immediately put in her protest. 
'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 are always delighted, 
afterwards.' 
'My uncle won't be delighted - nor my cousin, either. They will 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 approve, I won't do 
it; but I sacrifice a beautiful subject.' 
'There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all round you. We 
will take some drives, and I will show you some charming scenery.' 
'Scenery is not my department; I always need a human interest. You know I 
am deeply human, Isabel; I always was,' Miss Stackpole rejoined. 'I was 
going to bring in your cousin - the alienated American. There is a great 
demand just now for the alienated American, and your cousin is a beautiful 
specimen. I should have handled him severely.' 
'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 is a grand old man; I don't see how he can 
object to my paying him honour.' 
Isabel looked at her companion in much wonderment; it appeared to her so 
strange that a nature in which she found so much to esteem should exhibit 
such extraordinary disparities. 'My poor Henrietta,' she said, 'you have no 
sense of privacy.' 
Henrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes were 
suffused; while Isabel marvelled more than ever at her inconsistency. 'You 
do me great injustice,' said Miss Stackpole, with dignity. 'I have never 
written a word about myself!' 
'I am very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be modest for others 
also!' 
'Ah, that is very good!' cried Henrietta, seizing her pen again. 'Just let 
me make a note of it, and I will put it in a letter.' She was a thoroughly 
good-natured woman, and half an hour later she was in as cheerful a mood as 
should have been looked for in a newspaper-correspondent in want of 
material. 'I have 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 is just the place for me!' Miss Stackpole exclaimed. 'I must 
get a glimpse of the nobility.' 
'I can't take you,' said Isabel; 'but Lord Warburton is coming here, and 
you will have a chance to see him and observe him. Only if you intend to 
repeat his conversation, I shall certainly give him warning.' 
'Don't do that,' her companion begged; 'I want him to be natural.' 
'An Englishman is never so natural as when he is holding his tongue,' 
Isabel rejoined. 
It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that her cousin had fallen 
in love with 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 society had a less insoluble quality than Ralph 
had expected in the natural perturbation of his sense of the perfect 
adequacy of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the Interviewer 
made him laugh a good deal, and he had long since decided that abundant 
laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days. 
Henrietta, on her side, did not quite 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 
superficial on her part not to solve. 
'What does he do for a living?' she asked of Isabel, the evening of her 
arrival. 'Does he go round all day with his hands in his pockets?' 
'He does nothing,' said Isabel, smiling; 'he's a gentleman of leisure.' 
'Well, I call that a shame - when I have to work like a cottonmill,' Miss 
Stackpole replied. 'I should like to show him up.' 
'He is in wretched health; he is quite unfit for work,' Isabel urged. 
'Pshaw! Don't you believe it. I work when I am sick,' cried her friend. 
Later, when she stepped into the boat, on joining the water-party, she 
remarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her - he would like to drown 
her. 
'Ah, no,' said Ralph, 'I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you 
would be such an interesting one!' 
'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 have some delicious prejudices. Of course I spoil 
your flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, with your cousin; but I 
don't care for that, for I render your cousin the service of drawing you 
out. She will see how thin you are.' 
'Ah, do draw me out!' Ralph exclaimed. 'So few people will take the 
trouble.' 
Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no trouble; 
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 
ready-made 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 phrases; there was something 
earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times, in its brilliant 
deliberation, suggested a person of high culture speaking a foreign 
language. Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time 
officiated as art-critic to a transatlantic journal; 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 
Constable, she turned and looked at him as if he himself had been a 
picture. 
'Do you always spend your time like this?' she demanded. 
'I seldom spend it so agreeably,' said Ralph. 
'Well, you know what I mean - without any regular occupation.' 
'Ah,' said Ralph, 'I am the idlest man living.' 
Miss Stackpole turned her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph bespoke 
her attention for a small Watteau 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 grass. 
'That's my ideal of a regular occupation,' he said. 
Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and though her eyes had rested upon the 
picture, he saw that she had not apprehended the subject. She was thinking 
of something much more serious. 
'I don't see how you can reconcile it to your conscience,' she said. 
'My dear lady, I have no conscience!' 
'Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You will need it the next time you go 
to America.' 
'I shall probably never go again.' 
'Are you ashamed to show yourself?' 
Ralph meditated, with a gentle smile. 
'I suppose that, if one has no conscience, one has no shame.' 
'Well, you have got plenty of assurance,' Henrietta declared. 'Do you 
consider it right to give up your country?' 
'Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives up one's 
grandmother. It's antecedent to choice.' 
'I suppose that means that you would give it up if you could? What do they 
think of you over here?'
 'They delight in me.' 
'That's because you truckle to them.' 
'Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!' Ralph urged. 
'I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you have got any charm, 
it's quite unnatural. It's wholly acquired - or at least you have tried 
hard to acquire it, living over here. I don't say you have succeeded. It's 
a charm that I don't appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some way, 
and then we will talk about it.' 
'Well now, tell me what I shall do,' said Ralph. 
'Go right home, to begin with.' 
'Yes, I see. And then?' 
'Take right hold of something.' 
'Well, now, what sort of thing?' 
'Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new idea, some big 
work.' 
'Is it very difficult to take hold?' Ralph inquired. 
'Not if you put your heart into it.' 
'Ah, my heart,' said Ralph. 'If it depends upon my heart-' 
'Haven't you got any?' 
'I had one a few days ago, but I have lost it since.' 
'You are 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 
his attention, and on this occasion assigned a different cause to his 
mysterious perversity. 'I know what's the matter with you, Mr Touchett,' 
she said. 'You think you are too good to get married.' 
'I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole,' Ralph answered; 'and then I 
suddenly changed my mind.' 
'Oh, pshaw!' Henrietta exclaimed impatiently. 
'Then it seemed to me,' said Ralph, 'that I was not good enough.' 
'It would improve you. Besides, it's your duty.' 
'Ah,' cried the young man, 'one has so many duties! Is that a duty too?' 
'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 fellow. She was wanting in 
distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave, and there is always 
something fine about that. 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 upon an unencumbered young man, the most 
obvious explanation of her conduct is not the altruistic impulse. 
'Ah, well now, there is a good deal to be said about that,' Ralph rejoined. 
'There may be, but that is 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 are better than any one else in the world? 
In America it's usual for people to marry.' 
'If it's my duty,' Ralph asked, 'is it not, by analogy, yours as well?' 
Miss Stackpole's brilliant eyes expanded still further. 
'Have you the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reasoning? Of course I have 
got as good a right to marry as any one else.' 
'Well then,' said Ralph, 'I won't say it vexes me to see you single. It 
delights me rather.' 
'You are not serious yet. You never will be.' 
'Shall you not believe me to be so on the day that I tell you I desire to 
give up the practice of going round alone?' 
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 walked away. 
'I have not fallen in love with your friend,' Ralph said that evening to 
Isabel, 'though we talked some time this morning about it.' 
'And you said something she didn't like,' the girl replied. 
Ralph stared. 'Has she complained of me?' 
'She told me she thinks there is something very low in the tone of 
Europeans towards women.' 
'Does she call me a European?' 
'One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an 
American never would have said. But she didn't repeat it.'
Ralph treated himself to a burst of resounding laughter. 
'She is an extraordinary combination. Did she think I was making love to 
her?' 
'No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you 
mistook the intention of something she had said, and put an unkind 
construction on it.' 
'I thought she was proposing marriage to me, and I accepted her. Was that 
unkind?' 
Isabel smiled. 'It was unkind to me. I don't want you to marry.' 
'My dear cousin, what is one to do among you all?' Ralph demanded. 'Miss 
Stackpole tells me it's my bounden duty, and that it's hers to see I do 
mine!' 
'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 very frivolous for you to be single; that's what she meant to 
express to you. If you thought she was trying to - to attract you, you were 
very wrong.' 
'It is true it was an odd way; but I did think she was trying to attract 
me. Excuse my superficiality.' 
'You are very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed 
you would think she had.' 
'One must be very modest, then, to talk with such women,' Ralph said, 
humbly. 'But it's a very strange type. She is too personal - considering 
that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking at 
the door.' 
'Yes,' Isabel admitted, 'she doesn't suffciently recognise the existence of 
knockers; and indeed I am not sure that she doesn't think them a rather 
pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand ajar. But I 
persist in liking her.' 
'I persist in thinking her too familiar,' Ralph rejoined, naturally 
somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in 
Miss Stackpole. 
'Well,' said Isabel, smiling, 'I am afraid it is because she is rather 
vulgar that I like her.' 
'She would be flattered by your reason!' 
'If I should tell her, I would not express it in that way. I should say it 
is because there is something of the 'people' in her.' 
'What do you know about the people? And what does she, for that matter?'
 'She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she is 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 much to ask 
of her. But she suggests it; she reminds me of it.' 
'You like her then for patriotic reasons. I am afraid it is on those very 
grounds that I object to her.' 
'Ah,' said Isabel, with a kind of joyous sigh, 'I like so many things! If a 
thing strikes me in a certain way, I like it. I don't want to boast, but I 
suppose I am 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 am immensely struck with her; 
not so much for herself as what stands behind her.' 
'Ah, you mean the back view of her,' Ralph suggested. 
'What she says is true,' his cousin answered; 'you will 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 blue 
Pacific! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta 
- excuse my simile - has something of that odour in her garments.' 
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 am not sure the Pacific is blue,' he said; 'but you are a woman of 
imagination. Henrietta, however, is fragrant - Henrietta is decidedly 
fragrant!'



Chapter 11

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 sister-
spirit, 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 like them 
all or to restrict the girl to those she liked.
'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 boarding-house, 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 boarding-house civilisation, 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 boarding-house. For me, I 
find it almost too much of one! We shall never get on together therefore, 
and there's no use trying.'
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 reflections 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 
aquired a large familiarity with the technical hospitality of her country. 
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 individual; you like to be treated as a "party".'
'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 freemen,' Henrietta retorted.
'They're the companions of their servants - the Irish chambermaid and the 
negro waiter. They share their work.'
'Do you call the domestics in an American household 'slaves'?' Miss 
Stackpole enquired. 'If that's the way you desire to treat them, no wonder 
you don't like America.'
'If you've not good servants you're miserable,' Mrs Touchett serenely said. 
'They're very bad in America, but I've five perfect ones in Florence.'
'I don't see what you want with five,' Henrietta couldn't help observing. 
'I don't think I should like to see five persons surrounding me in that 
menial position.'
'I like them in that position better than in some others,' proclaimed Mrs 
Touchett with much meaning.
'Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear?' her husband asked.
'I don't think I should: you would make a very poor butler.'
'The companions of freemen - I like that, Miss Stackpole,' said Ralph. 
'It's a beautiful description.'
'When I said freemen I didn't mean you, sir!'
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 friend, I wonder if 
you're growing faithless.'
'Faithless? Faithless to you, Henrietta?'
'No, that would be a great pain; but it's not that.'
'Faithless to my country then?'
'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 your letter, but I confess I had forgotten it. 
What have you to tell me?'
Henrietta looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it. 'You don't 
ask that right - as if you thought it important. You're changed - you're 
thinking of other things.'
'Tell me what you mean, and I'll think of that.'
'Will you really think of it? That's what I wish to be sure of.'
'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 going 
to be married?'
'Not till I've seen Europe!' said Miss Stackpole. 'What are you laughing 
at?' she went on. 'What I mean is that Mr Goodwood came out in the steamer 
with me.'
'Ah!' Isabel responded.
'You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with him; he has come after 
you.'
'Did he tell you so?'
'No, he told me nothing; that's how I knew it,' said Henrietta cleverly. 
'He said very little about you, but I spoke of you a good deal.'
Isabel waited. At the mention of Mr Goodwood's name she had turned a little 
pale. 'I'm very sorry you did that,' she observed at last.
'It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. I could have 
talked a long time to such a listener; he was so quiet, so intense; he 
drank it all in.'
'What did you say about me?' Isabel asked.
'I said you were on the whole the finest creature I know.'
'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 talked. I never saw an ugly man look so handsome.'
'He's very simple-minded,' said Isabel. 'And he's not so ugly.'
'There's nothing so simplifying as a grand passion.'
'It's not a grand passion; I'm very sure it's not that.'
'You don't say that as if you were sure.'
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 affected by your 
new surroundings.'
'Very likely. I'm affected by everything.'
'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 good-bye.'
'Thank you for doing so.' And Isabel turned away.
'Yes, you're changed; you've got new ideas over here,' her friend 
continued.
'I hope so,' said Isabel; 'one should get as many new ideas as possible.'
'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 she faltered before her friend's implacable glitter.
'My dear child, you certainly encouraged him.'
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 and found Henrietta wanting in delicacy.
'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 something, and 
whatever he does will always be right.'
'I quite believe that.' Henrietta might be wanting in delicacy, but it 
touched the girl, all the same, to hear this declaration.
'Ah, you do care for him!' her visitor rang out.
'Whatever he does will always be right,' Isabel repeated. 'When a man's of 
that infallible mould what does it matter to him what one feels?'
'It may not matter to him, but it matters to one's self.'
'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.'
'I hope he'll hate me then,' said Isabel.
'I believe you hope it about as much as I believe him capable of it.'
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 forty-eight 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 heavy-hearted, she had been able, 
with the help of some well-chosen 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 empty-handed, 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 given entire.
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 present is the dearest 
wish of yours faithfully
CASPAR GOODWOOD
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 before her.



Chapter 12

She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of 
welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her 
coolness.
'They told me you were out here,' said Lord Warburton; 'and as there was no 
one in the drawing-room 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 just going indoors.'
'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 good-feeling 
and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of 
him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.
'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 
analysing 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 self-sufficiency 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 which will constitute almost a 
direct appeal to charity.
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 twenty-six 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 quickly-
judging 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 course it 
is not discredited by irritating associations.
'I hope you had a pleasant ride,' said Isabel, who observed her companion's 
hesitancy.
'It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me 
here.'
'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 country-
house, 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 she succeeded scarcely the 
less in looking at it from the outside.
'I care nothing for Gardencourt,' said her companion. 'I care only for you.
'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 in which he replied 
would quite have served the purpose.
'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 
to-day. 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 fancy-
phrase, 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 a lamp in a windless place.
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 drew her hand away.
'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.'
'If you know me little I know you even less,' said Isabel.
'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 like me rather, 
don't you?'
'I like you very much, Lord Warburton,' she answered; and at this moment 
she liked him immensely.
'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 who'll speak for me.'
'I don't need the recommendation of your friends,' said Isabel.
'Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself.'
'Completely,' Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the 
pleasure of feeling she did.
The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long 
exhalation of joy. 'If you're mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I 
possess!'
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 least your 
having listened at all - gives me some hope.'
'Don't hope too much,' Isabel said.
'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 much worse.'
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 sincere.'
'I'm willing to risk it, Miss Archer,' her companion replied.
'It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question.'
'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 on your answer.'
'I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,' said Isabel.
'Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a 
bad one to-day.'
'But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to 
give you one that you'd think good.'
'Why not, since you really like me?'
'Ah, you must never doubt that,' said Isabel.
'Well then, I don't see what more you ask!'
'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 should.'
'You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better 
royalist than the king.'
'It's not only that,' said Isabel; 'but I'm not sure I wish to marry any 
one.'
'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 frequently 
persuaded.'
'Ah, that's because they want to be!' And Isabel lightly laughed.
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 your own 
country.'
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?'
'I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans 
generally.'
'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 little.'
'Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton; leave it alone. I like it this way.
'Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection 
to what I propose.'
'I'm afraid I can't make you understand.'
'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 to-day.'
'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 your hands.'
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 know it 
without making you miserable.'
'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 die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live 
to no purpose.
'You'll live to marry a better woman than I.'
'Don't say that, please,' said Lord Warburton very gravely. 'That's fair to 
neither of us.'
'To marry a worse one then.'
'If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I can 
say,' he went on with the same earnestness. 'There's no accounting for 
tastes.'
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 suppose I must make the best of that.'
'I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a 
little.'
He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands 
behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. 'Do you know 
I'm very much afraid of it - of that remarkable mind of yours?'
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 home. 'Ah! be merciful, be merciful,' he murmured.
'I think you had better go,' said Isabel. 'I'll write to you.'
'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 mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know. Good-
bye.'
'I adore a moat,' said Isabel. 'Good-bye.'
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, he walked rapidly 
away. He was evidently much upset.
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, it 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 finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who 
offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise 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 the house, felt, as she had said to her 
friend, really frightened at herself.



Chapter 13

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 dressing-
room. 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 expectation.
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.
'Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?' he then enquired.
'I've not answered him definitely yet; I've taken a little time to think of 
it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.'
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 you'd be a 
success over here. Americans are highly appreciated.'
'Very highly indeed,' said Isabel. 'But at the cost of seeming both 
tasteless and ungrateful, I don't think I can marry Lord Warburton.'
'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 much 
consequence, 'that I've known all about it these three days.'
'About Lord Warburton's state of mind?'
'About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant 
letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see his letter?' the 
old man obligingly asked.
'Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I'm glad he wrote to you; 
it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.'
'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, and finding cheerful 
reasons for it.
'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 
interlocutors.
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 except the part that was about himself. I suppose he 
told you all that.'
'He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,' Isabel said.
'But you didn't feel curious?'
'My curiosity would have been idle - once I had determined to decline his 
offer.'
'You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?' Mr Touchett enquired.
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 the large pleasure-spaces of the park.
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.'
'Perhaps I might,' the girl replied.
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 clear-burning 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 reader has a right to a nearer and a 
clearer view.
He was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills 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 cotton-
spinning 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 organise, 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 cotton-factory; 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 ripening youth.
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 cotton-mill - 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 criticise 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 to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied. It 
was certainly strange.
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 belongs to our history.
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,
ISABEL ARCHER
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 address that I've 
never encountered in any woman.'
'Well,' Henrietta replied good-humouredly, '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 free-born 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.'
'Has she injured you?' Ralph asked.
'If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What I'm afraid 
of is that she'll injure herself.'
'I think that's very possible,' said Ralph.
His companion stopped in the garden-walk, 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.'
'To Isabel? Ah, not that!'
'Well, you're not in love with her, I hope.'
'How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?'
'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 do that to grant my favour. I'll supply the 
necessary intelligence.'
'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 that I find her 
fearfully changed.'
'Since you came, do you mean?'
'Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once so 
beautifully was.'
'As she was in America?'
'Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can't help 
it, but she does.'
'Do you want to change her back again?'
'Of course I do, and I want you to help me.'
'Ah,' said Ralph, 'I'm only Caliban; I'm not Prospero.'
'You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You've acted on 
Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr Touchett.'
'I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted on 
me - yes; she acts on every one. But I've been absolutely passive.'
'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 those ideals, Mr Touchett, and that's where you 
come in.'
'Not surely as an ideal?'
'Well, I hope not,' Henrietta replied promptly. 'I've got a fear in my 
heart that she's going to marry one of these fell Europeans, and I want to 
prevent it.'
'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 guess I can 
obtain it.'
'I've never heard of him,' said Ralph.
'Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't believe he has 
ever heard of you; but that's no reason why Isabel shouldn't marry him.'
Ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. 'What a rage you have for marrying 
people! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me the other day?'
'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.'
'Is she very fond of him?'
'If she isn't she ought to be. He's simply wrapped up in her.'
'And you wish me to ask him here,' said Ralph reflectively.
'It would be an act of true hospitality.'
'Caspar Goodwood,' Ralph continued - 'it's rather a striking name.'
'I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and I 
should say the same. He's the only man I have ever seen whom I think worthy 
of Isabel.'
'You're a very devoted friend,' said Ralph.
'Of course I am. If you say that to pour scorn on me I don't care.'
'I don't say it to pour scorn on you; I'm very much struck with it.'
'You're more satiric than ever, but I advise you not to laugh at Mr 
Goodwood.'
'I assure you I'm very serious; you ought to understand that,' said Ralph.
In a moment his companion understood it. 'I believe you are; now you're too 
serious.'
'You're difficult to please.'
'Oh, you're very serious indeed. You won't invite Mr Goodwood.'
'I don't know,' said Ralph. 'I'm capable of strange things. Tell me a 
little about Mr Goodwood. What's he like?'
'He's just the opposite of you. He's at the head of a cotton-factory; a 
very fine one.'
'Has he pleasant manners?' asked Ralph.
'Splendid manners - in the American style.'
'Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?'
'I don't think he'd care much about our little circle. He'd concentrate on 
Isabel.'
'And how would my cousin like that?'
'Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will call back 
her thoughts.'
'Call them back - from where?'
'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 strong American tie that will act as a preservative.'
'Aren't you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?' Ralph enquired. 'Don't 
you think you ought to give her more of a chance in poor old England?'
'A chance to ruin her bright young life? One's never too much in a hurry to 
save a precious human creature from drowning.'
'As I understand it then,' said Ralph, 'you wish me to push Mr Goodwood 
overboard after her. Do you know,' he added, 'that I've never heard her 
mention his name?'
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 with 
him.'
'Don't do that; he'd prove the better man.'
'You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really don't 
think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being rude to, him.'
'It's just as you please,' Henrietta returned. 'I had no idea you were in 
love with her yourself.'
'Do you really believe that?' the young man asked with lifted eyebrows.
'That's the most natural speech I've ever heard you make! Of course I 
believe it,' Miss Stackpole ingeniously said.
'Well,' Ralph concluded, 'to prove to you that you're wrong I'll invite 
him. It must be of course as a friend of yours.'
'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 that you'll ask him - but to prove it to 
yourself!'
These last words of Miss Stackpole's (on which the two presently separated) 
contained an amount of truth which Ralph Touchett was obliged to recognise; 
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 cotton-mill 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, exclaimed: 'Well, I never have heard of anything so 
stiff!'
'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, and I shall write to him to know what he 
means.'
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 had written in vain. Mr 
Goodwood had not replied.
'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 to-morrow, 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 inside out.'
'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 coffee-house 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, informal, old-fashioned place, and I'll have you 
put down at my club.'
'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 continent and can at least 
find her way about this minute island.'
'Ah then,' said Ralph, 'let me take advantage of her protection to go up to 
town as well. I may never have a chance to travel so safely!'



Chapter 14

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 reflections 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 good-humoured self-possession, 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, nun-like 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 inequality.
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 about the table.
'Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in America that they're 
all handsome and magnificent and that they wear wonderful robes and 
crowns.'
'Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion,' said Lord Warburton, 
'like your tomahawks and revolvers.'
'I'm sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be splendid,' 
Henrietta declared. 'If it's not that, what is it?'
'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 gentleman.'
'Do talk to me as if I were one,' said Lord Warburton. 'I don't see how you 
manage to get on without potatoes; you must find so few things to eat over 
here.'
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 as if I ought 
to tell you that.'
'Don't approve of me?'
'Yes; I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you before, did 
they? I don't approve of lords as an institution. I think the world has got 
beyond them - far beyond.'
'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 vainglorious.'
'Why don't you give it up then?' Miss Stackpole enquired.
'Give up - a-?' asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh inflexion with a 
very mellow one.
'Give up being a lord.'
'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.'
'I should like to see you do it!' Henrietta exclaimed rather grimly.
'I'll invite you to the ceremony; we'll have a supper and a dance.'
'Well,' said Miss Stackpole, 'I like to see all sides. I don't approve of a 
privileged class, but I like to hear what they have to say for themselves.'
'Mighty little, as you see!'
'I should like to draw you out a little more,' Henrietta continued. 'But 
you're always looking away. You're afraid of meeting my eye. I see you want 
to escape me.'
'No, I'm only looking for those despised potatoes.'
'Please explain about that young lady - your sister - then. I don't 
understand about her. Is she a Lady?'
'She's a capital good girl.'
'I don't like the way you say that - as if you wanted to change the 
subject. Is her position inferior to yours?'
'We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she's better off than 
I, because she has none of the bother.'
'Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I had as little 
bother as that. You do produce quiet people over here, whatever else you 
may do.'
'Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole,' said Lord Warburton. 
'And then you know we're very dull. Ah, we can be dull when we try!'
'I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't know what to talk 
to your sister about; she looks so different. Is that silver cross a 
badge?'
'A badge?'
'A sign of rank.'
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 criticising 
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 out: 'I hoped you wouldn't write to me that way.'
'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 should admit 
you do-'
'What have I admitted?' Isabel interrupted, turning slightly pale.
'That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?' She said nothing, and he 
went on: 'You don't seem to have any reason, and that gives me a sense of 
injustice.'
'I have a reason, Lord Warburton.' She said it in a tone that made his 
heart contract.
'I should like very much to know it.'
'I'll tell you some day when there's more to show for it.'
'Excuse my saying that in the mean time I must doubt of it.'
'You make me very unhappy,' said Isabel.
'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 to go on. 'Do 
you prefer some one else?'
'That's a question I'd rather not answer.'
'Ah, you do then!' her suitor murmured with bitterness.
The bitterness touched her, and she cried out: 'You're mistaken! I don't.'
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 the wall; 
'for that would be an excuse.'
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. 'An excuse? Must I excuse myself?'
He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into his 
head. 'Is it my political opinions? Do you think I go too far?'
'I can't object to your political opinions, because I don't understand 
them.'
'You don't care what I think!' he cried, getting up. 'It's all the same to 
you.
Isabel walked away, 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.'
'Your fate?'
'I should try to escape it if I were to marry you.'
'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 can't be.'
Poor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye. 'Do you 
call marrying me giving up?'
'Not in the usual sense. It's getting - getting - getting a great deal. But 
it's giving up other chances.'
'Other chances for what?'
'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 companion observed.
'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 exclaimed with an anxious laugh.
'I mustn't - I can't!' cried the girl.
'Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make me 
so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for you, it has none for me.'
'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.'
'By separating yourself from what?'
'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 your friend Miss Stackpole.'
'She'd never approve of it,' said Isabel, trying to smile and take 
advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for 
doing so.
'Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?' his lordship asked impatiently. 'I 
never saw a person judge things on such theoretic grounds.'
'Now I suppose you're speaking of me,' said Isabel with humility; and she 
turned away again, for she saw Miss Molyneux enter the gallery, accompanied 
by Henrietta and by Ralph.
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 
Royalty - stood like a lady-in-waiting.
'Well, I never, Miss Molyneux!' said Henrietta Stackpole. 'If I wanted to 
go he'd have to go. If I wanted my brother to do a thing he'd have to do 
it.'
'Oh, Warburton does everything one wants,' Miss Molyneux answered with a 
quick, shy laugh. 'How very many pictures you have!' she went on, turning 
to Ralph.
'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. Henrietta 
appeared at once to fascinate and to frighten her.
'Ah yes, pictures are very convenient,' said Ralph, who appeared to know 
better what style of reflection was acceptable to her.
'They're so very pleasant when it rains,' the young lady continued. 'It has 
rained of late so very often.'
'I'm sorry you're going away, Lord Warburton,' said Henrietta. 'I wanted to 
get a great deal more out of you.'
'I'm not going away,' Lord Warburton answered.
'Your sister says you must. In America the gentlemen obey the ladies.'
'I'm afraid we have some people to tea,' said Miss Molyneux, looking at her 
brother.
'Very good, my dear. We'll go.'
'I hoped you would resist!' Henrietta exclaimed. 'I wanted to see what Miss 
Molyneux would do.'
'I never do anything,' said this young lady.
'I suppose in your position it's sufficient for you to exist!' Miss 
Stackpole returned. 'I should like very much to see you at home.'
'You must come to Lockleigh again,' said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to 
Isabel, ignoring this remark of Isabel's friend.
Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that moment seemed to 
see in their grey depths the reflection 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: 'I'm afraid I can never come again.'
'Never again?'
'I'm afraid I'm going away.'
'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 him.
'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 able to answer many of your questions. When will 
you come?'
'Whenever Miss Archer will take me. We're thinking of going to London, but 
we'll go and see you first. I'm determined to get some satisfaction out of 
you.'
'If it depends upon Miss Archer I'm afraid you won't get much. She won't 
come to Lockleigh; she doesn't like the place.'
'She told me it was lovely!' said Henrietta.
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 English lady?' she enquired with soft asperity.
Lord Warburton stared. 'Yes, if I liked her enough.'
'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 therefore went on.
'Warning me?'
'Isn't that why she came off alone with you here - to put you on your 
guard?'
'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.'
'I hope not,' said Miss Molyneux vaguely.
'Miss Stackpole takes notes,' Ralph soothingly explained. 'She's a great 
satirist; she sees through us all and she works us up.'
'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 matter with you 
all; you're as dismal as if you had got a bad cable.'
'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 London?' he asked.
'I believe it has been arranged.'
'And when shall you come back?'
'In a few days; but probably for a very short time. I'm going to Paris with 
my aunt.'
'When, then, shall I see you again?'
'Not for a good while,' said Isabel. 'But some day or other, I hope.'
'Do you really hope it?'
'Very much.'
He went a few steps in silence; then he stopped and put out his hand. 'Good-
bye.'
'Good-bye,' said Isabel.
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 has informed me of your relations with Lord Warburton.'
Isabel considered. 'Relations? They're hardly relations. That's the strange 
part of it: he has seen me but three or four times.'
'Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?' Mrs Touchett dispassionately 
asked.
Again the girl hesitated. 'Because he knows Lord Warburton better.'
'Yes, but I know you better.'
'I'm not sure of that,' said Isabel, smiling.
'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 like Lord 
Warburton's it's because you expect to do something better.'
'Ah, my uncle didn't say that!' cried Isabel, smiling still.



Chapter 15

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 party to stay at a boarding-house.
'I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there's local colour,' 
said Isabel. 'That's what we're going to London for.'
'I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do 
anything,' her aunt rejoined. 'After that one needn't stand on trifles.'
'Should you have liked me to marry Lord Warburton?' Isabel enquired.
'Of course I should.'
'I thought you disliked the English so much.'
'So I do; but it's all the greater reason for making use of them.'
'Is that your idea of marriage?' And Isabel ventured to add that her aunt 
appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr Touchett.
'Your uncle's not an English nobleman,' said Mrs Touchett, 'though even if 
he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in 
Florence.'
'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 to marry him.'
'You did right to refuse him then,' said Mrs Touchett in her smallest, 
sparest voice. 'Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you'll manage to 
come up to your standard.'
'We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I hope 
very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me 
completely.'
'You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the 
Bohemian manner of life. However, I've promised Ralph not to criticise.'
'I'll do whatever Ralph says is right,' Isabel returned. 'I've unbounded 
confidence in Ralph.'
'His mother's much obliged to you!' this lady dryly laughed.
'It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!' Isabel irrepressibly 
answered.
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 resting-
place. 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 dish-covers. 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 lower-middle 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 half-empty 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 dining-
room, where the candle he took from the hall-table, 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 dining-room 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 candle-light; 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 table-talk 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, tourist-fashion, 
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 penny-steamer 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 sight-seer 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 dinner-parties 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 button-holing 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 falling 
below her mission.
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 
ill-matched 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 bric-a-brac, 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 fete-champetre, 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 for her. Of course you 
needn't act if you don't want to.'
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, 
easy-voiced 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?'
'Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one.'
'I think one name's as good as another. But what's her rank?'
'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 - Bedfordshire?'
'She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country, but 
I dare say you won't mind it. I'll try and run down while you're there.'
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 re-embark. 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 must have a cab. She couldn't walk all the way to Jermyn 
Street.
'I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone!' Henrietta 
exclaimed. 'Merciful powers, have I come to this?'
'There's not the slightest need of your walking alone,' Mr Bantling gaily 
interposed. 'I should be greatly pleased to go with you.'
'I simply meant that you'd be late for dinner,' Ralph returned. 'Those poor 
ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.'
'You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,' said Isabel.
'I'll get you a hansom if you'll trust me,' Mr Bantling went on. 'We might 
walk a little till we meet one.'
'I don't see why I shouldn't trust him, do you?' Henrietta enquired of 
Isabel.
'I don't see what Mr Bantling could do to you,' Isabel obligingly answered; 
'but, if you like, we'll walk with you till you find your cab.'
'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 pillar-post on the southeast corner.
'Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn 
Street,' Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss Stackpole as Henrietta.
'Very possibly,' said his companion.
'Or rather, no, she won't,' he went on. 'But Bantling will ask leave to get 
in.'
'Very likely again. I'm very glad they're such good friends.'
'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 comprehension of 
Mr Bantling.'
'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 landscape-gardening 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 London in a hansom.'
'There's no reason we shouldn't stay here - if you don't dislike it. It's 
very warm; there will be half an hour yet before dark; and if you permit it 
I'll light a cigarette.'
'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 Hotel.'
'Mayn't I dine with you?' Ralph asked.
'No, you'll dine at your club.'
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 me dine with 
you?' he demanded after a pause.
'Because I don't care for it.'
'I suppose you're tired of me.'
'I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.'
'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 expectation of another visitor?'
She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. 'Another 
visitor? What visitor should I have?'
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. There's none of it here in London.'
'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 band of music or a 
company of mountebanks.'
'One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in another 
ten minutes I shall begin to laugh.'
'I assure you I'm very serious,' said Ralph. 'You do really ask a great 
deal.'
'I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing!'
'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 me I've a right to ask it, because I've a kind of interest in the 
answer.'
'Ask what you will,' Isabel replied gently, 'and I'll try to satisfy you.'
'Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Warburton has told me of 
something that has passed between you.'
Isabel suppressed a start; he sat looking at her open fan. 'Very good; I 
suppose it was natural he should tell you.'
'I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope still,' 
said Ralph.
'Still?'
'He had it a few days ago.'
'I don't believe he has any now,' said the girl.
'I'm very sorry for him then; he's such an honest man.'
'Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?'
'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 heavy-hearted; he had just got a letter 
from you.'
'Did he show you the letter?' asked Isabel with momentary loftiness.
'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?' she enquired. 'Five or six times.'
'That's to your glory.'
'It's not for that I say it.'
'What then do you say it for? Not to prove that poor Warburton's state of 
mind's superficial, because I'm pretty sure you don't think that.'
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 of 
argument.'
'I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone. I'm 
simply greatly interested in your own sentiments.'
'I'm greatly obliged to you!' cried Isabel with a slightly nervous laugh.
'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 had I in mind?'
'What was the logic - the view of your situation - that dictated so 
remarkable an act?'
'I didn't wish to marry him - if that's logic.'
'No, that's not logic - and I knew that before. It's really nothing, you 
know. What was it you said to yourself? You certainly said more than that?'
Isabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own. 'Why 
do you call it a remarkable act? That's what your mother thinks too.
'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 being. He 
unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages.'
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 perfect for you.'
'Do you think I'm so good?'
'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. Perhaps you don't 
know how he has been stalked.'
'I don't wish to know. But it seems to me,' said Isabel, 'that one day when 
we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him.'
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 would have been in your power to make him a 
believer.'
'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 make such a 
marriage.'
'Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don't 
pretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching you - with the 
deepest interest.'
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.'
'Are you thinking of proposing to me?'
'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 Warburton.'
'That's what your mother counts upon too,' said Isabel.
'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 grand example of it.'
'I don't understand you very well,' said Isabel, 'but I do so well enough 
to be able to say that if you look for grand examples of anything from me I 
shall disappoint you.'
'You'll do so only by disappointing yourself - and that will go hard with 
you!'
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 life by 
marrying. There are other things a woman can do.'
'There's nothing she can do so well. But you're of course so many-sided.'
'If one's two-sided it's enough,' said Isabel.
'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 you don't, as the young men 
say.
'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.'
'You want to drain the cup of experience.'
'No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink! I 
only want to see for myself.'
'You want to see, but not to feel,' Ralph remarked.
'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 don't wish to 
marry till I've seen Europe.'
'You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you.'
'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, of utterances too vague for words.
'You've answered my question,' he said at last. 'You've told me what I 
wanted. I'm greatly obliged to you.'
'It seems to me I've told you very little.'
'You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that you 
want to throw yourself into it.'
Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. 'I never said that.'
'I think you meant it. Don't repudiate it. It's so fine!'
'I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the 
least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men.'
Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the 
square. 'No,' he said; 'women rarely boast of their courage. Men do so with 
a certain frequency.'
'Men have it to boast of!
'Women have it too. You've a great deal.'
'Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel, but not more.'
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 mightn't 
see her safely to the inn.
'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!'



Chapter 16

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 well-muffled 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 man stand before her 
without signifying her wishes.
'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 last; and waited for him not so much smoothing 
her hair as girding her spirit.
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 insistence.
She answered by a ready question, 'How did you know I was here?'
'Miss Stackpole let me know,' said Caspar Goodwood. 'She told me you would 
probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see me.'
'Where did she see you - to tell you that?'
'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. 'This 
is not kind of her.'
'Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?' asked the young man.
'I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises.'
'But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet.'
'Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a place 
as London it seemed very possible.'
'It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me,' her visitor went 
on.
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: 'It was a 
great liberty to take.'
'I suppose I'm not a model either - of those virtues or of any others. The 
fault's mine as much as hers.'
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 inevitable, I 
suppose, for you.'
'It was indeed!' cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh. 'And now 
that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?'
'You may sit down, certainly.'
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 answer to my 
letter. You might have written me a few lines.'
'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 any such rule as my own. I warned you that you should 
hear very soon.'
'I didn't say I hoped never to hear from you,' said Isabel.
'Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the same 
thing.'
'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: 'Are you enjoying 
your visit to your uncle?'
'Very much indeed.' She dropped, but then she broke out. 'What good do you 
expect to get by insisting?
'The good of not losing you.'
'You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even from your own 
point of view,' Isabel added, 'you ought to know when to let one alone.'
'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 endeavour to act with 
his eyes on it.
'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 pin-pricks 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 recognised 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 was naturally 
plated and steeled, armed essentially for aggression.
'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 indefinitely.'
'Indefinitely is more than I ask. It's more even than I should like.'
'You know that what you ask is impossible,' said the young man, taking his 
adjective for granted in a manner she found irritating.
'Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?' she demanded. 'You're 
strong for everything else; why shouldn't you be strong for that?'
'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 strongly.'
'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 me or 
not, as you find most possible; only leave me alone.'
'Until when?'
'Well, for a year or two.'
'Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference in 
the world.'
'Call it two then,' said Isabel with a studied effect of eagerness.
'And what shall I gain by that?' her friend asked with no sign of wincing.
'You'll have obliged me greatly.'
'And what will be my reward?'
'Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?'
'Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice.'
'There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't understand such 
things. If you make the sacrifice you'll have all my admiration.'
'I don't care a cent for your admiration - not one straw, with nothing to 
show for it. When will you marry me? That's the only question.'
'Never - if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present.'
'What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?'
'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 mockery. But try me some day.'
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 analyse her 
words. 'I'll go home - I'll go to-morrow - I'll leave you alone,' he 
brought out at last. 'Only,' he heavily said, 'I hate to lose sight of 
you!'
'Never fear. I shall do no harm.'
'You'll marry some one else, as sure as I sit here,' Caspar Goodwood 
declared.
'Do you think that a generous charge?'
'Why not? Plenty of men will try to make you.'
'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 things.'
'Why should I not say that? You've given me no pledge of anything at all.'
'No, that's all that would be wanting!'
'You may perhaps even believe you're safe - from wishing to be. But you're 
not,' the young man went on as if preparing himself for the worst.
'Very well then. We'll put it that I'm not safe. Have it as you please.'
'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?' she asked suddenly, changing her tone.
'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 will make 
straight for you. You'll be sure to take no one who isn't dazzling.'
'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.'
'Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you'd teach me!'
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 between his teeth as he turned away.
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 don't know!' 
she broke out. 'I shouldn't be an easy victim - I've proved it.'
'Oh, to me, perfectly.'
'I've proved it to others as well.' And she paused a moment. 'I refused a 
proposal of marriage last week; what they call - no doubt - a dazzling 
one.'
'I'm very glad to hear it,' said the young man gravely.
'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 like extremely.'
Caspar watched her with intense interest. 'Is he an Englishman?'
'He's an English nobleman,' said Isabel.
Her visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last 
said: 'I'm glad he's disappointed.'
'Well then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the best of it.'
'I don't call him a companion,' said Caspar grimly.
'Why not - since I declined his offer absolutely?'
'That doesn't make him my companion. Besides, he's an Englishman.'
'And pray isn't an Englishman a human being?' Isabel asked.
'Oh, those people? They're not of my humanity, and I don't care what 
becomes of them.'
'You're very angry,' said the girl. 'We've discussed this matter quite 
enough.'
'Oh yes, I'm very angry. I plead guilty to that!'
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 chimney-piece 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 the fear that she might contradict so happy a 
thought.
'I was thinking of you a little,' said Isabel.
'A little? I don't understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had 
any weight with you at all, calling it a 'little' is a poor account of it.'
Isabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. 'I've refused a most 
kind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.'
'I thank you then,' said Caspar Goodwood gravely. 'I thank you immensely.'
'And now you had better go home.'
'May I not see you again?' he asked.
'I think it's better not. You'll be sure to talk of this, and you see it 
leads to nothing.'
'I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.'
Isabel reflected and then answered: 'I return in a day or two to my 
uncle's, and I can't propose to you to come there. It would be too 
inconsistent.'
Caspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. 'You must do me justice too. I 
received an invitation to your uncle's more than a week ago, and I declined 
it.'
She betrayed surprise. 'From whom was your invitation?'
'From Mr Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it 
because I had not your authorisation to accept it. The suggestion that Mr 
Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.'
'It certainly never did from me. Henrietta really goes very far,' Isabel 
added.
'Don't be too hard on her - that touches me.'
'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 been so awkward for 
Lord Warburton.
'When you leave your uncle where do you go?' her companion asked.
'I go abroad with my aunt - to Florence and other places.'
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 questions. 'And when 
shall you come back to America?'
'Perhaps not for a long time. I'm very happy here.'
'Do you mean to give up your country?'
'Don't be an infant!'
'Well, you'll be out of my sight indeed!' said Caspar Goodwood.
'I don't know,' she answered rather grandly. 'The world - with all these 
places so arranged and so touching each other - comes to strike one as 
rather small.'
'It's a sight too big for me!' Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity our young 
lady might have found touching if her face had not been set against 
concessions.
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 
independence.'
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 independent that I want to marry you.
'That's a beautiful sophism,' said the girl with a smile more beautiful 
still.
'An unmarried woman - a girl of your age - isn't independent. There are all 
sorts of things she can't do. She's hampered at every step.'
'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 hundred miles of sea between us as possible.'
'One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!' said Caspar 
Goodwood.
'Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that if the fancy takes me.'
'Well then,' he said slowly, 'I'll go home.' And he put out his hand, 
trying to look contented and confident.
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 hand-clasp which was not 
merely passive on her side. 'That's right,' she said very kindly, almost 
tenderly. 'You'll lose nothing by being a reasonable man.'
'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: 'And remember too that I 
shall not be an easy victim!'
'You'll get very sick of your independence.'
'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 Isabel; and she opened the door and passed into the 
other room.
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 four-posted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, 
and at last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the sitting-room 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.



 Chapter 17

She was not praying; she was trembling - trembling all over. She was an 
excitable creature, and now she was much excited; but she wished to resist 
her excitement, and the attitude of prayer, which she kept for some time, 
seemed to help her to be still. She was extremely glad Caspar Goodwood was 
gone; there was something exhilarating in having got rid of him. As Isabel 
became conscious of this feeling she bowed her head a little lower; the 
feeling was there, throbbing in her heart; it was a 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 when she 
came back to the sitting-room she was still trembling a little. Her 
agitation had 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 expressed her gladness in accidents of 
which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and gave herself up 
to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors within 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 seemed to her that she had done 
something; she had tasted of the delight, if not of battle, at least of 
victor; she had done what she preferred. In the midst of this agreeable 
sensation 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 quickly with 
an apprehension that he had come back. But it was only Henrietta Stackpole 
returning from her dinner. Miss Stackpole immediately saw that something 
had happened to Isabel, and indeed the discovery demanded no great 
penetration. Henrietta 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 glad that he had come to see her; but at the 
same time she perfectly remembered that Henrietta had had no right to set a 
trap for her. 
'Has he been here, dear?' Miss Stackpole inquired, softly. 
Isabel turned away, and for some moments answered nothing. 
'You acted very wrongly,' she said at last. 
'I acted for the best, dear. I only hope you acted as well.' 
'You are not the judge. I can't trust you,' said Isabel. 
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 declared, with equal abruptness and solemnity, 'if you 
marry one of these people, I will never speak to you again!' 
'Before making so terrible a threat, you had better wait till I am asked,' 
Isabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss Stackpole about Lord 
Warburton's overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify herself 
to Henrietta by telling her that she had refused that nobleman. 
'Oh, you'll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie 
Climber was asked three times in Italy - poor plain little Annie.' 
'Well, if Annie Climber was not captured, why should I be?' 
'I don't believe Annie was pressed; but you'll be.' 
'That's a flattering conviction,' said Isabel, with a laugh. 
'I don't flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!' cried her friend. 'I 
hope you don't mean to tell me that you didn't give Mr Goodwood some hope.' 
'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 are so much interested in Mr Goodwood, I 
won't conceal from you that he returns immediately to America.' 
'You don't mean to say you have sent him off' Henrietta broke out in 
dismay. 
'I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Henrietta.'
 Miss Stackpole stood there with expanded eyes, and then she went to the 
mirror over the chimney-piece and took off her bonnet. 
'I hope you have enjoyed your dinner,' Isabel remarked, lightly, as she did 
so. 
But Miss Stackpole was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions, nor 
bribed by the offer of autobiographic opportunities. 
'Do you know where you are going, Isabel Archer?' 
'Just now I am going to bed,' said Isabel, with persistent frivolity. 
'Do you know where you are drifting?' Henrietta went on, 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 immoral novel,' said Miss Stackpole. 'You are drifting to 
some great mistake.' 
Isabel was irritated by her friend's interference, but even in the midst of 
her irritation she tried to think what truth this declaration could 
represent. She could think of nothing that diverted her from saying - 'You 
must be very fond of me, Henrietta, to be willing to be so disagreeable to 
me.' 
'I love you, Isabel,' said Miss Stackpole, with feeling. 
'Well, if you love me, let me alone. I asked that of Mr Goodwood, and I 
must also ask it of you.' 
'Take care you are not let alone too much.' 
'That is what Mr Goodwood said to me. I told him I must take the risks.' 
'You are a creature of risks - you make me shudder!' cried Henrietta. 'When 
does Mr Goodwood return to America?' 
'I don't know - he didn't tell me.' 
'Perhaps you didn't inquire,' said Henrietta, with the note of righteous 
irony. 
'I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask questions of 
him.' 
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!' 
'Take care,' said Isabel; 'you are spoiling me.' 'I am afraid I have done 
that already. I hope, at least,' Miss Stackpole added, 'that he may cross 
with Annie Climber!' 
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 evidently going to see something of the inner life this 
time. 
'Do you know where you are drifting, Henrietta Stackpole?' Isabel asked, 
imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken the night before. 
'I am drifting to a big position - that of queen of American journalism. If 
my next letter isn't copied all over the West, I'll swallow my penwiper!' 
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 that he had something 
on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence He had 
received a telegram from his mother, telling him that his father had had a 
sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much alarmed, and that she 
begged Ralph would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occasion, at 
least, Mrs Touchett's devotion to the electric wire had nothing 
incongruous. 
'I have judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope, first,' 
Ralph said; 'by great good luck he's in town. He is to see me at half-past 
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 is an express at two-forty-five, which I 
shall take, and you will come back with me, or remain here a few days 
longer, exactly as you prefer.' 
'I will go with you!' Isabel exclaimed. 'I don't suppose I can be of any 
use to my uncle, but if he is ill I should like to be near him.' 
'I think you like him,' said Ralph, with a certain shy pleasure in his eye. 
'You appreciate him, which all the world hasn't done. The quality is too 
fine.' 
'I think I love him,' said Isabel, simply. 
'That's very well. After his son, he is your greatest admirer.' 
Isabel welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a little sigh of 
relief at the thought that Mr Touchett was one of those admirers who could 
not propose to marry her. This, however, was not what she said; she went on 
to inform Ralph that there were other reasons why she should not remain in 
London. She was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta was 
going away - going to stay in Bedfordshire.' 
'In Bedfordshire?' Ralph exclaimed, with surprise. 
'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, 
however, he looked grave again. 'Bantling is a man of courage. But if the 
invitation should get lost on the way' 
'I thought the British post office was impeccable.' 
'The good Homer sometimes nods,' said Ralph. 'However,' he went on, more 
brightly, 'the good Bantling never does, and, whatever happens, he will 
take care of Henrietta.' 
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 rushed into 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 sitting-room, where she had just 
risen from the lunch-table, and this lady immediately expressed her regret 
at his father's illness. 
'He is a grand old man,' she said; 'he is faithful to the last. If it is 
really to be the last - excuse my alluding to it, but you must often have 
thought of the possibility - I am sorry that I shall not be at 
Gardencourt.' 
'You will amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire.' 
'I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time,' said Henrietta, with 
much propriety. But she immediately added - 'I should like so to 
commemorate the closing scene.' 
'My father may live a long time,' said Ralph, simply. Then, adverting to 
topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss Stackpole as to her own future. 
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 society items 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 in the afternoon. 
'To take you where?' Ralph ventured to inquire. 
'To Buckingham Palace. He is going to show me over it, so that I may get 
some idea how they live.' 
'Ah,' said Ralph, 'we leave you in good hands. The first thing we shall 
hear is that you are invited to Windsor Castle.' 
'If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I am not afraid. 
But for all that,' Henrietta added in a moment, 'I am not satisfied; I am 
not satisfied about Isabel.' 
'What is her last misdemeanour?' 
'Well, I have told you before, and I suppose there is no harm in my going 
on. I always finish a subject that I take up. Mr Goodwood was here last 
night.' 
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 Pratt's Hotel, and it was a 
novel sensation 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 made Miss Stackpole a diplomatic answer. 'I should have 
thought that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, that would 
satisfy you perfectly.' 
'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 just sent him a 
word - a word to the wise. I hoped he would find her alone; I won't pretend 
I didn't hope that you would be out of the way. He came to see her; but he 
might as well have stayed away.' 
'Isabel was cruel?' Ralph inquired, smiling, and relieved at learning that 
his cousin had not deceived him. 
'I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no 
satisfaction - she sent him back to America.' 
'Poor Mr Goodwood!' Ralph exclaimed. 
'Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,' Henrietta went on. 
'Poor Mr Goodwood!' repeated Ralph. The exclamation, it must be confessed, 
was somewhat mechanical. It failed exactly to express his thoughts, which 
were taking another line. 
'You don't say that as if you felt it; I don't believe you care.' 
'Ah,' said Ralph, 'you must remember that I don't know this interesting 
young man - that I have never seen him.' 
'Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn't 
believe Isabel would come round,' said Miss Stackpole, ' - well, I'd give 
her up myself!'



Chapter 18

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 drawing-room 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 well-dressed 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 plumage but the more lustrous.
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 
reflections she became aware that the lady at the piano played remarkably 
well. She was playing something of Schubert's - Isabel knew not what, but 
recognised 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 her presence.
'That's very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still,' 
said Isabel with all the young radiance with which she usually uttered a 
truthful rapture.
'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, especially as I played just - just 
du bout des doigts.'
'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 nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that 
they are our worst.'
'I'm not in that state now then,' said Isabel. 'On the contrary I should be 
so glad if you would play something more.'
'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 new-comer stopped with her hands on the keys, half-
turning 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?'
'I'm my aunt's niece,' Isabel replied with simplicity.
The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, casting her air of 
interest over her shoulder. 'That's very well; we're compatriots.' And then 
she began to play.
'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 even than to be 
French seemed it to be American on such interesting terms.
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 cold-looking 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 reply to this speech. 'From whom have you heard about 
me?'
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 you.'
'As you didn't know me that must rather have bored you.'
'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 for my visit.'
A servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another 
bearing the tea-tray. On the appearance of this repast Mrs Touchett had 
apparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed herself to the 
tea-pot. 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 have much society 
but each other.'
'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 had ever encountered.
'She's not a foreigner in spite of her name,' said Mrs Touchett. 'She was 
born - I always forget where you were born.'
'It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.'
'On the contrary,' said Mrs Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; 
'if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous.'
Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of world-wide smile, a thing 
that over-reached frontiers. 'I was born under the shadow of the national 
banner.'
'She's too fond of mystery,' said Mrs Touchett; 'that's her great fault.'
'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 navy-yard. 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 something.'
Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of 
Mrs Touchett's characterisation 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, full-rimmed 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 admirable order. This 
commended itself to Isabel as an ideal combination.
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 drawing-room. 
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 mitigate Isabel's sense of the 
sadness now settling on Gardencourt.
When she came into the drawing-room 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 this Madame Merle?'
'The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself,' said Ralph.
'I thought she seemed very pleasant.'
'I was sure you'd think her very pleasant.'
'Is that why you invited her?'
'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.'
'Well, she's very charming,' said Isabel. 'And she plays beautifully.'
'She does everything beautifully. She's complete.'
Isabel looked at her cousin a moment. 'You don't like her.'
'On the contrary, I was once in love with her.'
'And she didn't care for you, and that's why you don't like her.'
'How can we have discussed such things? Monsieur Merle was then living.'
'Is he dead now?'
'So she says.'
'Don't you believe her?'
'Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. The husband of 
Madame Merle would be likely to pass away.'
Isabel gazed at her cousin again. 'I don't know what you mean. You mean 
something - that you don't mean. What was Monsieur Merle?'
'The husband of Madame.'
'You're very odious. Has she any children?'
'Not the least little child - fortunately.'
'Fortunately?'
'I mean fortunately for the child. She'd be sure to spoil it.'
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, 
apologising 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 
alertness of a man who was no longer a lover.
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 twenty-four 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 recognise 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 him 
that they should presently have him sitting up.
'No, my boy,' said Mr Touchett, 'not unless you bury me in a sitting 
posture, as some of the ancients - was it the ancients? - used to do.'
'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 ceiling with an outline constantly 
varying but always grotesque.
'Who's that with me - is it my son?' the old man asked.
'Yes, it's your son, daddy.'
'And is there no one else?'
'No one else.'
Mr Touchett said nothing for a while; and then, 'I want to talk a little,' 
he went on.
'Won't it tire you?' Ralph demurred.
'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 better select a brighter topic.'
'You were always bright; I used to be proud of your brightness. I should 
like so much to think you'd do something.'
'If you leave us,' said Ralph, 'I shall do nothing but miss you.'
'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 mother,' he said 
at last. 'You'll take care of her.'
'My mother will always take care of herself,' Ralph returned.
'Well,' said his father, 'perhaps as she grows older she'll need a little 
help.'
'I shall not see that. She'll outlive me.'
'Very likely she will; but that's no reason-!' Mr Touchett let his phrase 
die away in a helpless but not quite querulous sigh and remained silent 
again.
'Don't trouble yourself about us,' said his son. 'My mother and I get on 
very well together, you know.'
'You get on by always being apart; that's not natural.'
'If you leave us we shall probably see more of each other.'
'Well,' the old man observed with wandering irrelevance, 'it can't be said 
that my death will make much difference in your mother's life.'
'It will probably make more than you think.'
'Well, she'll have more money,' said Mr Touchett. 'I've left her a good 
wife's portion, just as if she had been a good wife.'
'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 knows I've 
noticed it.'
'I shall certainly tell her so; I'm so glad you mention it.'
'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 thing had happened - a young man trying to get a will 
made against him.'
'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 will be enough for two.'
'That's too much,' said Ralph.
'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 back in his chair and returned his father's appealing gaze.
'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 pause his father resumed softly: 'What do you 
think of your cousin?'
At this Ralph started, meeting the question with a strained smile. 'Do I 
understand you to propose that I should marry Isabel?'
'Well, that's what it comes to in the end. Don't you like Isabel?'
'Yes, very much.' And Ralph got up from his chair and wandered over to the 
fire. He stood before it an instant and then he stooped and stirred it 
mechanically.
'I like Isabel very much,' he repeated.
'Well,' said his father, 'I know she likes you. She has told me how much 
she likes you.'
'Did she remark that she would like to marry me?'
'No, but she can't have anything against you. And she's the most charming 
young lady I've ever seen. And she would be good to you. I have thought a 
great deal about it.'
'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, and she wouldn't have him.'
'I know she refused Warburton: he told me himself.'
'Well, that proves there's a chance for somebody else.'
'Somebody else took his chance the other day in London - and got nothing by 
it.'
'Was it you?' Mr Touchett eagerly asked.
'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 you.'
'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 that you're in love with than it is to remain single on 
false principles.'
'I'm not in love with Isabel,' said Ralph.
'You said just now that you would be if you didn't think it wrong. I want 
to prove to you that it isn't wrong.'
'It will only tire you, dear daddy,' said Ralph, who marvelled at his 
father's tenacity and at his finding strength to insist. 'Then where shall 
we all be?'
'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 should like to do something for her.'
'What should you like to do?'
'I should like to put a little wind in her sails.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she wants. 
She wants to see the world for instance. I should like to put money in her 
purse.'
'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 legacy - five thousand pounds.'
'That's capital; it's very kind of you. But I should like to do a little 
more.'
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 man of happiness. 'I shall be happy to consider it,' he 
said softly.
'Isabel's poor then. My mother tells me that she has but a few hundred 
dollars a year. I should like to make her rich.'
'What do you mean by rich?'
'I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their 
imagination. Isabel has a great deal of imagination.'
'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 second.'
'To do what she likes with?'
'Absolutely what she likes.'
'And without an equivalent?'
'What equivalent could there be?'
'The one I've already mentioned.'
'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 prevent. She 
wishes to be free, and your bequest will make her free.'
'Well, you seem to have thought it out,' said Mr Touchett. 'But I don't see 
why you appeal to me. The money will be yours, and you can easily give it 
to her yourself.'
Ralph openly stared. 'Ah, dear father, I can't offer Isabel money!'
The old man gave a groan. 'Don't tell me you're not in love with her! Do 
you want me to have the credit of it?'
'Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your will, without the 
slightest reference to me.'
'Do you want me to make a new will then?'
'A few words will do it; you can attend to it the next time you feel a 
little lively.'
'You must telegraph to Mr Hilary then. I'll do nothing without my 
solicitor.'
'You shall see Mr Hilary to-morrow.'
'He'll think we've quarrelled, you and I,' said the old man.
'Very probably; I shall like him to think it,' said Ralph, smiling; 'and, 
to carry out the idea, I give you notice that I shall be very sharp, quite 
horrid and strange, with you.'
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 
aren't you afraid of putting too much?'
'I should like to see her going before the breeze!' Ralph answered.
'You speak as if it were for your mere amusement.'
'So it is, a good deal.'
'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 that?'
'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 coming to the 
consciousness of a lot of wants she should be unable to satisfy.'
'I've left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a good many wants with 
that.'
'She can indeed. But she would probably spend it in two or three years.'
'You think she'd be extravagant then?'
'Most certainly,' said Ralph, smiling serenely.
Poor Mr Touchett's acuteness was rapidly giving place to pure confusion. 
'It would merely be a question of time then, her spending the larger sum?'
'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, and 
live within her means.'
'Well, you have worked it out,' said the old man helplessly. 'You do take 
an interest in her, certainly.'
'You can't consistently say I go too far. You wished me to go further.'
'Well, I don't know,' Mr Touchett answered. 'I don't think I enter into 
your spirit. It seems to me immoral.'
'Immoral, dear daddy?'
'Well, I don't know that it's right to make everything so easy for a 
person.'
'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: 'Isabel's a sweet young thing; but do you think 
she's so good as that?'
'She's as good as her best opportunities,' Ralph returned.
'Well,' Mr Touchett declared, 'she ought to get a great many opportunities 
for sixty thousand pounds.'
'I've no doubt she will.'
'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 take any more trouble about it. We'll leave it 
alone.'
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 thousand 
pounds may fall a victim to the fortune-hunters?'
'She'll hardly fall a victim to more than one.'
'Well, one's too many.'
'Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my calculation. I think 
it's appreciable, but I think it's small, and I'm prepared to take it.'
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!'



Chapter 19

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 too-familiar 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 Madame Merle 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 ill-fortune 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 pre-eminent. 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 now she pretended to be 
perfectly sane.
'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 
up.'
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 from her like cold 
confessions.
A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew shorter 
and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties 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 half-
rueful, half-critical, 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 aristocratic situation.
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 
civilised, 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 post-office 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 camp-
stool and a box of water-colours. 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 music-stool, 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 chimney-
piece; 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 country-house 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 
people I've met, to express herself by original signs.'
'I'm afraid you've suffered much,' she once found occasion to say to her 
friend in response to some allusion that had appeared to reach far.
'What makes you think that?' Madame Merle asked with the amused smile of a 
person seated at a game of guesses. 'I hope I haven't too much the droop of 
the misunderstood.'
'No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been 
happy wouldn't have found out.'
'I haven't always been happy,' said Madame Merle, smiling still, but with a 
mock gravity, as if she were telling a child a secret. 'Such a wonderful 
thing!'
But Isabel rose to the irony. 'A great many people give me the impression 
of never having for a moment felt anything.'
'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 and into a strong light - then, my dear, I'm a 
horror!'
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 of 
confidence.
'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 saying, were the most convenient in the world to live with.
'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 relation 
with Madame Merle. She's one of the most brilliant women in Europe.'
'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 you do.'
'That will be cruel - to you,' said Isabel.
'You needn't mind me. You won't discover a fault in her.'
'Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it.'
'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 clock-face doesn't 
register.'
'So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?'
'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 drawing-room; 
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 ill-natured. 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 a flat gossip.
'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 to-day; 
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 ill-natured 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 got a consumption; I say 
fortunately, because it gives him something to do. His consumption's his 
career; 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 snuff-boxes.' 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 snuff-boxes. 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 
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 water-colours; 
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 to-day 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 snuff-boxes; 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 
reflections, 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 pied-a-terre 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 of life. One evening she announced 
definitely that he wouldn't live.
'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.
'Perfectly, but he doesn't like me.'
'What have you done to him?'
'Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that.'
'For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason.'
'You're very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you begin.'
'Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin.'
'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 Merle subjoined in 
a moment, 'I'm not afraid of him.'
'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 mind with the finest 
capacity for ignorance.
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. 'If I could only begin again - if I could have my life 
before me!'
'Your life's before you yet,' Isabel answered gently, for she was vaguely 
awe-struck.
'No; the best part's gone, and gone for nothing.'
'Surely not for nothing,' said Isabel.
'Why not - what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor 
position, nor the traces of a beauty that I never had.'
'You have many friends, dear lady.'
'I'm not so sure!' cried Madame Merle.
'Ah, you're wrong. You have memories, graces, talents-'
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 you find a better use for your friendship.'
'It will be for you to see that I don't then,' said Isabel.
'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 should have 
made something better of my life.'
'What should you have liked to do that you've not done?'
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 replied.
'And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been great.'
'They were great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of them.'
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're a vivid 
image of success.'
Madame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. 'What's your idea of 
success?'
'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 divine! Who had ever seen 
such things come to pass?
'I myself - a few of them,' Isabel ventured to answer.
'Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday.'
'I began to dream very young,' Isabel smiled.
'Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood - that of having a pink 
sash and a doll that could close her eyes.'
'No, I don't mean that.'
'Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to you.'
'No, nor that either,' Isabel declared with still more emphasis.
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 shouldn't he count? There are young men and young men.'
'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. Only in that case why 
didn't you fly with him to his castle in the Apennines?'
'He has no castle in the Apennines.'
'What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don't tell me that; I 
refuse to recognise that as an ideal.'
'I don't care anything about his house,' said Isabel.
'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 are all expressive.'
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!'
'You dress very well,' Madame Merle lightly interposed.
'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 society.'
'Should you prefer to go without them?' Madame Merle enquired in a tone 
which virtually terminated the discussion.
I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the sketch I 
have given of the youthful loyalty practised 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 freshly-imported 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 is 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 good-looking 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 
income. I wish you had a little money.'
'I wish I had!' said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for the moment 
that her poverty had been a venial fault for two gallant gentlemen.
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 think as 
well of me as possible. You must reward me by believing in me.'
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 
account-book - 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. 'I'd have waited and sent for you next year.'
'So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It's a great happiness 
to me to have come now.'
'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 set-off 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 
career of the representative of the Interviewer.
'It seems to me she's doing very well,' he said, 'going over to Paris with 
an ex-Lancer! If she wants something to write about she has only to 
describe that episode.'
'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 had made 
her!'
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 window-bench, 
from which she looked out into the dull, damp park; and as the library 
stood at right angles to the entrance-front 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 smile. She got up and her movement and glance were a question.
'It's all over,' said Ralph.
'Do you mean that my uncle-?' And Isabel stopped.
'My dear father died an hour ago.'
'Ah, my poor Ralph!' she gently wailed, putting out her two hands to him.



Chapter 20

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 dining-room 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 drawing-
room, 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 might be taken for granted.
'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 recognised 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 recognise the fact that though I lived much abroad and mingled - you may 
say freely - in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest preference for 
any one else.'
'For any one but yourself,' Madame Merle mentally observed; but the 
reflection was perfectly inaudible.
'I never sacrificed my husband to another,' Mrs Touchett continued with her 
stout curtness.
'Oh no,' thought Madame Merle; 'you never did anything for another!'
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 well-founded conviction that her 
friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust 
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 Touchett's gain 
as for her losses.
'He has left me this house,' the newly-made 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 maid-of-all-work 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.'
'A fortune!' Madame Merle softly repeated.
'Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.'
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 cried, 
'the clever creature!'
Mrs Touchett gave her a quick look. 'What do you mean by that?'
For an instant Madame Merle's colour rose and she dropped her eyes. 'It 
certainly is clever to achieve such results - without an effort!'
'There assuredly was no effort. Don't call it an achievement.'
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 world. Her charm includes great cleverness.'
'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 unconsciously.'
'Ah,' rejoined Madame Merle, 'those are the greatest strokes!'
Mrs Touchett reserved her opinion. 'The girl's fortunate; I don't deny 
that. But for the present she's simply stupefied.'
'Do you mean that she doesn't know what to do with the money?'
'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 to 
remain in the affairs of the bank, and she's to draw the interest.'
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 think of it?' she 
abruptly asked.
'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 
anything done by his father.'
'Didn't you say his own share had been cut down?'
'Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for the 
people in America. He's not in the least addicted to looking after number 
one.'
'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 raised them.
'You may see her; but you'll not be struck with her being happy. She has 
looked as solemn, these three days, as a Cimabue Madonna!' And Mrs Touchett 
rang for a servant.
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 scrutinised 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 longed for opportunities, but these 
were not the opportunities she meant.
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 anything, and 
I should think you'd get very tired of it.'
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 well-cushioned little corner of the brilliant city, the domestic tone 
of her native Baltimore. This reduced Mr Luce, her worthy husband, a tall, 
lean, grizzled, well-brushed gentleman who wore a gold eye-glass 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 
post-office 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 court-carriages 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 back again.'
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 French-English, 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 railway-trains. 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 altar-lace, the envy of his female 
friends, who declared that his chimney-piece was better draped than the 
high shoulders of many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of 
every winter at Pau, and had once passed a couple of months in the United 
States.
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 
recognise 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 asphalt. 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 bed-room, Queen Anne - for one's washing-room; 
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 not for 
gentlemen either. I'm sure if you had seen the last min-'
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 said to him 'Never!'
'I see,' Isabel had answered, 'You think it will prove a curse in disguise. 
Perhaps it will.'
'Leave it to some one you care less for - that's what I should have said.'
'To yourself for instance?' Isabel suggested jocosely. And then, 'Do you 
really believe it will ruin me?' she asked in quite another tone.
'I hope it won't ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your dangerous 
tendencies.'
'Do you mean the love of luxury - of extravagance?'
'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 newly-
acquired 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 so hard not to have any.'
'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 in life to 
please no one at all - not even yourself.'
Isabel shook her head sadly; she looked troubled and frightened. 'This, for 
you, Henrietta,' she said, 'must be one of those occasions!'
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 cross-purposes - 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 
lady-correspondents 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 analysed (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 good-humoured 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 good-humouredly; 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 her gallant friend during the spring in Italy.



Chapter 21

Mrs Toucuett, before arriving in Paris, had fixed a day for her departure; 
and by the middle of February she had begun to travel southward. She did 
not go directly to Florence, but 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, under a white umbrella. Isabel went 
with her aunt, as a matter of course, though Mrs Touchett, with her usual 
homely logic, had laid before her a pair of alternatives. 
'Now, of course you are completely your own mistress,' she said. 'Excuse 
me; I don't mean that you were not so before. But you are on a different 
footing - property erects a kind of barrier. You can do a great many things 
if you are rich which would be severely criticised 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 will take a companion - some decayed gentlewoman 
with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints on velvet. You don't think 
you would like that? Of course you can do as you please; I only want you to 
understand that you are at liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your 
dame de compagnie; she would keep people off very well. I think, however, 
that it is 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 would 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, narrow-minded old woman.' 
'I don't think you are at all dull,' Isabel had replied to this. 
'But you do think I am obstinate and narrow-minded? I told you so!' said 
Mrs Touchett, with much elation at being justified. 
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 
with her. On her own ground she was always to be found; but she 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 wind-sown blossom, no familiar moss. Her passive 
extent, in other words, was about that of a knife-edge. Isabel had reason 
to believe, however, that as she advanced in life she grew more disposed to 
confer those sentimental favours which she was still unable to accept - 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; for 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 the Palazzo 
Crescentini contained a spacious apartment which was known as the room of 
the signorino. 
'I want to ask you something,' Isabel said to this young man, the day after 
her arrival at San Remo, ' - something that I have thought more than once 
of asking you by letter, but that I have hesitated on the whole to write 
about. Face to face, nevertheless, my question seems easy enough. Did you 
know that your father intended to leave me so much money?' 
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.' 
'So,' said the girl, 'you did know.' 
'Yes; he told me. We even talked it over a little.' 
'What did he do it for?' asked Isabel, abruptly. 
'Why, as a kind of souvenir.' 
'He liked me too much,' said Isabel. 
'That's a way we all have.' 
'If I believed that, I should be very unhappy. Fortunately I don't believe 
it. I want to be treated with justice; I want nothing but that.' 
'Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is after 
all a florid sort of sentiment.' 
'I am not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very moment when I 
am asking such odious questions? I must seem to you delicate.' 
'You seem to me troubled,' said Ralph. 
'I am troubled.' 
'About what?' 
For a moment she answered nothing; then she broke out: 'Do you think it 
good for me suddenly to be made so rich? Henrietta doesn't.' 
'Oh, hang Henrietta!' said Ralph, coarsely. 'If you ask me, I am delighted 
at it.' 
'Is that why your father did it - for your amusement?' 
'I differ with Miss Stackpole,' Ralph said, more gravely. 'I think it's 
very good for you to have means.' 
Isabel looked at him a moment with serious eyes. 'I wonder whether you know 
what is good for me - or whether you care.'
 'If I know, depend upon it I care. Shall I tell you what it is? Not to 
torment yourself.' 
'Not to torment you, I suppose you mean.' 
'You can't do that; I am 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 rosebud. Live as you like best, and your 
character will form itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions 
are very rare, and a comfortable income is not one of them.' Ralph paused, 
smiling; Isabel had listened quickly. 'You have too much conscience,' Ralph 
added. 'It's out of all reason, the number of things you think wrong. 
Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It's never wrong to do that.' 
She had listened eagerly, as I say; and it was her nature to understand 
quickly. 
'I wonder if you appreciate what you say. If you do, you take a great 
responsibility.' 
'You frighten me a little, but I think I am right,' said Ralph, continuing 
to smile. 
'All the same, what you say is very true,' Isabel went on. 'You could say 
nothing more true. I am 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 are 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 reflection 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 am afraid.' She stopped; her voice had trembled a little. 
'Yes, I am afraid; I can't tell you. A large fortune means freedom, and I 
am 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 always be 
thinking - it's a constant effort. I am not sure that it's not a greater 
happiness to be powerless.' 'For weak people I have no doubt it's a greater 
happiness. For weak people the effort not to be contemptible must be 
great.' 
'And how do you know I am not weak?' Isabel asked. 
'Ah,' Ralph answered, with a blush which the girl noticed, 'if you are, I 
am 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 awhile 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 knowledge; the stillness of 
these soft weeks seemed good to her. They were a peaceful interlude 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 Isabel 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, Madame Merle'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; at any rate before she 
left San Remo she had grown used to feeling rich. The consciousness found a 
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 was a perpetual 
implication of good intentions. She lost herself in a maze of visions; the 
fine things a rich, independent, generous girl, who took a large, human 
view of her opportunities and obligations, might do were really 
innumerable. 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 intermingled with other reveries. 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 suffficiently salient; they were recognizable without 
difficulty as those of Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton. It was strange 
how quickly these gentlemen 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 to wear the 
supernatural aspect of a resurrection. Isabel moreover was not prone to 
take for granted that she herself lived in the mind of others - she had not 
the fatuity to believe that she left indelible traces. She was capable of 
being wounded by the discovery that she had been forgotten; and yet, 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 she did not regard them as 
appreciably in her debt. 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. Isabel did not 
say to herself that her American suitor might find some other girl more 
comfortable to woo; because, though it was certain that 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 change her humour - 
might weary of those things that were not Caspar (and there were so many 
things that were not Caspar!), and might find satisfaction in the very 
qualities which struck her today as his limitations. It was conceivable 
that his limitations should some day prove a sort of blessing in disguise - 
a clear and quiet harbour, enclosed by a fine granite breakwater. But that 
day could only come in its order, and she could not wait for it with folded 
hands. That Lord Warburton should continue to cherish her image seemed to 
her more than modesty should not only expect, but even desire. She had so 
definitely undertaken to forget him, as a lover, that a corresponding 
effort on his own part would be eminently proper. This was not, as it may 
seem, merely a theory tinged with sarcasm. Isabel really believed that his 
lordship would, in the usual phrase, get over it. He had been deeply 
smitten - this she believed, and she was still capable of deriving pleasure 
from the belief; but it was absurd that a man so completely absolved from 
fidelity should stiffen himself in an attitude it would be more graceful to 
discontinue. Englishmen liked to be comfortable, said Isabel, and there 
could be little comfort for Lord Warburton, in the long run, in thinking of 
a self-sufficient American girl who had been but a casual acquaintance. 
Isabel flattered herself that should she hear, from one day to another, 
that he had married some young lady of his own country who had done more to 
deserve him, she should receive the news without an impulse of jealousy. It 
would have proved that he believed she was firm - which was what she wished 
to seem to him; and this was grateful to her pride.



Chapter 22

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 olive-muffled hill outside of the Roman gate of Florence. The 
villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, with the far-projecting 
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 hill-top; 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 lounging-
place 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, weather-worn, 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 sun-warmed. The parapet of the terrace 
was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground declined into 
the vagueness of olive-crops 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 ground-floor, 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 cross-barred, 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 
time-polished 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 writing-table 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 water-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room 
easel before which, at the moment we begin to be concerned with her, the 
young girl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the 
picture in silence.
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, mild-featured women, with a kind of business-like 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 well-shaped 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 
well-chosen 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 languid-
looking 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 it yourself?'
'Certainly I made it. Don't you think I'm clever?'
'Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures.' And she 
turned round and showed a small, fair face painted with a fixed and 
intensely sweet smile.
'You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.'
'I've brought a great many; they're in my trunk.'
'She draws very - very carefully,' the elder of the nuns remarked, speaking 
in French.
'I'm glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?'
'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 drawing-master, Mr - Mr - what is his name?' she asked of her 
companion.
Her companion looked about at the carpet. 'It's a German name,' she said in 
Italian, as if it needed to be translated.
'Yes,' the other went on. 'he's a German, and we've had him many years.'
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,' he instantly 
added.
'Oh, yes, we're complete. We've everything, and everything's of the best.'
'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 grown.
'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 said, 'no particular reason why my child should be 
short.'
The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might be 
beyond our knowledge. 'She's in very good health; that's the best thing.'
'Yes, she looks sound.' And the young girl's father watched her a moment. 
'What do you see in the garden?' he asked in French.
'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 turned to him with her smile heightened by pleasure. 'May I 
truly?'
'Ah, when I tell you,' said her father.
The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. 'May I, truly, ma mere?'
'Obey monsieur your father, my child,' said the sister, blushing again.
The child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the threshold 
and was presently lost to sight. 'You don't spoil them,' said her father 
gaily.
'For everything they must ask leave. That's our system. Leave is freely 
granted, but they must ask it.'
'Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I've no doubt it's excellent. I sent 
you my daughter to see what you'd make of her. I had faith.'
'One must have faith,' the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her 
spectacles.
'Well, has my faith been rewarded? What have you made of her?'
The sister dropped her eyes a moment. 'A good Christian, monsieur.'
Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement 
had in each case a different spring. 'Yes, and what else?'
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 woman - a daughter in 
whom you will have nothing but contentment.'
'She seems to me very gentille,' said the father. 'She's really pretty.'
'She's perfect. She has no faults.'
'She never had any as a child, and I'm glad you have given her none.'
'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. We've had her since 
she was so small.'
'Of all those we shall lose this year she's the one we shall miss most,' 
the younger woman murmured deferentially.
'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, presently 
drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture.
'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.
'We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very young to leave 
us.'
'Oh,' exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet used, 'it 
is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could keep her always!'
'Ah, monsieur,' said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, 'good as she 
is, she's made for the world. Le monde y gagnera.'
'If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would the world 
get on?' her companion softly enquired, rising also.
This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently 
supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmonising view by saying 
comfortably: 'Fortunately there are good people everywhere.'
'If you're going there will be two less here,' her host remarked gallantly.
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 bunches of 
roses - one of them all white, the other red.
'I give you your choice, Mamman Catherine,' said the child. 'It's only the 
colour that's different, Mamman Justine; there are just as many roses in 
one bunch as in the other.'
The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with 'Which 
will you take?' and 'No, it's for you to choose.'
'I'll take the red, thank you,' said mother Catherine in the spectacles. 
I'm so red myself. They'll comfort us on our way back to Rome.'
'Ah, they won't last,' cried the young girl. 'I wish I could give you 
something that would last!'
'You've given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That will last!'
'I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads,' the 
child went on.
'And do you go back to Rome to-night?' her father enquired.
'Yes, we take the train again. We've so much to do la-bas.'
'Are you not tired?'
'We are never tired.'
'Ah, my sister, sometimes,' murmured the junior votaress.
'Not to-day, 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 ante-chamber, as high as a chapel and paved with red tiles; and 
into this ante-chamber 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 asked.
'Some one you may see.'
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:
'Ah, Madame Merle!'
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 bring in 
with her something of the radiance of the outer world.
'These ladies have brought my daughter home, and now they return to the 
convent,' the gentleman explained.
'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 Rome?'
'I remember the last time best,' said Pansy, 'because you told me I should 
come away.'
'Did you tell her that?' the child's father asked.
'I hardly remember. I told her what I thought would please her. I've been 
in Florence a week. I hoped you would come to see me.'
'I should have done so if I had known you were there. One doesn't know such 
things by inspiration - though I suppose one ought. You had better sit 
down.'
These two speeches were made in a particular tone of voice - a tone half-
lowered 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 salue, mesdames,' she added, in French, to the nuns, as 
if to dismiss them.
'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 the end 
of the holidays.'
'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 meant for the 
world.'
'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 daughter.'
'I shall certainly come back and see you,' Pansy returned, recommencing her 
embraces, which were presently interrupted by Madame Merle.
'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 gently.
'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 ante-chamber.
'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 do.'
'Oh yes, I obey very well,' cried Pansy with soft eagerness, almost with 
boastfulness, as if she had been speaking of her piano-playing. 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 used to dislike them, but I like them now,' the child made answer.
'Very good, I'll make you a present of a dozen.'
'I thank you very much. What colours will they be?' Pansy demanded with 
interest.
Madame Merle meditated. 'Useful colours.'
'But very pretty?'
'Are you very fond of pretty things?'
'Yes; but - but not too fond,' said Pansy with a trace of asceticism.
'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 went on.
'Yes - when I think of her.'
'Try then not to think of her. Perhaps some day,' added Madame Merle, 
'you'll have another mother.'
'I don't think that's necessary,' Pansy said, repeating her little soft 
conciliatory sigh. 'I had more than thirty mothers at the convent.'
Her father's step sounded again in the ante-chamber, 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 yourself to fetch Pansy away.'
'That was a natural supposition; but I'm afraid it's not the first time 
I've acted in defiance of your calculations.'
'Yes,' said Madame Merle, 'I think you very perverse.'
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 last of Mamman Catherine?' he 
asked of her abruptly in French.
Pansy hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Merle. 'I asked her to stay 
with me,' said this lady, who had seated herself again in another place.
'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.
'She's going to give me some gloves,' said Pansy.
'You needn't tell that to every one, my dear,' Madame Merle observed.
'You're very kind to her,' said Osmond. 'She's supposed to have everything 
she needs.'
'I should think she had had enough of the nuns.'
'If we're going to discuss that matter she had better go out of the room.'
'Let her stay,' said Madame Merle. 'We'll talk of something else.'
'If you like I won't listen,' Pansy suggested with an appearance of candour 
which imposed conviction.
'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 looking particularly well.'
'I think I always look the same,' said Madame Merle.
'You always are the same. You don't vary. You're a wonderful woman.'
'Yes, I think I am.'
'You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me on your return from 
England that you wouldn't leave Rome again for the present.'
'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 uncertain.'
'That reason's characteristic. You're always doing something for your 
friends.'
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 praise. I care greatly for myself.'
'Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves - so much of every one 
else and of everything. I never knew a person whose life touched so many 
other lives.'
'What do you call one's life?' asked Madame Merle. 'One's appearance, one's 
movements, one's engagements, one's society?'
'I call your life your ambitions,' said Osmond.
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, ma bonne, 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 attitude might be wanting.
'My ambitions are principally for you,' said Madame Merle, looking up at 
him with a certain courage.
'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?'
'You're indolent. For me that's your worst fault.'
'I'm afraid it's really my best.'
'You don't care,' said Madame Merle gravely.
'No; I don't think I care much. What sort of a fault do you call that? My 
indolence, at any rate, was one of the reasons I didn't go to Rome. But it 
was only one of them.'
'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 month ago. There's 
something I should like you to do at present in Florence.'
'Please remember my indolence,' said Osmond.
'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 acquaintance?'
'I don't think I've made any since I made yours.'
'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 thoroughly well considered.
'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 from bad.'
'Society is all bad.'
'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 with each other.'
'Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.'
'To profit? Are you very sure that I shall?'
'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 turn up here - is worth an effort?'
Madame Merle flushed as with a wounded intention. 'Don't be foolish, 
Osmond. No one knows better than you what is worth an effort. Haven't I 
seen you in old days?'
'I recognise some things. But they're none of them probable in this poor 
life.'
'It's the effort that makes them probable,' said Madame Merle.
'There's something in that. Who then is your friend?'
'The person I came to Florence to see. She's a niece of Mrs Touchett, whom 
you'll not have forgotten.'
'A niece? The word niece suggests youth and ignorance. I see what you're 
coming to.'
'Yes, she's young - twenty-three 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 do every day 
- I admire her. You'll do the same.'
'Not if I can help it.'
'Precisely. But you won't be able to help it.'
'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 want to know any more.'
'Miss Archer isn't dingy; she's as bright as the morning. She corresponds 
to your description; it's for that I wish you to know her. She fills all 
your requirements.'
'More or less, of course.'
'No; quite literally. She's beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an 
American, well-born. She's also very clever and very amiable, and she has a 
handsome fortune.'
Mr Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his 
mind with his eyes on his informant. 'What do you want to do with her?' he 
asked at last.
'What you see. Put her in your way.'
'Isn't she meant for something better than that?'
'I don't pretend to know what people are meant for,' said Madame Merle. 'I 
only know what I can do with them.'
'I'm sorry for Miss Archer!' Osmond declared.
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 well as when 
you've got an idea; they're always becoming to you.'
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 self-consciousness 
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 self-possession 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 against you 
now.'
'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. But it touches 
me, all the same.'
'You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some 
things you'll never understand. There's no particular need you should.'
'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 - when-' But he paused a moment.
'When I myself have mattered so little?'
'That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and appreciated 
such a woman as you.'
'Isabel Archer's better than I,' said Madame Merle.
Her companion gave a laugh. 'How little you must think of her to say that!'
'Do you suppose I'm capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.'
'With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't.'
'Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs Touchett's - 
Palazzo Crescentini - and the girl will be there.'
'Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the girl?' 
said Osmond. 'You could have had her there at any rate.'
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 water-colour 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 sketches?'
'Yes - but how you guess everything!'
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 do so many other things: those were my 
ambitions.'
'Yes; you've told me many times - things that were impossible.'
'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.'
'I'm sick of my adorable taste,' said Gilbert Osmond.
'You must nevertheless let Miss Archer come and see it. I've told her about 
it.'
'I don't object to showing my things - when people are not idiots.'
'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 you say she was rich?'
'She has seventy thousand pounds.'
'En ecus bien comptes?'
'There's no doubt whatever about her fortune. I've seen it, as I may say.'
'Satisfactory woman! - I mean you. And if I go to see her shall I see the 
mother?'
'The mother? She has none - nor father either.'
'The aunt then - whom did you say? - Mrs Touchett.'
'I can easily keep her out of the way.'
'I don't object to her,' said Osmond; 'I rather like Mrs Touchett. She has 
a sort of old-fashioned character that's passing away - a vivid identity. 
But that long jackanapes the son - is he about the place?'
'He's there, but he won't trouble you.'
'He's a good deal of a donkey.'
'I think you're mistaken. He's a very clever man. But he's not fond of 
being about when I'm there, because he doesn't like me.'
'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 beginning; that's all I ask of you.'
'A beginning of what?'
Madame Merle was silent a little. 'I want you of course to marry her.'
'The beginning of the end? Well, I'll see for myself. Have you told her 
that?'
'For what do you take me? She's not so coarse a piece of machinery - nor am 
I.'
'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 looking out. 'Pansy has really 
grown pretty,' she presently added.
'So it seemed to me.'
'But she has had enough of the convent.'
'I don't know,' said Osmond. 'I like what they've made of her. It's very 
charming.'
'That's not the convent. It's the child's nature.'
'It's the combination, I think. She's as pure as a pearl.'
'Why doesn't she come back with my flowers then?' Madame Merle asked. 
'She's not in a hurry.'
'We'll go and get them.'
'She doesn't like me,' the visitor murmured as she raised her parasol and 
they passed into the garden.



Chapter 23

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 demoralised 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 
long-established 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 butcher-boys.'
'Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes to with 
most of them. You'll pick out, for your society, the few whom you don't 
despise.'
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 right-hand angle in 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 good-humour. 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 
imagination awake.
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 well-bred 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 hill-top 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 embarrassment, leaving his sentence 
unfinished.
'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 hill-top 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 matter-
of-course, 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. 'I'm under no obligation that I know of to 
charm Mr Osmond.'
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 matters 
little whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked him.'
'I did,' said Isabel honestly. 'But I don't see what that matters either.'
'Everything that concerns you matters to me,' Madame Merle returned with 
her weary nobleness; 'especially when at the same time another old friend's 
concerned.'
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 them all 
much better than I.'
'I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,' said Isabel.
'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 about one's dangers the better.'
'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 one tells you about 
any one else. Judge every one and everything for yourself.'
'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 any more than what they say about your friend or 
your enemy.'
Isabel considered. 'I think you're right; but there are some things I can't 
help minding: for instance when my friend's attacked or when I myself am 
praised.'
'Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as 
critics, however,' Ralph added, 'and you'll condemn them all!'
'I shall see Mr Osmond for myself,' said Isabel. 'I've promised to pay him 
a visit.'
'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 take me; she tells me a great many ladies call on 
him.'
'Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance,' said Ralph. 'She 
knows none but the best people.'
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 else say nothing at all.'
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.'
'Exaggerated, precisely. That's what I complain of.'
'I do so because Madame Merle's merits are exaggerated.'
'By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.'
'No, no; by herself.'
'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 with small claims - she has a perfect right to make 
large ones.'
'Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.'
'Her merits are immense,' said Ralph. 'She's indescribably blameless; a 
pathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a 
chance.'
'A chance for what?'
'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 mind.'
'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 occasion to peep from his face. 'Do you wish 
Madame Merle to be banished?'
'By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,' said 
Ralph Touchett simply.
'You're very odious, sir!' Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him if he 
knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.
'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, nothing, 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 guide.'
'I suppose you mean by that that she's worldly?'
'Worldly? No,' said Ralph, 'she's the great round world itself!'
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 deep-lying 
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 half-dozen 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 too-
ingenious 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 injured.



Chapter 24

It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to her 
from the visit she presently paid to Mr Osmond's hill-top. 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 high-
walled lanes into which the wealth of blossoming orchards over-drooped 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 light-arched 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 ante-chamber - 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 Osmond indicated to Isabel as 
his sister, the Countess Gemini.
'And that's my little girl,' he said, 'who has just come out of her 
convent.'
Pansy had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly arranged in 
a net; she wore her small shoes tied sandal-fashion 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 beak-like nose, 
small, quickly-moving 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 to-day; 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 to-day. 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 good seats here, but there are also some 
horrors.'
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 beautiful and precious.'
'I've a few good things,' Mr Osmond allowed; 'indeed I've nothing very bad. 
But I've not what I should have liked.'
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 kind of finish that was not entirely artless.
'You'd have liked a few things from the Uffizi and the Pitti - that's what 
you'd have liked,' said Madame Merle.
'Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes!' the Countess Gemini 
exclaimed: she appeared to call her brother only by his family-name. Her 
ejaculation had no particular object; she smiled at Isabel as she made it 
and looked at her from head to foot.
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 have let myself so needlessly in-!' she could fancy his 
exclaiming to himself.
'You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his bibelots and 
gives you a lecture on each,' said the Countess Gemini.
'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 know the more unhappy you are.'
'You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not finished her 
education,' Madame Merle interposed with a smile.
'Pansy will never know any harm,' said the child's father. 'Pansy's a 
little convent-flower.'
'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 
convent-flower myself. I don't pretend to be good, but the nuns do. Don't 
you see what I mean?' she went on, appealing to Isabel.
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 know what I like.'
'Ah, that's the great thing,' said Isabel, smiling and suspecting that her 
acquaintance with this lightly-flitting 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 to-day, 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 'realise,' 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 second-rate; 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 Ghirlandajo'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 I'm a particular admirer of Mrs Touchett.'
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 group with expressive compassion. 'She has been brought quite into 
the family.'
'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 good-humour. 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 feet.
The Countess assumed for an instant an attitude of intense meditation, 
pressing one of her hands, with the finger-tips gathered together, to her 
forehead. 'I'll tell you in a moment. One's Machiavelli; the other's 
Vittoria Colonna; the next is Metastasio.'
'Ah, with me,' said Madame Merle, passing her arm into the Countess 
Gemini's as if to guide her course to the garden, 'Mr Osmond's never so 
historical.'
'Oh you,' the Countess answered as they moved away, 'you yourself are 
Machiavelli - you yourself are Vittoria Colonna!'
'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 recognised 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 sixteenth-century 
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 done.
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 delicately-fretted hills, its 
peculiarly human-looking 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 
angles of the terrace.
'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 were 
to settle in Florence.'
'A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most appreciated.'
'The point's to find out where that is.'
'Very true - she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry. People 
ought to make it very plain to her.'
'Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me,' smiled Isabel.
'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.'
'I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day.'
'I don't see why you should be ashamed; it's the greatest of pleasures.'
'It seems frivolous, I think,' said Isabel. 'One ought to choose something 
very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
'By that rule then, I've not been frivolous.'
'Have you never made plans?'
'Yes, I made one years ago, and I'm acting on it to-day.'
'It must have been a very pleasant one,' Isabel permitted herself to 
observe.
'It was very simple. It was to be as quiet as possible.'
'As quiet?' the girl repeated.
'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 the conscious 
air of a man who has brought himself to confess something.
'Do you call that simple?' she asked with mild irony.
'Yes, because it's negative.'
'Has your life been negative?'
'Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my indifference. 
Mind you, not my natural indifference - I had none. But my studied, my 
wilful renunciation.'
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 said in a moment.
'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 
some inspired idiot.'
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 said, 'to renounce everything but Correggio!'
'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 fault if one isn't happy.'
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 have to do what's best for Pansy.'
'Yes, do that,' said Isabel. 'She's such a dear little girl.'
'Ah,' cried Gilbert Osmond beautifully, 'she's a little saint of heaven! 
She is my great happiness!'



Chapter 25

While this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some time after we 
cease to follow it) was going on, 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 Madame Merle, 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 tete-a-tete, 
and the Countess waited because Madame Merle did. The Countess, moreover, 
by waiting, found the time ripe for saying something discordant; a 
necessity of which she had been conscious for the last twenty minutes. Her 
brother wandered with Isabel to the end of the garden, and she followed the 
pair for a while with her eyes. 
'My dear,' she then observed to Madame Merle, 'you will excuse me if I 
don't congratulate you!' 
'Very willingly; for I don't in the least know why you should.' 
'Haven't you a little plan that you think rather well of?' And the Countess 
nodded towards the retreating couple. 
Madame Merle's eyes took the same direction; then she looked serenely at 
her neighbour. 'You know I never understand you very well,' she answered, 
smiling. 
'No one can understand better than you when you wish. I see that, just now, 
you don't wish to.' 
'You say things to me that no one else does,' said Madame Merle, gravely, 
but without bitterness. 
'You mean things you don't like? Doesn't Osmond sometimes say such things?' 
'What your brother says has a point.' 
'Yes, a very sharp one sometimes. If you mean that I am not so clever as 
he, you must not think I shall suffer from your saying it. But it will be 
much better that you should understand me.' 
'Why so?' asked Madame Merle; 'what difference will it make' 
'If I don't approve of your plan, you ought to know it in order to 
appreciate the danger of my interfering with it.' 
Madame Merle looked as if she were ready to admit that there might be 
something in this; but in a moment she said quietly-'You think me more 
calculating than I am.' 
'It's not your calculating that I think ill of; it's your calculating 
wrong. You have done so in this case.' 
'You must have made extensive calculations yourself to discover it.' 
'No, I have not had time for that. I have seen the girl but this once,' 
said the Countess, 'and the conviction has suddenly come to me. I like her 
very much.' 'So do I,' Madame Merle declared. 
'You have a strange way of showing it.' 
'Surely - I have given her the advantage of making your acquaintance.' 
'That, indeed,' cried the Countess, with a laugh, 'is perhaps the best 
thing that could happen to her!' 
Madame Merle said nothing for some time. The Countess's manner was 
impertinent, but she did not suffer this to discompose her; and with her 
eyes upon the violet slope of Monte Morello she gave herself up to 
reflection. 
'My dear lady,' she said at last, 'I advise you not to agitate yourself. 
The matter you allude to concerns three persons much stronger of purpose 
than yourself.' 
'Three persons? You and Osmond, of course. But is Miss Archer also very 
strong of purpose?' 
'Quite as much so as we.' 
'Ah then,' said the Countess radiantly, 'if I convince her it's her 
interest to resist you, she will do so successfully!' 
'Resist us? Why do you express yourself so coarsely? She is not to be 
subjected to force.' 
'I am not sure of that. You are capable of anything, you and Osmond. I 
don't mean Osmond by himself, and I don't mean you by yourself. But 
together you are dangerous - like some chemical combination.' 
'You had better leave us alone, then,' said Madame Merle, smiling. 
'I don't mean to touch you - but I shall talk to that girl.' 
'My poor Amy,' Madame Merle murmured, 'I don't see what has got into your 
head.' 
'I take an interest in her - that is what has got into my head. I like 
her.' 
Madame Merle hesitated a moment. 'I don't think she likes you.' 
The Countess's bright little eyes expanded, and her face was set in a 
grimace. 'Ah, you are dangerous,' she cried, 'even by yourself!' 
'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, with his rms 
folded; and she, at present, though she had her face turned to the opposite 
prospect, was evidently not scrutinizing it. As Madame Merle watched her 
she lowered her eyes; she was listenng, possibly with a certain 
embarrassment, while she pressed the point of her parasol into the path. 
Madame Merle rose from her chair. 'Yes, I think so!' she said. 
The shabby footboy, summoned by Pansy, had come out with a small table, 
which he placed upon the grass, and then had gone back and fetched the tea-
tray; after which he 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 to the servant. When the tea-
table had been arranged, however, she gently approached her aunt. 
'Do you think papa would object to my making the tea?' 
The Countess looked at her with a deliberately critical gaze, and without 
answering her question. 'My poor niece,' she said, 'is that your best 
frock?' 
'Ah, no,' Pansy answered, 'it's just a little toilet for common occasions.' 
'Do you call it a common occasion when I come to see you? - to say nothing 
of Madame Merle and the pretty lady yonder.' 
Pansy reflected a moment, looking 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 is very simple. Why should I expose it beside your 
beautiful things?' 
'Because it's the prettiest you have; for me you must always wear the 
prettiest. Please put it on the next time. It seems to me they don't dress 
you so well as they might.' 
The child stroked down her antiquated skirt, sparingly. 'It's a good little 
dress to make tea - don't you think? Do you not believe papa would allow 
me?' 
'Impossible for me to say, my child,' said the Countess. 'For me, your 
father's ideas are unfathomable. Madame Merle understands them better; ask 
her.' 
Madame Merle smiled with her usual geniality. '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 of the 
house - when she grows up.' 
'So it seems to me, Madame Merle!' Pansy cried. 'You shall see how well I 
will make it. A spoonful for each.' And she began to busy herself at the 
table. 
'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 think of your visitor.' 
'Ah, she is not mine - she is papa's,' said Pansy. 
'Miss Archer came to see you as well,' Madame Merle remarked. 
'I am very happy to hear that. She has been very polite to me.' 
'Do you like her, then?' the Countess asked. 
'She is charming - charming,' said Pansy, in her little neat, 
conversational tone. 'She pleases me exceedingly.' 
'And you think she pleases your father?' 
'Ah, really, Countess,' murmured Madame Merle, dissuasively. 'Go and call 
them to tea,' she went on, to the child. 
'You will see if they don't like it!' Pansy declared; and went off to 
summon the others, who were still lingering at the end of the terrace. 
'If Miss Archer is to become her mother it is surely interesting to know 
whether the child likes her,' said the Countess. 
'If your brother marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake,' Madame Merle 
replied. 'She will soon be sixteen, and after that she will begin to need a 
husband rather than a stepmother.' 
'And will you provide the husband as well?' 
'I shall certainly take an interest in her marrying well. I imagine you 
will do the same.' 
'Indeed I shan't!' cried the Countess. 'Why should I, of all women, set 
such a price on a husband?' 
'You didn't marry well; that's what I am speaking of. When I say a husband, 
I mean a good one.' 
'There are no good ones. Osmond won't be a good one.' 
Madame Merle closed her eyes a moment. 'You are irritated just now; I don't 
know why,' she said, presently. 'I don't think you will really object 
either to your brother, or to your niece's, marrying, when the time comes 
for them to do so; and as regards Pansy, I am 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 am irritated,' the Countess answered. 'You often irritate me. Your 
own coolness is fabulous; you are a strange woman.' 
'It is much better that we should always act together,' Madame Merle went 
on. 
'Do you mean that as a threat?' asked the Countess, rising. 
Madame Merle shook her head, with a smile of sadness. 'No indeed, you have 
not my coolness!' 
Isabel and Mr Osmond were now coming toward them, and Isabel had taken 
Pansy by the hand. 
'Do you pretend to believe he would make her happy?' the Countess demanded. 
'If he should marry Miss Archer I suppose he would behave like a 
gentleman.' 
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 have never, no never, seen any one 
of Osmond's pretensions! What they are all based upon is more than I can 
say. I am 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 suppose 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 is nothing, nothing, 
nothing. One's parents were charming people of course; but so were yours, I 
have no doubt. Every one is a charming person, now-a-days. Even I am a 
charming person; don't laugh, it has literally been said. As for Osmond, he 
has always appeared to believe that he is 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 are modest about it, but you yourself are extremely 
distinguished. What do you say about your niece? The child's a little 
duchess. Nevertheless,' Madame Merle added, 'it will not be an easy matter 
for Osmond to marry Miss Archer. But he can try.' 
'I hope she will refuse him. It will take him down a little.' 
'We must not forget that he is one of the cleverest of men.' 
'I have 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 wait.' 
'To wait for Miss Archer's money? How much of it is there?' 
'That's not what I mean,' said Madame Merle. 'Miss Archer has seventy 
thousand pounds.' 
'Well, it is a pity she is so nice,' the Countess declared. 'To be 
sacrificed, any girl would do. She needn't be superior.' 
'If she were not superior, your brother would never look at her. He must 
have the best.' 
'Yes,' rejoined the Countess, as they went forward a little to meet the 
others, 'he is very hard to please. That makes me fear for her happiness!'



Chapter 26

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 loose-fitting urbanity that wrapped him about like an ill-made 
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 middle-aged 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 might as 
well address her in the deaf-mute's alphabet.
'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 there would be no such proof of that as his having a fortune of 
his own.'
'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 away again. Excuse 
another metaphor.'
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 curious creature's 
really making love to my niece.'
'Gilbert Osmond?' Madame Merle widened her clear eyes and, with a full 
intelligence, 'Heaven help us,' she exclaimed, 'that's an idea!'
'Hadn't it occurred to you?'
'You make me feel an idiot, but I confess it hadn't. I wonder,' she added, 
'if it has occurred to Isabel.'
'Oh, I shall now ask her,' said Mrs Touchett.
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 that air of his, given Isabel's situation - what 
business it is of mine.'
'I'll ask him myself,' Madame Merle bravely declared.
'But what business - for him - is it of yours?'
'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 know.'
'Pray let me hear then,' said Mrs Touchett, 'of the fruits of your 
penetration. If I can't speak to him, however, at least I can speak to 
Isabel.'
Her companion sounded at this the note of warning. 'Don't be too quick with 
her. Don't inflame her imagination.'
'I never did anything in my life to any one's imagination. But I'm always 
sure of her doing something - well, not of my kind.'
'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 great impression, to my knowledge, more than once.'
'Don't tell me about his probably quite cold-blooded love-affairs; 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 a very young and very innocent and very harmless 
person.'
'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 dowry.'
'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 - and that, to 
prove it, she must first become one.'
'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 hill-top 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 moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno and 
holding by the hand a little girl whose bell-like 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 to-day; 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 half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood. At Palazzo Crescentini Mr 
Osmond's manner remained the same; diffident at first - oh self-conscious 
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 walking-sticks - 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 fair and smooth 
a page would be covered with an edifying text.
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 unmistakable 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 
somewhere.
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 chalk-mark 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 low-lived 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 patronise. 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 all-judging 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 down 
first.
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 Whyte-Melville, 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 Rome-lover; 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 and mentioning her intention to him.
'I should like to be in Rome with you,' he commented. 'I should like to see 
you on that wonderful ground.'
She scarcely faltered. 'You might come then.'
'But you'll have a lot of people with you.'
'Ah,' Isabel admitted, 'of course I shall not be alone.'
For a moment he said nothing more. 'You'll like it,' he went on at last. 
They've spoiled it, but you'll rave about it.'
'Ought I to dislike it because, poor old dear - the Niobe of Nations, you 
know - it has been spoiled?' she asked.
'No, I think not. It has been spoiled so often,' he smiled: 'If I were to 
go, what should I do with my little girl?'
'Can't you leave her at the villa?'
'I don't know that I like that - though there's a very good old woman who 
looks after her. I can't afford a governess.'
'Bring her with you then,' said Isabel promptly.
Mr Osmond looked grave. 'She has been in Rome all winter, at her convent; 
and she's too young to make journeys of pleasure.'
'You don't like bringing her forward?' Isabel enquired.
'No, I think young girls should be kept out of the world.'
'I was brought up on a different system.'
'You? Oh, with you it succeeded, because you - you were exceptional.'
'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 join a social group in Rome I'd take her there 
tomorrow.'
'Don't make her resemble me,' said Isabel. 'Keep her like herself.'
'I might send her to my sister,' Mr Osmond observed. He had almost the air 
of asking advice; he seemed to like to talk over his domestic matters with 
Miss Archer.
'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 drawing-room 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 half-behind, half-
beside Madame Merle's chair: 'She wants me to go to Rome with her,' he 
remarked in a low voice.
'To go with her?'
'To be there while she's there. She proposed it.'
'I suppose you mean that you proposed it and she assented.'
'Of course I gave her a chance. But she's encouraging - she's very 
encouraging.'
'I rejoice to hear it - but don't cry victory too soon. Of course you'll go 
to Rome.'
'Ah,' said Osmond, 'it makes one work, this idea of yours!'
'Don't pretend you don't enjoy it - you're very ungrateful. You've not been 
so well occupied these many years.'
'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.'
'The girl's not disagreeable,' Osmond quietly conceded.
Madame Merle dropped her eye on him a moment, during which her lips closed 
with a certain firmness. 'Is that all you can find to say about that fine 
creature?'
'All? Isn't it enough? Of how many people have you heard me say more?'
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.'
He took it almost gaily. 'You can't draw back - you've gone too far.'
'Very good; but you must do the rest yourself.'
'I shall do it,' said Gilbert Osmond.
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 moved when I did.'
He had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his forehead. 'I always 
forget; I'm out of the habit.'
'You're quite unfathomable,' she repeated, glancing up at the windows of 
the house, a modern structure in the new part of the town.
He paid no heed to this remark, but spoke in his own sense. 'She's really 
very charming. I've scarcely known any one more graceful.'
'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 devotion. She has only one fault.'
'What's that?'
'Too many ideas.'
'I warned you she was clever.'
'Fortunately they're very bad ones,' said Osmond.
'Why is that fortunate?'
'Dame, if they must be sacrificed!'
Madame Merle leaned back, looking straight before her; then she spoke to 
the coachman. But her friend again detained her. 'If I go to Rome what 
shall I do with Pansy?'
'I'll go and see her,' said Madame Merle.



Chapter 27

I may not attempt to report in its fullness our young woman's response to 
the deep appeal of Rome, to analyse 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 re-echoing 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 
chariot-ruts traceable in the antique street and the over-jangled 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 stood there baring his head to her perceptibly pale surprise.
'Lord Warburton!' Isabel exclaimed as she rose.
'I had no idea it was you. I turned that corner and came upon you.'
She looked about her to explain. 'I'm alone, but my companions have just 
left me. My cousin's gone to look at the work over there.'
'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,' she added.
'Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do. I had no idea you 
were in Rome. I've just come from the East. I'm only passing through.'
'You've been making a long journey,' said Isabel, who had learned from 
Ralph that Lord Warburton was absent from England.
'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 little?'
She took it all humanely. 'I don't wish you to leave me, Lord Warburton; 
I'm very glad to see you.'
'Thank you for saying that. May I sit down?'
The fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would have afforded a 
resting-place to several persons, and there was plenty of room even for a 
highly-developed 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 loose-fitting, 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 minimising 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 break-up. 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.'
'Written to me? I've never had your letters.'
'I never sent them. I burned them up.'
'Ah,' laughed Isabel, 'it was better that you should do that than I!'
'I thought you wouldn't care for them,' he went on with a simplicity that 
touched her. 'It seemed to me that after all I had no right to trouble you 
with letters.'
'I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped 
that - that-' But she stopped; there would be such a flatness in the 
utterance of her thought.
'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 appear so.
She found herself reduced simply to 'Please don't talk of all that'; a 
speech which hardly struck her as improvement on the other.
'It's a small consolation to allow me!' her companion exclaimed with force.
'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 through the medium of her strange elation.
'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 conscious majesty, looking 
for her companions.
'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 self-control, 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 committee, assuredly, would have felt the 
point proved.
'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: 'There's no harm in that on 
either side.'
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 mentioning the limit of her stay declared he was glad it was still so 
distant.
'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 Clapham Junction. To pass through Rome is to stop a week 
or two.'
'Say frankly that you mean to stay as long as I do!'
His flushed smile, for a little, seemed to sound her. 'You won't like that. 
You're afraid you'll see too much of me.'
'It doesn't matter what I like. I certainly can't expect you to leave this 
delightful place on my account. But I confess I'm afraid of you.'
'Afraid I'll begin again? I promise to be very careful.'
They had gradually stopped and they stood a moment face to face. 'Poor Lord 
Warburton!' she said with a compassion intended to be good for both of 
them.
'Poor Lord Warburton indeed! But I'll be careful.'
'You may be unhappy, but you shall not make me so. That I can't allow.'
'If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it.' At this 
she walked in advance and he also proceeded. 'I'll never say a word to 
displease you.'
'Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end.'
'Perhaps some day - after a while - you'll give me leave.'
'Give you leave to make me unhappy?'
He hesitated. 'To tell you again-' But he checked himself. 'I'll keep it 
down. I'll keep it down always.'
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 
suppose you remember me, sir.'
'Indeed I do remember you,' said Lord Warburton. 'I asked you to come and 
see me, and you never came.'
'I don't go everywhere I'm asked,' Miss Stackpole answered coldly.
'Ah well, I won't ask you again,' laughed the master of Lockleigh.
'If you do I'll go; so be sure!'
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 'Oh, you here, Bantling?' 
and a hand-shake.
'Well,' said Henrietta, 'I didn't know you knew him!'
'I guess you don't know every one I know,' Mr Bantling rejoined 
facetiously.
'I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always told you.'
'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 
convenience.
In the church, as she strolled over its tessellated 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 far-
arching 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 multiplied them on this 
occasion to suit the place.
'So you decided to come?' she said as she put out her hand.
'Yes, I came last night and called this afternoon at your hotel. They told 
me you had come here, and I looked about for you.'
'The others are inside,' she decided to say.
'I didn't come for the others,' he promptly returned.
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 nice-girl 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.
'It's very large and very bright,' she contented herself with replying.
'It's too large; it makes one feel like an atom.'
'Isn't that the right way to feel in the greatest of human temples?' she 
asked with rather a liking for her phrase.
'I suppose it's the right way to feel everywhere, when one is nobody. But I 
like it in a church as little as anywhere else.'
'You ought indeed to be a Pope!' Isabel exclaimed, remembering something he 
had referred to in Florence.
'Ah, I should have enjoyed that!' said Gilbert Osmond.
Lord Warburton meanwhile had joined Ralph Touchett, and the two strolled 
away together. 'Who's the fellow speaking to Miss Archer?' his lordship 
demanded.
'His name's Gilbert Osmond - he lives in Florence,' Ralph said.
'What is he besides?'
'Nothing at all. Oh yes, he's an American; but one forgets that - he's so 
little of one.'
'Has he known Miss Archer long?'
'Three or four weeks.'
'Does she like him?'
'She's trying to find out.'
'And will she?'
'Find out-?' Ralph asked.
'Will she like him?'
'Do you mean will she accept him?'
'Yes,' said Lord Warburton after an instant; 'I suppose that's what I 
horribly mean.'
'Perhaps not if one does nothing to prevent it,' Ralph replied.
His lordship stared a moment, but apprehended. 'Then we must be perfectly 
quiet?'
'As quiet as the grave. And only on the chance!' Ralph added.
'The chance she may?'
'The chance she may not?'
Lord Warburton took this at first in silence, but he spoke again. 'Is he 
awfully clever?'
'Awfully,' said Ralph.
His companion thought. 'And what else?'
'What more do you want?' Ralph groaned.
'Do you mean what more does she?'
Ralph took him by the arm to turn him: they had to rejoin the others. 'She 
wants nothing that we can give her.'
'Ah well, if she won't have You-!' said his lordship handsomely as they 
went.



Chapter 28

On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his friends 
at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had gone to 
the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a visit in 
their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had obtained his 
admittance - it was one of the secondary theatres - looked about the large, 
bare, ill-lighted house. An act had just terminated and he was at liberty 
to pursue his quest. After scanning two or three tiers of boxes he 
perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady whom he easily 
recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage and partly screened by 
the curtain of the box; and beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr 
Gilbert Osmond. They appeared to have the place to themselves, and 
Warburton supposed their companions had taken advantage of the recess to 
enjoy the relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on 
the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the 
harmony. At last he judged that Isabel had seen him, and this accident 
determined him. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to 
the upper regions and on the staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly 
descending, his hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they 
usually were.
'I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely 
and want company,' was Ralph's greeting.
'You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted.'
'Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want me. Then 
Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice - Miss 
Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either. The 
opera's very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks. I 
feel very low.'
'You had better go home,' Lord Warburton said without affectation.
'And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over her.'
'She seems to have plenty of friends.'
'Yes, that's why I must watch,' said Ralph with the same large mock-
melancholy.
'If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me.'
'No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.'
Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to a friend 
so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer temporal 
province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr Osmond, to whom 
he had been introduced the day before and who, after he came in, sat 
blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in the subjects of 
allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor that Miss Archer had, 
in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was, 
however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely 
animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk 
with him moreover pointed to presence of mind; it expressed a kindness so 
ingenious and deliberate as to indicate that she was in undisturbed 
possession of her faculties. Poor Lord Warburton had moments of 
bewilderment. She had discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could; 
what business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above all 
with such tones of reparation - preparation? Her voice had tricks of 
sweetness, but why play them on him? The others came back; the bare, 
familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was large, and there was room 
for him to remain if he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did 
so for half an hour, while Mr Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, 
his elbows on his knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, 
and from his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young 
lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was 
another interval no one moved. Mr Osmond talked to Isabel, and Lord 
Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however; after 
which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Isabel said nothing to 
detain him, but it didn't prevent his being puzzled again. Why should she 
mark so one of his values - quite the wrong one - when she would have 
nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was angry with 
himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry. Verdi's music 
did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and walked homeward, 
without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic streets of Rome, 
where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the stars.
'What's the character of that gentleman?' Osmond asked of Isabel after he 
had retired.
'Irreproachable - don't you see it?'
'He owns about half England; that's his character,' Henrietta remarked. 
'That's what they call a free country!'
'Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!' said Gilbert Osmond.
'Do you call that happiness - the ownership of wretched human beings?' 
cried Miss Stackpole. 'He owns his tenants and has thousands of them. It's 
pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I don't 
insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.'
'It seems to me you own a human being or two,' Mr Bantling suggested 
jocosely. 'I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.'
'Lord Warburton's a great radical,' Isabel said. 'He has very advanced 
opinions.'
'He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a gigantic iron 
fence, some thirty miles round,' Henrietta announced for the information of 
Mr Osmond. 'I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston 
radicals.'
'Don't they approve of iron fences?' asked Mr Bantling.
'Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking 
to you over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.'
'Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?' Osmond went on, 
questioning Isabel.
'Well enough for all the use I have for him.'
'And how much of a use is that?'
'Well, I like to like him.'
' "Liking to like" - why, it makes a passion!' said Osmond.
'No' - she considered - 'keep that for liking to dislike.'
'Do you wish to provoke me then,' Osmond laughed, 'to a passion for him?'
She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a 
disproportionate gravity. 'No, Mr Osmond; I don't think I should ever dare 
to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,' she more easily added, 'is a 
very nice man.'
'Of great ability?' her friend enquired.
'Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.'
'As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking. How 
detestably fortunate! - to be a great English magnate, to be clever and 
handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your high 
favour! That's a man I could envy.'
Isabel considered him with interest. 'You seem to me to be always envying 
some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; today it's poor Lord Warburton.'
'My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to destroy 
the people - I only want to be them. You see it would destroy only myself.'
'You'd like to be the Pope?' said Isabel.
'I should love it - but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why' - 
Osmond reverted - 'do you speak of your friend as poor?'
'Women - when they are very, very good - sometimes pity men after they've 
hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness,' said Ralph, joining 
in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so transparently 
ingenious as to be virtually innocent.
'Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?' Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows as 
if the idea were perfectly fresh.
'It serves him right if you have,' said Henrietta while the curtain rose 
for the ballet.
Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four 
hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered 
him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the 
collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her 
companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his 
place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and 
finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said 
in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. 'And I'm leaving Rome,' he 
added. 'I must bid you good-bye.' Isabel, inconsequently enough, was now 
sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of 
his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the 
point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a 
happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. 'I'm afraid 
you'll think me very 'volatile.' I told you the other day I wanted so much 
to stop.'
'Oh no; you could easily change your mind.'
'That's what I have done.'
'Bon voyage then.'
'You're in a great hurry to get rid of me,' said his lordship quite 
dismally.
'Not in the least. But I hate partings.'
'You don't care what I do,' he went on pitifully.
Isabel looked at him a moment. 'Ah,' she said, 'you're not keeping your 
promise!'
He coloured like a boy of fifteen. 'If I'm not, then it's because I can't; 
and that's why I'm going.'
'Good-bye then.'
'Good-bye.' He lingered still, however. 'When shall I see you again?'
Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: 'Some 
day after you're married.'
'That will never be. It will be after you are.'
'That will do as well,' she smiled.
'Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.'
They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the 
shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these 
presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful 
blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is 
impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek 
sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as 
with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the 
large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman 
air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine 
mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it 
is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon 
them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a 
clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more mildly human. 
Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, 
wondering to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and 
how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red walls of the 
room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their 
beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, 
and it was all the greater because she was glad again, for the time, to be 
alone. At last, however, her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide 
of life. An occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the 
Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the 
smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, 
apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, 
with his hands behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing 
smile. 'I'm surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.'
'So I have - the best.' And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.
'Do you call them better company than an English peer?'
'Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.' She got up, speaking with 
intention a little dryly.
Mr Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest of 
his question. 'I'm afraid that what I heard the other evening is true: 
you're rather cruel to that nobleman.'
Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. 'It's not true. I'm 
scrupulously kind.'
'That's exactly what I mean!' Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such happy 
hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was fond of 
originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he 
had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race 
and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a 
young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice 
objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high 
appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its 
distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its solid 
actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing him to an 
English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of such conduct as 
Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he might marry should have done 
something of that sort.



Chapter 29

Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly 
qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond's personal merits; 
but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of that 
gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond spent a 
portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended by affecting 
them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have seen that he 
could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety? - which perhaps was 
exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial sociability a 
reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman was obliged to admit that 
he was just now a delightful associate. His good-humour was imperturbable, 
his knowledge of the right fact, his production of the right word, as 
convenient as the friendly flicker of a match for your cigarette. Clearly 
he was amused - as amused as a man could be who was so little ever 
surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not that his spirits 
were visibly high - he would never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the 
big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, 
ragged note, to what he called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer 
sometimes of too precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, 
because if she had not had it she would really have had none; she would 
have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the 
palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these 
closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow 
irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small 
sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; 
he had never before been pleased with so many things at once. Old 
impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to 
his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he prefixed the 
title of 'Rome Revisited.' A day or two later he showed this piece of 
correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to her that it was an 
Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by a tribute to the 
muse.
He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often - he would have 
admitted that - too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the 
fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his 
spirit. But at present he was happy - happier than he had perhaps ever been 
in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the 
sense of success - the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond 
had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the irritation of 
satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded himself. 'Ah no, I've 
not been spoiled; certainly I've not been spoiled,' he used inwardly to 
repeat. 'If I do succeed before I die I shall thoroughly have earned it.' 
He was too apt to reason as if 'earning' this boon consisted above all of 
covertly aching for it and might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely 
void of it, also, his career had not been; he might indeed have suggested 
to a spectator here and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his 
triumphs were, some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The 
present one had been less arduous than might have been expected, but had 
been easy - that is had been rapid - only because he had made an altogether 
exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to 
make. The desire to have something or other to show for his 'parts' - to 
show somehow or other - had been the dream of his youth; but as the years 
went on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected 
him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of 
beer to advertise what one could 'stand.' If an anonymous drawing on a 
museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this 
peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified - as from 
the hand of a great master - by the so high and so unnoticed fact of style. 
His 'style' was what the girl had discovered with a little help; and now, 
beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world without his 
having any of the trouble. She should do the thing for him, and he would 
not have waited in vain.
Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady 
received from Mrs Touchett a telegram running as follows: 'Leave Florence 
4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't 
wait if you dawdle in Rome.' The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but 
Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately 
join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied 
that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he 
himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow of Saint Peter's. 
He would not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that time she 
would have started for Bellaggio. It might be months in this case before he 
should see her again. This exchange took place in the large decorated 
sitting-room occupied by our friends at the hotel; it was late in the 
evening, and Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence on the 
morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a 
friendship with a delightful American family on the fourth floor and had 
mounted the interminable staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta 
contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and had formed 
in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph 
was making arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a 
wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange; the 
walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the pictures 
had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and painted 
over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly to 
distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar, bragging, 
lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on 
their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in her lap with her 
finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to pursue her study. 
A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink tissue-paper burned on the 
table beside her and diffused a strange pale rosiness over the scene.
'You say you'll come back; but who knows?' Gilbert Osmond said. 'I think 
you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the world. You're 
under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what you choose; you 
can roam through space.'
'Well, Italy's a part of space,' Isabel answered. 'I can take it on the 
way.
'On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a 
parenthesis - give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on 
your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see 
you when you're tired and satiated,' Osmond added in a moment. 'I shall 
prefer you in that state.'
Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. 'You turn 
things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think, without 
intending it. You've no respect for my travels - you think them 
ridiculous.'
'Where do you find that?'
She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the paper-
knife. 'You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about as if the 
world belonged to me, simply because - because it has been put into my 
power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. You think it bold 
and ungraceful.'
'I think it beautiful,' said Osmond. 'You know my opinions - I've treated 
you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one ought to 
make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first; but then 
I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do 
with your own.'
She looked up from her book. 'What you despise most in the world is bad, is 
stupid art.'
'Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.'
'If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,' she went on.
Osmond gave a smile - a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their 
conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had seen 
it before. 'You have an imagination that startles one!'
'That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.'
'I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries I 
want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?'
'I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,' said Isabel.
'You've a better excuse - the means of going. You're quite wrong in your 
theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it into your head.'
'It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should 
have the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything, and I 
know nothing.'
'The more reason why you should travel and learn,' smiled Osmond. 
'Besides,' he added as if it were a point to be made, 'I don't know 
everything.'
Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was 
thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life - so it pleased her to 
qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have likened 
to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress over-
muffled 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 reflection 
she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the point 
abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were a danger they 
should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be as well. Happy 
things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure wore already the changed, 
the seaward face of some romantic island from which, after feasting on 
purple grapes, she was putting off while the breeze rose. She might come 
back to Italy and find him different - this strange man who pleased her 
just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run the risk of 
that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity that the chapter was 
closed; she felt for a moment a pang that touched the source of tears. The 
sensation kept her silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was 
looking at her. 'Go everywhere,' he said at last, in a low, kind voice; 'do 
everything; get everything out of life. Be happy - be triumphant.'
'What do you mean by being triumphant?'
'Well, doing what you like.'
'To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things 
one likes is often very tiresome.'
'Exactly,' said Osmond with his quiet quickness. 'As I intimated just now, 
you'll be tired some day.' He paused a moment and then he went on: 'I don't 
know whether I had better not wait till then for something I want to say to 
you.'
'Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when I'm 
tired,' Isabel added with due inconsequence.
'I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes - that I can believe, though 
I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never "cross".'
'Not even when I lose my temper?'
'You don't lose it - you find it, and that must be beautiful.' Osmond spoke 
with a noble earnestness. 'They must be great moments to see.'
'If I could only find it now!' Isabel nervously cried.
'I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very 
seriously.' He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he 
bent his eyes on the floor. 'What I wish to say to you,' he went on at 
last, looking up, 'is that I find I'm in love with you.'
She instantly rose. 'Ah, keep that till I am tired!'
'Tired of hearing it from others?' He sat there raising his eyes to her. 
'No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must say 
it now.' She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped herself 
and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this situation, 
exchanging a long look - the large, conscious look of the critical hours of 
life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were 
afraid he had been too familiar. 'I'm absolutely in love with you.'
He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal discretion, 
like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for his own 
needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed the 
sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a fine 
bolt - backward, forward, she couldn't have said which. The words he had 
uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful and generous, invested him 
as with the golden air of early autumn; but, morally speaking, she 
retreated before them - facing him still - as she had retreated in the 
other cases before a like encounter. 'Oh don't say that, please,' she 
answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of having, in this case 
too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great was precisely the 
force which, as it would seem, ought to have banished all dread - the sense 
of something within herself, deep down, that she supposed to be inspired 
and trustful passion. It was there like a large sum stored in a bank - 
which there was a terror in having to begin to spend. If she touched it, it 
would all come out.
'I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you,' said Osmond. 'I've 
too little to offer you. What I have - it's enough for me; but it's not 
enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages of 
any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it can't 
offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It gives me 
pleasure, I assure you,' he went on, standing there before her, 
considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken up, 
slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of awkwardness 
and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm, refined, slightly 
ravaged face. 'It gives me no pain, because it's perfectly simple. For me 
you'll always be the most important woman in the world.'
Isabel looked at herself in this character - looked intently, thinking she 
filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an expression of 
any such complacency. 'You don't offend me; but you ought to remember that, 
without being offended, one may be incommoded, troubled.' 'Incommoded': she 
heard herself saying that, and it struck her as a ridiculous word. But it 
was what stupidly came to her.
'I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. But if it's 
nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave something 
that I may not be ashamed of.'
'I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm not 
overwhelmed,' said Isabel with rather a pale smile. 'I'm not too troubled 
to think. And I think that I'm glad we're separating - that I leave Rome to-
morrow.'
'Of course I don't agree with you there.'
'I don't at all know you,' she added abruptly; and then she coloured as she 
heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord 
Warburton.
'If you were not going away you'd know me better.'
'I shall do that some other time.'
'I hope so. I'm very easy to know.'
'No, no,' she emphatically answered - 'there you're not sincere. You're not 
easy to know; no one could be less so.'
'Well,' he laughed, 'I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast, 
but I do.'
'Very likely; but you're very wise.'
'So are you, Miss Archer!' Osmond exclaimed.
'I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had better 
go. Good-night.'
'God bless you!' said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed to 
surrender. After which he added: 'If we meet again you'll find me as you 
leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same.'
'Thank you very much. Good-bye.'
There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go of his 
own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. 'There's one thing more. I haven't 
asked anything of you - not even a thought in the future; you must do me 
that justice. But there's a little service I should like to ask. I shall 
not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and it's a good place 
for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry to leave it; but 
you're right to do what your aunt wishes.'
'She doesn't even wish it!' Isabel broke out strangely.
Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match 
these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: 'Ah well, it's 
proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper; I 
go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't know me, 
but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for propriety.'
'You're not conventional?' Isabel gravely asked.
'I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm 
convention itself. You don't understand that?' And he paused a moment, 
smiling. 'I should like to explain it.' Then with a sudden, quick, bright 
naturalness, 'Do come back again,' he pleaded. 'There are so many things we 
might talk about.'
She stood there with lowered eyes. 'What service did you speak of just 
now?'
'Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at 
the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my 
ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,' said Gilbert 
Osmond gently.
'It will be a great pleasure to me to go,' Isabel answered. 'I'll tell her 
what you say. Once more good-bye.'
On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a 
moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of 
deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded 
hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation - for it had not diminished 
- was very still, very deep. What had happened was something that for a 
week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but here, when it 
came, she stopped - that sublime principle somehow broke down. The working 
of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I 
see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination, as 
I say, now hung back: there was a last vague space it couldn't cross - a 
dusky, uncertain tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly 
treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to 
cross it yet.



Chapter 30

She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and 
Ralph Touchett, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought 
very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried his 
companion away from the city now distinguished by Gilbert Osmond's 
preference - hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme of 
travel. Miss Stackpole had remained behind; she was planning a little trip 
to Naples, to be carried out with Mr Bantling's aid. Isabel was to have 
three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs Touchett's 
departure, and she determined to devote the last of these to her promise to 
call on Pansy Osmond. Her plan, however, seemed for a moment likely to 
modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame Merle's. This lady was 
still at Casa Touchett; but she too was on the point of leaving Florence, 
her next station being an ancient castle in the mountains of Tuscany, the 
residence of a noble family of that country, whose acquaintance (she had 
known them, as she said, 'forever') seemed to Isabel, in the light of 
certain photographs of their immense crenellated dwelling which her friend 
was able to show her, a precious privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate 
woman that Mr Osmond had asked her to take a look at his daughter, but 
didn't mention that he had also made her a declaration of love.
'Ah, comme cela se trouve!' Madame Merle exclaimed. 'I myself have been 
thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I go 
off.'
'We can go together then,' Isabel reasonably said: 'reasonably' because the 
proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had prefigured 
her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like it better so. She 
was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic sentiment to her great 
consideration for her friend.
That personage finely meditated. 'After all, why should we both go; having, 
each of us, so much to do during these last hours?'
'Very good; I can easily go alone.'
'I don't know about your going alone - to the house of a handsome bachelor. 
He has been married - but so long ago!'
Isabel stared. 'When Mr Osmond's away what does it matter?'
'They don't know he's away, you see.'
'They? Whom do you mean?'
'Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify.'
'If you were going why shouldn't I?' Isabel asked.
'Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman.'
'Granting all that, you've not promised.'
'How much you think of your promises!' said the elder woman in mild 
mockery.
'I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?'
'You're right,' Madame Merle audibly reflected. 'I really think you wish to 
be kind to the child.'
'I wish very much to be kind to her.'
'Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have come 
if you hadn't. Or rather,' Madame Merle added, 'don't tell her. She won't 
care.'
As Isabel drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding way 
which led to Mr Osmond's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had meant 
by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals, this 
lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of the open 
sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous quality, 
struck a note that sounded false. What cared Isabel Archer for the vulgar 
judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Merle suppose that she was 
capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly done? Of course 
not: she must have meant something else - something which in the press of 
the hours that preceded her departure she had not had time to explain. 
Isabel would return to this some day; there were sorts of things as to 
which she liked to be clear. She heard Pansy strumming at the piano in 
another place as she herself was ushered into Mr Osmond's drawing-room; the 
little girl was 'practising,' and Isabel was pleased to think she performed 
this duty with rigour. She immediately came in, smoothing down her frock, 
and did the honours of her father's house with a wide-eyed earnestness of 
courtesy. Isabel sat there half an hour, and Pansy rose to the occasion as 
the small, winged fairy in the pantomime soars by the aid of the 
dissimulated wire - not chattering, but conversing, and showing the same 
respectful interest in Isabel's affairs that Isabel was so good to take in 
hers. Isabel wondered at her; she had never had so directly presented to 
her nose the white flower of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had 
been taught, said our admiring young woman; how prettily she had been 
directed and fashioned; and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she 
had been kept! Isabel was fond, ever, of the question of character and 
quality, of sounding, as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it 
had pleased her, up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender 
slip were not really all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the 
perfection of self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father's 
visitor, or was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour 
that Isabel spent in Mr Osmond's beautiful empty, dusky rooms - the windows 
had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through 
an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a gleam of 
faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom - her interview with the 
daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Pansy was 
really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept so; she had 
neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent - only two or three small 
exquisite instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake, for 
taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender was to be 
touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy victim of fate. She would 
have no will, no power to resist, no sense of her own importance; she would 
easily be mystified, easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when 
and where to cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had 
asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where Pansy gave her 
judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her 
occupations, her father's intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the 
propriety of supplying the information so distinguished a guest would 
naturally expect.
'Please tell me,' she said, 'did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame Catherine? 
He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time. Papa likes a 
great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education; it isn't 
finished yet, you know. I don't know what they can do with me more; but it 
appears it's far from finished. Papa told me one day he thought he would 
finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the convent, the masters 
that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa's not rich, and I should 
be very sorry if he were to pay much money for me, because I don't think 
I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough, and I have no memory. For what 
I'm told, yes - especially when it's pleasant; but not for what I learn in 
a book. There was a young girl who was my best friend, and they took her 
away from the convent, when she was fourteen, to make - how do you say it 
in English? - to make a dot. You don't say it in English? I hope it isn't 
wrong; I only mean they wished to keep the money to marry her. I don't know 
whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep the money - to marry me. It 
costs so much to marry!' Pansy went on with a sigh; 'I think papa might 
make that economy. At any rate I'm too young to think about it yet, and I 
don't care for any gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my 
papa I should like to marry him! I would rather be his daughter than the 
wife of-of some strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as 
you might think, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always been 
principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you must 
not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I'm very sorry, and he'll 
be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best. That's not a 
great compliment, for there are not many people. It was very kind of you to 
come to-day - so far from your house; for I'm really as yet only a child. 
Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When did you give them up, 
the occupations of a child? I should like to know how old you are, but I 
don't know whether it's right to ask. At the convent they told us that we 
must never ask the age. I don't like to do anything that's not expected; it 
looks as if one had not been properly taught. I myself - I should never 
like to be taken by surprise. Papa left directions for everything. I go to 
bed very early. When the sun goes off that side I go into the garden. Papa 
left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I always enjoy the view; 
the mountains are so graceful. In Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing 
but roofs and bell-towers. I 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 slate-pencil making flourishes.'
Isabel gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down to 
the piano, while Pansy, standing beside her, watched her white hands move 
quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child good-bye, held 
her close, looked at her long. 'Be very good,' she said; 'give pleasure to 
your father.'
'I think that's what I live for,' Pansy answered. 'He has not much 
pleasure; he's rather a sad man.'
Isabel listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it almost 
a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged her, and 
a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in her head which 
she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say to Pansy about her 
father; there were things it would have given her pleasure to hear the 
child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner became conscious of these 
things than her imagination was hushed with horror at the idea of taking 
advantage of the little girl - it was of this she would have accused 
herself - and of exhaling into that air where he might still have a subtle 
sense for it any breath of her charmed state. She had come - she had come; 
but she had stayed only an hour. She rose quickly from the music-stool; 
even then, however, she lingered a moment, still holding her small 
companion, drawing the child's sweet slimness closer and looking down at 
her almost in envy. She was obliged to confess it to herself - she would 
have taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Gilbert Osmond to this 
innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said no other 
word; she only kissed Pansy once again. They went together through the 
vestibule, to the door that opened on the court; and there her young 
hostess stopped, looking rather wistfully beyond. 'I may go no further. 
I've promised papa not to pass this door.'
'You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable.'
'I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?'
'Not for a long time, I'm afraid.'
'As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl,' said Pansy, 'but I 
shall always expect you.' And the small figure stood in the high, dark 
doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court and disappear into the 
brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider dazzle as it opened.



Chapter 31

Isabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval 
sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this 
interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is engaged 
again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return to 
Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just 
narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the 
numerous rooms devoted by Mrs Touchett to social uses, and there was that 
in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she was 
expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green 
shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had come in through 
a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth and perfume. Our young 
woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her; she gazed 
abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved 
in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of 
her visitor before he should pass into the house, since the entrance to the 
palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and privacy always 
reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival by a process of 
conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her face this attempt gave 
her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively more weighted, as 
by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the 
world. She had ranged, she would have said, through space and surveyed much 
of mankind, and was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person 
from the frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the 
measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She 
flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal more of 
life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If her thoughts 
just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead of fluttering their 
wings nervously about the present, they would have evoked a multitude of 
interesting pictures. These pictures would have been both landscapes and 
figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have been the more numerous. With 
several of the images that might have been projected on such a field we are 
already acquainted. There would be for instance the conciliatory Lily, our 
heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's wife, who had come out from New York 
to spend five months with her relative. She had left her husband behind 
her, but had brought her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal 
munificence and tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr Ludlow, toward the 
last, had been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, 
crossing the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two 
ladies in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not 
yet, even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; 
so that while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to 
a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in the 
month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine 
valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade of great 
chestnuts made a resting place for such upward wanderings as might be 
undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had afterwards 
reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with costly 
ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel, who in 
these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done, in a hot 
and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her 
handkerchief.
Mrs Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and wonderments 
not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined her found 
further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these speculations. 
They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done 
before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated, 
at anything his sister-in-law might have done or have failed to do. Mrs 
Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various. At one moment she 
thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take a 
house in New York - the Rossiters', for instance, which had an elegant 
conservatory and was just round the corner from her own; at another she 
couldn't conceal her surprise at the girl's not marrying some member of one 
of the great aristocracies. On the whole, as I have said, she had fallen 
from high communion with the probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction 
in Isabel's accession of fortune than if the money had been left to 
herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper setting for her 
sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had 
developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely - development, to 
Lily's understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with morning 
calls and evening-parties. Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense 
strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of 
which Mrs Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of 
such achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had 
expected of Isabel-to give it form and body. Isabel could have done as well 
as she had done in New York; and Mrs Ludlow appealed to her husband to know 
whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe which the society of 
that city might not offer her. We know ourselves that Isabel had made 
conquests - whether inferior or not to those she might have effected in her 
native land it would be a delicate matter to decide; and it is not 
altogether with a feeling of complacency that I again mention that she had 
not rendered these honourable victories public. She had not told her sister 
the history of Lord Warburton, nor had she given her a hint of Mr Osmond's 
state of mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that 
she didn't wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing, and, 
drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask 
poor Lily's advice as she would have been to close that rare volume 
forever. But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only 
pronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax - an impression 
confirmed by the fact that Isabel's silence about Mr Osmond, for instance, 
was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her 
thoughts. As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs Ludlow 
that she had lost her courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an 
incident as inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful 
Lily; it added to her general sense that Isabel was not at all like other 
people.
Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its 
height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver things 
than spending the winter in Paris - Paris had sides by which it so 
resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose - and her close 
correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She 
had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and 
wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the 
Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of 
the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to 
their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very 
conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good for 
her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good enough. 
To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had made the 
journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have accompanied 
them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, 
not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such impossible 
questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to the 
elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously 
far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an occasion of 
violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy London street. 
The world lay before her - she could do whatever she chose. There was a 
deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was tolerably 
discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. 
The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in; the street-
lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our heroine was 
unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel 
performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her 
way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was 
disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. She was 
so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of 
gathering dusk in the London streets - the moving crowds, the hurrying 
cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of 
everything. That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she 
should start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome 
without touching at Florence - having gone first to Venice and then 
proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other 
assistance than that of her servant, for her natural protectors were not 
now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and 
Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by 
a telegram from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant 
correspondent a fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of 
Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr Bantling 
that he would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs Touchett to 
apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt 
replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs Touchett intimated, were 
of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such 
articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one 'would' have 
done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future 
life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case 
with Mrs Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her 
niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a sign that 
Gilbert Osmond was less in question there than formerly. She watched of 
course to see if he would now find a pretext for going to Rome, and derived 
some comfort from learning that he had not been guilty of an absence.
Isabel, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed 
to Madame Merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East. 
Madame Merle remarked that her friend was restless, but she added that she 
herself had always been consumed with the desire to visit Athens and 
Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and 
spent three months in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to 
interest her in these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark 
that even among the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to 
suggest repose and reflection, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. 
Isabel travelled rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person 
draining cup after cup. Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a 
princess circulating incognita, panted a little in her rear. It was on 
Isabel's invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the 
girl's uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might 
have been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a 
companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had 
no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking pair on 
their travels would not have been able to tell you which was patroness and 
which client. To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance states 
meagrely the impression she made on her friend, who had found her from the 
first so ample and so easy. At the end of an intimacy of three months 
Isabel felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and the 
admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her 
history from her own point of view-a consummation the more desirable as 
Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others. This 
history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M. Merle, a 
positive adventurer, she might say, though originally so plausible, who had 
taken advantage, years before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which 
doubtless those who knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); 
it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents that Isabel wondered 
the poor lady had kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into 
this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight; she 
seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in 
its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the 
'favourite' of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a 
corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained 
after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge only in 
character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a distance, 
that she belonged to the 'old, old' world, and Isabel never lost the 
impression that she was the product of a different moral or social clime 
from her own, that she had grown up under other stars.
She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course 
the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our young 
woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at the 
shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth, that a 
morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this conviction 
was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse 
from candour, in the conversation of a person who had raised delicate 
kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the narrow ways of 
deception. Her conception of human motives might, in certain lights, have 
been acquired at the court of some kingdom in decadence, and there were 
several in her list of which our heroine had not even heard. She had not 
heard of everything, that was very plain; and there were evidently things 
in the world of which it was not advantageous to hear. She had once or 
twice had a positive scare; since it so affected her to have to exclaim, of 
her friend, 'Heaven forgive her, she doesn't understand me!' Absurd as it 
may seem this discovery operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay 
in which there was even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course 
subsided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable 
intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of 
confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a 
friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline-there being no 
point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary 
affection, in other words, was impossible-it must move one way or the 
other. However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses 
for her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been. 
I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in 
the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the broken 
columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to 
her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions had 
remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made 
another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond descended 
from Florence and remained three weeks, during which the fact of her being 
with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose house she had gone to lodge, 
made it virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the 
last of April came she wrote to Mrs Touchett that she should now rejoice to 
accept an invitation given long before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo 
Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her 
aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in 
Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a 
year, was prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.



Chapter 32

It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at 
the window, where we found her a while ago, and it was not of any of the 
matters that I have just rapidly sketched. She was not thinking of the 
past, but of the future; of the immediate, impending hour. She had reason 
to expect a scene, and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking 
herself what she should say to her visitor; this question had already been 
answered. What he would say to her - that was the interesting speculation. 
It could be nothing agreeable; Isabel was convinced of this, and the 
conviction had something to do with her being rather paler than usual. For 
the rest, however, she wore her natural brightness of aspect; even deep 
grief, with this vivid young lady, would have had a certain soft 
effulgence. She had laid aside her mourning, but she was still very simply 
dressed, and as she felt a good deal older than she had done a year before, 
it is probable that to a certain extent she looked so. She was not left 
indefinitely to her apprehensions, for the servant at last came in and 
presented her a card. 
'Let the gentleman come in,' said Isabel, who continued to gaze out of the 
window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard the 
door close behind the person who presently entered that she looked round. 
Caspar Goodwood stood there - stood and received a moment, from head to 
foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered a 
greeting. Whether on his side Mr Goodwood felt himself older than on the 
first occasion of our meeting him is a point which we shall perhaps 
presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to Isabel's critical glance 
he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong, and fresh, there 
was nothing in his appearance that spoke positively either of youth or of 
age; he looked too deliberate, too serious to be young; and too eager, too 
active to be old. Old he would never be, and this would serve as a 
compensation for his never having known the age of chubbiness. Isabel 
perceived that his jaw had quite the same voluntary look that it had worn 
in earlier days; but she was prepared to admit that such a moment as the 
present was not a time for relaxation. 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 reflection. 'Poor fellow,' she mentally 
murmured, 'what great things he is capable of, and what a pity that he 
should waste his splendid force! What a pity, too, that one can't satisfy 
everybody!' It gave her time to do more - to say at the end of a minute: 'I 
can't tell you how I hoped that you wouldn't come.' 
'I have no doubt of that.' And Caspar Goodwood looked about him for a seat. 
Not only had he come, but he meant to stay a little.
 'You must be very tired,' said Isabel, seating herself, generously, as she 
thought, to give him his opportunity. 
'No, I am not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?' 
'Never; I wish I had. When did you arrive here?' 
'Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express. 
These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.' 
'That is in keeping - you must have felt as if you were coming to a 
funeral,' Isabel said, forcing a smile, in order to offer such 
encouragement as she might to an easy treatment of their situation. She had 
reasoned out the matter elaborately; she had made it perfectly clear that 
she broke no faith, that she falsified no contract; but for all this she 
was afraid of him. 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 persistency - a persistency in which there was almost a want of tact; 
especially as there was a dull dark beam in his eye which rested on her 
almost like a physical weight. 
'No, I didn't feel that; because I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I 
could!' said Caspar Goodwood, plainly. 
'I thank you immensely.' 
'I would rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.' 
'That is very selfish of you!' Isabel cried, with the ardour of a real 
conviction. 'If you are not happy yourself, others have a right to be.' 
'Very likely it is selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so. I 
don't mind anything you can say now - I don't feel it. The cruellest things 
you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you have 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 a sort of 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 said, after a little, irrelevantly, by 
way of answer to Mr Goodwood's speech - 'When did you leave New York?'
 He threw up his head a moment, as if he were calculating. 'Seventeen days 
ago.' 
'You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.' 
'I came as fast as I could. I would have come five days ago if I had been 
able.' 
'It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr Goodwood,' said Isabel, smiling. 
'Not to you - no. But to me.' 
'You gain nothing that I see.' 
'That is for me to judge!' 
'Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself. And then, to 
change the subject, Isabel asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole. 
He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk about 
Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered distinctly enough, that this young 
lady had come to see him just before he left America. 
'She came to see you?' 
'Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had 
got your letter.' 
'Did you tell her?' Isabel asked, with a certain anxiety. 
'Oh no,' said Caspar Goodwood, simply; 'I didn't want to. She will hear it 
soon enough; she hears everything.' 
'I shall write to her; and then she will write to me and scold me,' Isabel 
declared, trying to smile again. 
Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. 'I guess she'll come out,' he 
said. 
'On purpose to scold me?' 
'I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.' 
'I am glad you tell me that,' Isabel said. 'I must prepare for her.' 
Mr Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last, raising 
them - 'Does she know Mr Osmond?' he asked. 
'A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to please 
Henrietta,' Isabel added. 
It would have been better for poor Caspar if she had tried a little more to 
gratify Miss Stackpole; but he did not say so; he only asked, presently, 
when her marriage would take place. 
'I don't know yet. I can only say it will be soon. I have told no one but 
yourself and one other person - an old friend of Mr Osmond's.' 
'Is it a marriage your friends won't like?' Caspar Goodwood asked. 
'I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my friends.' 
He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions. 
'What is Mr Osmond?' 
'What is he? Nothing at all but a very good man. He is not in business,' 
said Isabel. 'He is not rich; he is 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 certainly small; he sat very 
upright, gazing at her. 
'Where does he come from?' he went on. 
'From nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.' 
'You said in your letter that he was an American. Hasn't he a native 
place?' 
'Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.' 
'Has he never gone back?' 
'Why should he go back?' Isabel asked, flushing a little, and defensively. 
'He has no profession.' 
'He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the United 
States?' 
'He doesn't know them. Then he is very simple - he contents himself with 
Italy.' 
'With Italy and with you,' said Mr Goodwood, with gloomy plainness, and no 
appearance of trying to make an epigram. 'What has he ever done?' he added, 
abruptly. 
'That I should marry him? Nothing at all,' Isabel replied, with a smile 
that had gradually become a trifle defiant. 'If he had done great things 
would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr Goodwood; I am marrying a 
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 is a nonentity. You think he is a great man, though no one 
else thinks so.' 
Isabel's colour deepened; she thought this very clever of her companion, 
and it was certainly a proof of the clairvoyance of such a feeling as his. 
'Why do you always come back to what others think? I can't discuss Mr 
Osmond with you.' 
'Of course not,' said Caspar, reasonably. 
And he sat there with his air of stiff helplessness, as if not only this 
were true, but there were nothing else that they might discuss. 
'You see how little you gain,' Isabel broke out, ' - how little comfort or 
satisfaction I can give you.' 
'I didn't expect you to give me much.' 
'I don't understand, then, why you came.' 
'I came because I wanted to see you once more - as you are.' 
'I appreciate that; but if you had waited awhile, sooner or later we should 
have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been pleasanter for each 
of us than this.' 
'Waited till after you are married? That is just what I didn't want to do. 
You will be different then.' 
'Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You will see.' 
'That will make it all the worse,' said Mr Goodwood, grimly. 
'Ah, you are unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you, in order to 
help you to resign yourself.' 
'I shouldn't care if you did!' 
Isabel got up, with a movement of repressed impatience, and walked to the 
window, where she remained a moment, looking out. When she turned round, 
her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came towards him again 
and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just 
quitted. 
'Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That's better for you, perhaps, 
than for me.' 
'I wished to hear the sound of your voice,' said Caspar. 
'You have heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.' 
'It gives me pleasure, all the same.' 
And with this he got up. 
She had felt pain and displeasure when she received that morning the note 
in which he told her that he was in Florence, and, with her permission, 
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 implication. It implied things she could never assent to 
- rights, reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her 
change her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been 
expressed; and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her 
visitor's remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him which 
irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand which made her heart 
beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself that 
she was as angry as a woman who had 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. 
If he had not held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone 
in which she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having 
accused her: 'I have not deceived you! I was perfectly free!' 
'Yes, I know that,' said Caspar. 
'I gave you full warning that I would do as I chose.' 
'You said you would probably never marry, and you said it so positively 
that I pretty well believed it.' 
Isabel was silent an instant. 
'No one can be more surprised than myself at my present intention.' 
'You told me that if I heard you were engaged, I was not to believe it,' 
Caspar went on. 'I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I remembered 
what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and that is 
partly why I came.' 
'If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that is soon done. There is 
no mistake at all.' 
'I saw that as soon as I came into the room.' 
'What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?' Isabel asked, with a 
certain fierceness. 'I should like it better than this.' 
'You are very selfish, as I said before.' 
'I know that. I am selfish as iron.' 
'Even iron sometimes melts. If you will be reasonable I will see you 
again.' 
'Don't you call me reasonable now?' 
'I don't know what to say to you,' she answered, with sudden humility. 
'I shan't trouble you for a long time,' the young man went on. He made a 
step towards the door, but he stopped. 'Another reason why I came was that 
I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having changed 
your mind.' 
Isabel's humbleness as suddenly deserted her. 
'In explanation? Do you think I am bound to explain?' 
Caspar gave her one of his long dumb looks. 
'You were very positive. I did believe it.' 
'So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?' 
'No, I suppose not. Well,' he added, 'I have done what I wished. I have 
seen you.' 
'How little you make of these terrible journeys,' Isabel murmured. 
'If you are afraid I am tired, you may be at your ease about that.' 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. 
'I am delighted to hear it!' she answered, passionately. And he went out. 
Five minutes after he had gone she burst into tears.


Chapter 33

Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had 
vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this 
expression because she had been sure Mrs Touchett would not be pleased; 
Isabel had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr
Goodwood. She had an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make 
the fact public before she should have heard what Mr Goodwood would say 
about it. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a 
somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more; she 
waited till Mrs Touchett came into the drawing-room before the mid-day 
breakfast, and then she began. 'Aunt Lydia, I've something to tell you.'
Mrs Touchett gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely: 'You 
needn't tell me; I know what it is.'
'I don't know how you know.'
'The same way that I know when the window's open-by feeling a draught. 
You're going to marry that man.'
'What man do you mean?' Isabel enquired with great dignity.
'Madame Merle's friend-Mr Osmond.'
'I don't know why you call him Madame Merle's friend. Is that the principal 
thing he's known by?'
'If he's not her friend he ought to after what she has done for him!
cried Mrs Touchett. 'I shouldn't have expected it of her; I'm 
disappointed.'
'If you mean that Madame Merle has had anything to do with my engagement 
you're greatly mistaken,' Isabel declared with a sort of ardent coldness.
'You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman 
having had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your 
attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she hadn't 
put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he was not a 
man to take trouble. Madame Merle took the trouble for him.'
'He has taken a great deal for himself!' cried Isabel with a voluntary 
laugh.
Mrs Touchett gave a sharp nod. 'I think he must, after all, to have made 
you like him so much.'
'I thought he even pleased you.'
'He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him.'
'Be angry with me, not with him,' said the girl.
'Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this 
that you refused Lord Warburton?'
'Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr Osmond, since others 
have done so?'
'Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There's 
nothing of him,' Mrs Touchett explained.
'Then he can't hurt me,' said Isabel.
'Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings, you 
should know.'
'I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?'
'What you will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as they 
go into partnership-to set up a house. But in your partnership you'll bring 
everything.'
'Is it that Mr Osmond isn't rich? Is that what you're talking about?' 
Isabel asked.
'He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such things 
and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very precious. Many other 
people think the same, and they show it. But they give some other reason.'
Isabel hesitated a little. 'I think I value everything that's valuable. I 
care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr Osmond to have a 
little.'
'Give it to him then; but marry some one else.'
'His name's good enough for me,' the girl went on. 'It's a very pretty 
name. Have I such a fine one myself?'
'All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen 
American names. Do you marry him out of charity?'
'It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my duty to 
explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So please don't 
remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can't 
talk about it.'
'I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of 
intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.'
'You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very 
considerate.'
'It was not considerate-it was convenient,' said Mrs Touchett. 'But I shall 
talk to Madame Merle.'
'I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good friend 
to me.'
'Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.'
'What has she done to you?'
'She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your 
engagement.'
'She couldn't have prevented it.'
'She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she 
could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I 
didn't understand that she would play two at the same time.'
'I don't know what part she may have played to you,' Isabel said; 'that's 
between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and devoted.'
'Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me she 
was watching you only in order to interpose.'
'She said that to please you,' the girl answered; conscious, however, of 
the inadequacy of the explanation.
'To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased to-day?'
'I don't think you're ever much pleased,' Isabel was obliged to reply. 'If 
Madame Merle knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by 
insincerity?'
'She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you were 
marching away, and she was really beating the drum.'
'That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and 
even if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have tried to stop me.'
'No, but some one else would.'
'Whom do you mean?' Isabel asked, looking very hard at her aunt.
Mrs Touchett's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained 
her gaze rather than returned it. 'Would you have listened to Ralph?'
'Not if he had abused Mr Osmond.'
'Ralph doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much 
for you.'
'I know he does,' said Isabel; 'and I shall feel the value of it now, for 
he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.'
'He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it, 
and he argued the other way.'
'He did it for the sake of argument,' the girl smiled. 'You don't accuse 
him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Merle?'
'He never pretended he'd prevent it.'
'I'm glad of that!' cried Isabel gaily. 'I wish very much,' she presently 
added, 'that when he comes you'd tell him first of my engagement.'
'Of course I'll mention it,' said Mrs Touchett. 'I shall say nothing more 
to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.'
'That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the 
announcement should come from you than from me.'
'I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!' And on this the aunt and 
the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs Touchett, as good as her word, made 
no allusion to Gilbert Osmond. After an interval of silence, however, she 
asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an hour before.
'From an old friend-an American gentleman,' Isabel said with a colour in 
her cheek.
'An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman who calls 
at ten o'clock in the morning.'
'It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this evening.'
'Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?'
'He only arrived last night.'
'He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?' Mrs Touchett cried. 'He's an 
American gentleman truly.'
'He is indeed,' said Isabel, thinking with perverse admiration of what 
Caspar Goodwood had done for her.
Two days afterward Ralph arrived; but though Isabel was sure that Mrs 
Touchett had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed at 
first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of his 
health; Isabel had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been shocked 
by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten how ill he 
looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if he 
were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with an 
invalid. Poor Ralph made no nearer approach to conventional beauty as he 
advanced in life, and the now apparently complete loss of his health had 
done little to mitigate the natural oddity of his person. Blighted and 
battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a 
lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker 
languished upon a lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined 
itself more sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and loose-
jointed; an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket 
had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he 
shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that denoted great physical 
helplessness. It was perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his 
character more than ever as that of the humorous invalid-the invalid for 
whom even his own disabilities are part of the general joke. They might 
well indeed with Ralph have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness 
marking his view of a world in which the reason for his own continued 
presence was past finding out. Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his 
awkwardness had become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; 
they struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be 
charming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had hitherto 
had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed not a 
limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him from all 
professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of being 
exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful; he had 
remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to consent to 
be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally sick. Such had 
been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she had pitied him it 
was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal she had allowed him a 
certain amount of compassion; but she always had a dread of wasting that 
essence-a precious article, worth more to the giver than to any one else. 
Now, however, it took no great sensibility to feel that poor Ralph's tenure 
of life was less elastic than it should be. He was a bright, free, generous 
spirit, he had all the illumination of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and 
yet he was distressfully dying.
Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people, and she 
felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now promised to 
become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Ralph was not pleased 
with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of her affection 
for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not even prepared, 
or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his 
privilege-it would be indeed his natural line-to find fault with any step 
she might take toward marriage. One's cousin always pretended to hate one's 
husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a part of one's cousin's 
always pretending to adore one. Ralph was nothing if not critical; and 
though she would certainly, other things being equal, have been as glad to 
marry to please him as to please any one, it would be absurd to regard as 
important that her choice should square with his views. What were his views 
after all? He had pretended to believe she had better have married Lord 
Warburton; but this was only because she had refused that excellent man. If 
she had accepted him Ralph would certainly have taken another tone; he 
always took the opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the 
essence of a marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should 
she only give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She 
had other employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the 
care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must 
have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing. After 
three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman wearied of 
waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through the form. We, 
who know more about poor Ralph than his cousin, may easily believe that 
during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo Crescentini he had 
privately gone through many forms. His mother had literally greeted him 
with the great news, which had been even more sensibly chilling than Mrs 
Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked and humiliated; his 
calculations had been false and the person in the world in whom he was most 
interested was lost. He drifted about the house like a rudderless vessel in 
a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of the palace on a great cane chair, 
his long legs extended, his head thrown back and his hat pulled over his 
eyes. He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less. What 
could he do, what could he say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he 
pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the 
attempt should succeed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or 
sinister in the man to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently 
discreet only in the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should 
simply have damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his 
thought and to dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor 
protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew-or rather he supposed-that the 
affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond at this moment 
showed himself little at Palazzo Crescentini; but Isabel met him every day 
elsewhere, as she was free to do after their engagement had been made 
public. She had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to 
her aunt for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs Touchett 
disapproved, and she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban 
wilderness, during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our 
young lady, joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a 
while through the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.



Chapter 34

One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before luncheon, 
she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and, instead of 
ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed beneath another 
archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this moment could not 
have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over it, and the warm 
shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious caves. Ralph was 
sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore-a 
dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of 
Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at first to 
Isabel that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the grass had not roused 
him, and before turning away she stood for a moment looking at him. During 
this instant he opened his eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair 
that matched with his own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of 
indifference she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had 
something to brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by 
the languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the 
property inherited from his father-the fruit of eccentric arrangements of 
which Mrs Touchett disapproved and which, as she had told Isabel, now 
encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to 
have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence; he 
had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank than 
in the state of Patagonia.
'I'm sorry I waked you,' Isabel said; 'you look too tired.'
'I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.'
'Are you tired of that?'
'Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never arrive.'
'What do you wish to arrive at?' she put to him, closing her parasol.
'At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your 
engagement.'
'Don't think too much of it,' she lightly returned.
'Do you mean that it's none of my business?'
'Beyond a certain point, yes.'
'That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me 
wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you.'
'Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.'
'There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now,' Ralph said. He 
pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at her. 
He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against his marble 
pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands laid upon the 
rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable; he hesitated 
long. Isabel said nothing; when people were embarrassed she was usually 
sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to utter a word 
that should not be to the honour of her high decision. 'I think I've hardly 
got over my surprise,' he went on at last. 'You were the last person I 
expected to see caught.'
'I don't know why you call it caught.'
'Because you're going to be put into a cage.'
'If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you,' she answered.
'That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of.'
'If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm satisfied 
that I'm doing well.'
'You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty beyond 
everything. You wanted only to see life.'
'I've seen it,' said Isabel. 'It doesn't look to me now, I admit, such an 
inviting expanse.'
'I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view of 
it and wanted to survey the whole field.'
'I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose a corner 
and cultivate that.'
'That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible. I 
had an idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that you 
were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me off my 
guard.'
'It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew 
nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your 
guard, however,' Isabel asked, 'what would you have done?'
'I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'
'Wait for what?'
'Well, for a little more light,' said Ralph with rather an absurd smile, 
while his hands found their way into his pockets.
'Where should my light have come from? From you?'
'I might have struck a spark or two.'
Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay upon her 
knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her expression was 
not conciliatory. 'You're beating about the bush, Ralph. You wish to say 
you don't like Mr Osmond, and yet you're afraid.'
'Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike'? I'm willing to wound him, yes-
but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of him. If you marry him it 
won't be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.'
'If I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?'
'Of course that seems to you too fatuous.'
'No,' said Isabel after a little; 'it seems to me too touching.'
'That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.'
She stroked out her long gloves again. 'I know you've a great affection for 
me. I can't get rid of that.'
'For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince you 
how intensely I want you to do well.'
'And how little you trust me!'
There was a moment's silence; the warm noon-tide seemed to listen. 'I trust 
you, but I don't trust him,' said Ralph.
She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. 'You've said it now, 
and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by it.'
'Not if you're just.'
'I'm very just,' said Isabel. 'What better proof of it can there be than 
that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the matter with me, but 
I'm not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought to 
be angry, but Mr Osmond wouldn't think so. He wants me to know everything; 
that's what I like him for. You've nothing to gain, I know that. I've never 
been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have much reason for 
wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice; you've often done so. 
No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your wisdom,' she went on, 
boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of contained 
exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it touched Ralph to 
the heart, affected him like a caress from a creature he had injured. He 
wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a moment he was absurdly 
inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had said. But she gave him no 
chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse, as she thought, of the heroic 
line and desiring to advance in that direction. 'I see you've some special 
idea; I should like very much to hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I 
feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about, and of course I ought 
to tell you definitely that if you expect to dissuade me you may give it 
up. You'll not move me an inch; it's too late. As you say, I'm caught. 
Certainly it won't be pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will 
be in your own thoughts. I shall never reproach you.'
'I don't think you ever will,' said Ralph. 'It's not in the least the sort 
of marriage I thought you'd make.'
'What sort of marriage was that, pray?'
'Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I had 
a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for-well, for that type.'
'What's the matter with Mr Osmond's type, if it be one? His being so 
independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,' the girl declared. 
'What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.'
'Yes,' Ralph said, 'I know him very little, and I confess I haven't facts 
and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can't help feeling 
that you're running a grave risk.'
'Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as mine.'
'That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he 
would.'
Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her 
cousin. 'I don't think I understand you,' she said at last coldly. 'I don't 
know what you're talking about.'
'I believed you'd marry a man of more importance.'
Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped 
into her face. 'Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that 
one's husband should be of importance to one's self!'
Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking he 
proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward, 
resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an air 
of the most respectful deliberation. 'I'll tell you in a moment what I 
mean,' he presently said. He felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he 
had opened the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished 
also to be superlatively gentle.
Isabel waited a little-then she went on with majesty. 'In everything that 
makes one care for people Mr Osmond is pre-eminent. There may be nobler 
natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr Osmond's is the 
finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever 
enough. I'm far more struck with what he has and what he represents than 
with what he may lack.'
'I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,' Ralph observed 
without answering this: 'I had amused myself with planning out a high 
destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not 
to come down so easily or so soon.'
'Come down, you say?'
'Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me 
to be soaring far up in the blue-to be, sailing in the bright light, over 
the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud-a missile 
that should never have reached you-and straight you drop to the ground. It 
hurts me,' said Ralph audaciously, 'hurts me as if I had fallen myself!'
The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face. 'I 
don't understand you in the least,' she repeated. 'You say you amused 
yourself with a project for my career-I don't understand that. Don't amuse 
yourself too much, or I shall think you're doing it at my expense.'
Ralph shook his head. 'I'm not afraid of your not believing that I've had 
great ideas for you.'
'What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?' she pursued. 'I've never 
moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now. There's nothing higher for 
a girl than to marry a-a person she likes,' said poor Isabel, wandering 
into the didactic.
'It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my 
dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a more 
active, larger, freer sort of nature.' Ralph hesitated, then added: 'I 
can't get over the sense that Osmond is somehow-well, small.' He had 
uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would 
flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of 
considering.
'Small?' She made it sound immense.
'I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!
'He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that,' said 
Isabel. 'It makes one more sure to respect others.'
Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone. 'Yes, but 
everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation to things-to 
others. I don't think Mr Osmond does that.'
'I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's excellent.'
'He's the incarnation of taste,' Ralph went on, thinking hard how he could 
best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without putting himself 
in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe him 
impersonally, scientifically. 'He judges and measures, approves and 
condemns, altogether by that.'
'It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.'
'It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride. 
But have you ever seen such a taste-a really exquisite one-ruffled?'
'I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's.'
At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. 'Ah, that's wilful, 
that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that way-you 
were meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities 
of a sterile dilettante!'
Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment 
looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult. But 
'You go too far,' she simply breathed.
'I've said what I had on my mind-and I've said it because I love you!'
Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden wish 
to strike him off. 'Ah then, you're not disinterested!'
'I love you, but I love without hope,' said Ralph quickly, forcing a smile 
and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he 
intended.
Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the garden; 
but after a little she turned back to him. 'I'm afraid your talk then is 
the wildness of despair! I don't understand it-but it doesn't matter. I'm 
not arguing with you; it's impossible I should; I've only tried to listen 
to you. I'm much obliged to you for attempting to explain,' she said 
gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung up had already 
subsided. 'It's very good of you to try to warn me, if you're really 
alarmed; but I won't promise to think of what you've said: I shall forget 
it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you've done your duty, 
and no man can do more. I can't explain to you what I feel, what I believe, 
and I wouldn't if I could.' She paused a moment and then went on with an 
inconsequence that Ralph observed even in the midst of his eagerness to 
discover some symptom of concession. 'I can't enter into your idea of Mr 
Osmond; I can't do it justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's 
not important-no, he's not important; he's a man to whom importance is 
supremely indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call him 'small,' 
then he's as small as you please. I call that large-it's the largest thing 
I know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I'm going to 
marry,' Isabel repeated. 'I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr 
Osmond; he's not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would 
seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and 
coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any 
one but you; and you, after what you've said-I may just answer you once for 
all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage-what they call a 
marriage of ambition? I've only one ambition-to be free to follow out a 
good feeling. I had others once, but they've passed away. Do you complain 
of Mr Osmond because he's not rich? That's just what I like him for. I've 
fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful for it as to-day. 
There have been moments when I should like to go and kneel down by your 
father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing than he knew when he put it 
into my power to marry a poor man-a man who has borne his poverty with such 
dignity, with such indifference. Mr Osmond has never scrambled nor 
struggled he has cared for no worldly prize. If that's to be narrow, if 
that's to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm not frightened by such 
words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry that you should make a 
mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm surprised that you should. You 
might know a gentleman when you see one-you might know a fine mind. Mr 
Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows everything, he understands everything, 
he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You've got hold of some false 
idea. It's a pity, but I can't help it; it regards you more than me.' 
Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a 
sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness of her manner-a mingled 
sentiment, to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded 
pride of having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the 
nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said 
nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly 
solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. 'What sort 
of a person should you have liked me to marry?' she asked suddenly. 'You 
talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one touches 
the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in one's 
bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother has never 
forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding with Lord 
Warburton, and she's horrified at my contenting myself with a person who 
has none of his great advantages-no property, no title, no honours, no 
houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant belongings 
of any sort. It's the total absence of all these things that pleases me. Mr 
Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very cultivated and a very honest man-he's 
not a prodigious proprietor.'
Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited 
deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of the things 
she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight of 
his total impression-the impression of her ardent good faith. She was 
wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally consistent. 
It was wonderfully characteristic of her that, having invented a fine 
theory about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really 
possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph 
remembered what 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 elation-
absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His opposition had made her own 
conception of her conduct clearer to her. 'Shall you not come up to 
breakfast?' she asked.
'No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry.'
'You ought to eat,' said the girl; 'you live on air.'
'I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another 
mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that if 
you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how I feel 
to-day.'
'Do you think I'm in trouble?'
'One's in trouble when one's in error.'
'Very well,' said Isabel; 'I shall never complain of my trouble to you!
And she moved up the staircase.
Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets followed her with his 
eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made 
him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the 
Florentine sunshine.



Chapter 35

Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse to 
tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The discreet 
opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the 
whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was simply that they 
disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to Isabel; she 
scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher 
relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please 
herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this for a 
more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction was confirmed by her 
lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond was in love, and he had 
never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them 
numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism 
passed upon him by Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on 
Isabel's spirit by this criticism was that the passion of love separated 
its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself 
disjoined from every one she had ever known before-from her two sisters, 
who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a 
surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort who was 
the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was 
sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord 
Warburton, who would certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, 
who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about 
marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt; and from 
Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but a 
whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her 
not to marry at all-that was what it really meant-because he was amused 
with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment 
made him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: 
Isabel flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the 
more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little 
free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident, in 
fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert 
Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She 
tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious, 
almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed and 
possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed virtue 
of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's right was 
always made of the wrong of some one else.
The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted 
meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his 
part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men, 
was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him 
an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten and 
dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot 
to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance-which presented indeed no 
difficulty-of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was immensely pleased 
with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable 
value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned 
to softness? For would not the softness be all for one's self, and the 
strenuousness for society, which admired the air of superiority? What could 
be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved 
one repetitions and reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant surface? 
Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced literally-that made it look 
stale and stupid; he preferred it to be freshened in the reproduction even 
as 'words' by music. His egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring 
a dull wife; this lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an 
earthen one-a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it 
would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of 
served dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; 
he could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew 
perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little 
favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so 
completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to 
express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one morning, 
he made an abrupt allusion to it. 'It's the difference in our fortune they 
don't like,' he said. 'They think I'm in love with your money.'
'Are you speaking of my aunt-of my cousin?' Isabel asked. 'How do you know 
what they think?'
'You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs Touchett the 
other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I should 
have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you rich is the 
most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course when a poor man 
marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. I don't mind them; 
I only care for one thing-for your not having the shadow of a doubt. I 
don't care what people of whom I ask nothing think-I'm not even capable 
perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so concerned myself, God forgive me, 
and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself a compensation 
for everything? I won't pretend I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I 
delight in everything that's yours-whether it be money or virtue. Money's a 
horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, 
however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I 
never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to 
suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose 
it's their business to suspect-that of your family; it's proper on the 
whole they should. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that 
matter. Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply 
to be thankful for life and love.' 'It has made me better, loving you,' he 
said on another occasion; 'it has made me wiser and easier and I won't 
pretend to deny-brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a 
great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them. Theoretically 
I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my 
wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, 
hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I 
can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to 
spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been 
putting out my eyes over the book of life and finding nothing to reward me 
for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see it's a delightful 
story. My dear girl, I can't tell you how life seems to stretch there 
before us-what a long summer afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of 
an Italian day-with a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and 
that divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have 
loved all my life and which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see 
why we shouldn't get on. We've got what we like-to say nothing of having 
each other. We've the faculty of admiration and several capital 
convictions. We're not stupid, we're not mean, we're not under bonds to any 
kind of ignorance or dreariness. You're remarkably fresh, and I'm 
remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor child to amuse us; we'll try and 
make up some little life for her. It's all soft and mellow-it has the 
Italian colouring.'
They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal of 
latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live for the 
present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had been a party 
to their first impressions of each other, and Italy should be a party to 
their happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance and Isabel 
the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future at a high level of 
consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for unlimited expansion had been 
succeeded in her soul by the sense that life was vacant without some 
private duty that might gather one's energies to a point. She had told 
Ralph she had 'seen life' in a year or two and that she was already tired, 
not of the act of living, but of that of observing. What had become of all 
her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her 
independence and her incipient conviction that she should never marry? 
These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need-a need the answer 
to which brushed away numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. 
It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the 
light of the stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation 
enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be 
able to be of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of 
humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only 
taking, she was giving.
He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine-Pansy who was 
very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she would 
always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who held her 
by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to go and play 
while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore a short dress 
and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She found pleasure 
in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of the alley, and then 
in walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for approbation. Isabel 
approved in abundance, and the abundance had the personal touch that the 
child's affectionate nature craved. She watched her indications as if for 
herself also much depended on them-Pansy already so represented part of the 
service she could render, part of the responsibility she could face. Her 
father took so the childish view of her that he had not yet explained to 
her the new relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. 'She 
doesn't know,' he said to Isabel; 'she doesn't guess; she thinks it 
perfectly natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply 
as good friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; 
it's the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think; 
I've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've 
brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way.'
He was very fond, in all things, of the 'old way'; that had struck Isabel 
as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. 'It occurs to me that you'll not 
know whether you've succeeded until you've told her,' she said. 'You must 
see how she takes your news. She may be horrified-she may be jealous.'
'I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I should 
like to leave her in the dark a little longer-to see if it will come into 
her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be.'
Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it somehow 
appeared, of Pansy's innocence-her own appreciation of it being more 
anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a 
few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who had 
made such a pretty little speech-'Oh, then I shall have a beautiful 
sister!'
She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he expected.
'Perhaps she had guessed it,' said Isabel.
'Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it 
would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her good 
manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for 
yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.'
The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither 
Pansy had been conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come in 
the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Countess on learning that 
they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett the visitor 
had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been ushered 
into the Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her aunt would 
presently appear. Pansy was spending the day with that lady, who thought 
her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in company. It was 
Isabel's view that the little girl might have given lessons in deportment 
to her relative, and nothing could have justified this conviction more than 
the manner in which Pansy acquitted herself while they waited together for 
the Countess. Her father's decision, the year before, had finally been to 
send her back to the convent to receive the last graces, and Madame 
Catherine had evidently carried out her theory that Pansy was to be fitted 
for the great world.
'Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him,' said this 
excellent woman's pupil. 'It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very 
well.'
'You think I shall suit you?'
'You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will suit 
each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're not so quiet as he-
or even as Madame Merle; but you're more quiet than many others. He should 
not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's always in motion, in 
agitation-to-day especially; you'll see when she comes in. They told us at 
the convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but I suppose there's no harm 
if we judge them favourably. You'll be a delightful companion for papa.'
'For you too, I hope,' Isabel said.
'I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself think 
of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I think it 
will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be my model; I 
shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be very feeble. I'm very 
glad for papa-he needed something more than me. Without you I don't see how 
he could have got it. You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use that 
word. They're always said to be cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so 
much as pinch or even push me. I'm not afraid at all.'
'My good little Pansy,' said Isabel gently, 'I shall be ever so kind to 
you.' A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need it 
had intervened with the effect of a chill.
'Very well then, I've nothing to fear,' the child returned with her note of 
prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest-or 
what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!
Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini was 
further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room with a 
flutter through the air and kissed Isabel first on the forehead and then on 
each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She drew the 
visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, 
began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she 
were applying a series of considered touches to a composition of figures 
already sketched in. 'If you expect me to congratulate you I must beg you 
to excuse me. I don't suppose you care if I do or not; I believe you're 
supposed not to care-through being so clever-for all sorts of ordinary 
things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never tell them unless there's 
something rather good to be gained. I don't see what's to be gained with 
you - especially as you wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any 
more than I make paper flowers or flouncey lampshades-I don't know how. My 
lampshades would be sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger 
than life. I'm very glad for my own sake that you're to marry Osmond; but I 
won't pretend I'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant-you know that's the 
way you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and 
original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family. Our 
family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told you that; and my mother 
was rather distinguished-she was called the American Corinne. But we're 
dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up. I've great 
confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to talk to you 
about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to 
make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy oughtn't 
to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me for-to acquire the 
tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing what horrors she may be in 
for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on you I thought 
of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not to listen 
to him. Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that 
kind. Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all I'm very 
selfish. By the way, you won't respect me, not one little mite, and we 
shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the 
same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first. My husband 
will come and see you, though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of 
terms with Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not 
afraid of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, 
you won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your 
affair, and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you 
can stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to 
go out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir.'
'Let her stay, please,' said Isabel. 'I would rather hear nothing that 
Pansy may not!'



Chapter 36

One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing 
appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an 
old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame Merle; 
whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a lady's 
maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the 
favour of his name. 'Mr Edward Rosier,' said the young man, who sat down to 
wait till his hostess should appear.
The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr Rosier was an ornament 
of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he 
sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of several 
winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might 
have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort. 
In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the 
current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences. He passed 
a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a charming 
young girl. To this little person he began to pay, on the spot, particular 
attention: she struck him as exactly the household angel he had long been 
looking for. He was never precipitate, he was nothing if not discreet, so 
he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it seemed to him 
when they parted-the young lady to go down into Italy and her admirer to 
proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join other friends that he 
should be romantically wretched if he were not to see her again. The 
simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond 
was domiciled with her family. Mr Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the 
Italian capital and reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant 
thing to do, but for the young man there was a strain of the heroic in the 
enterprise. He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman 
air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, 
favours the brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a 
day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had 
made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to 
finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; 
she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought 
of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a 
Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom of her 
juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose taste was 
predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he 
esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods would have been 
apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle's drawing-room, 
which, although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially 
rich in articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass 
into one eye and looked round; and then 'By Jove, she has some jolly good 
things!' he had yearningly murmured. The room was small and densely filled 
with furniture; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes 
which might totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his 
careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the 
cushions embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found 
him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great 
lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it 
delicately, as if he were smelling it.
'It's old Venetian,' she said; 'it's rather good.'
'It's too good for this; you ought to wear it.'
'They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.'
'Ah, but I can't wear mine,' smiled the visitor.
'I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear.'
His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. 'You've some very 
good things.'
'Yes, but I hate them.'
'Do you want to get rid of them?' the young man quickly asked.
'No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!'
'I love my things,' said Mr Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his 
recognitions. 'But it's not about them, nor about yours, that I came to 
talk to you.'
He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: 'I care more for Miss 
Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!'
Madame Merle opened wide eyes. 'Did you come to tell me that?'
'I came to ask your advice.'
She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large 
white hand. 'A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice.'
'Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a man 
in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But never so much as this 
time-really never so much. I should like particularly to know what you 
think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr Osmond I'm not-well, a real 
collector's piece.'
'Do you wish me to intercede?' Madame Merle asked with her fine arms folded 
and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
'If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There 
will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to 
believe her father will consent.'
'You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in rather 
an off-hand way that I think you a prize.'
'You've been very kind to me,' said the young man. 'That's why I came.'
'I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare 
now, and there's no telling what one may get by it.' With which the left-
hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression to the joke.
But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently 
strenuous. 'Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!'
'I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me if I 
seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I must tell 
you, however, that I've not the marrying of Pansy Osmond.'
'I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her family, 
and I thought you might have influence.'
Madame Merle considered. 'Whom do you call her family?'
'Why, her father; and-how do you say it in English?-her bellemere.'
'Mr Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed a 
member of her family. Mrs Osmond has nothing to do with marrying her.' 'I'm 
sorry for that,' said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. 'I think 
Mrs Osmond would favour me.'
'Very likely-if her husband doesn't.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Does she take the opposite line from him?'
'In everything. They think quite differently.'
'Well,' said Rosier, 'I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business.
She's very fond of Pansy.'
'Yes, she's very fond of Pansy.'
'And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves her 
as if she were her own mother.'
'You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor 
child,' said Madame Merle. 'Have you declared your sentiments?'
'Never!' cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. 'Never till I've 
assured myself of those of the parents.'
'You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the 
proprieties.'
'I think you're laughing at me,' the young man murmured, dropping back in 
his chair and feeling his small moustache. 'I didn't expect that of you, 
Madame Merle.'
She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them. 
'You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and the 
best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think.'
'I wouldn't agitate her-only to agitate her; I love her too much for that,' 
said Ned Rosier.
'I'm glad, after all, that you've told me,' Madame Merle went on.
'Leave it to me a little; I think I can help you.'
'I said you were the person to come to!' her visitor cried with prompt 
elation.
'You were very clever,' Madame Merle returned more dryly. 'When I say I can 
help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a little 
if it is.'
'I'm awfully decent, you know,' said Rosier earnestly. 'I won't say I've no 
faults, but I'll say I've no vices.'
'All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call 
vices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What have you got 
besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?'
'I've a comfortable little fortune-about forty thousand francs a year. With 
the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an 
income.'
'Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you live.'
'Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.'
Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. 'It wouldn't be famous; you'd have 
to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken.'
'We don't want to be famous. If Miss Osmond should have everything pretty 
it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can afford-well, quite 
cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but muslin-without the 
sprig,' said Rosier reflectively.
'Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to you at any 
rate for that theory.'
'It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into it. She 
understands all that; that's why I love her.'
'She's a very good little girl, and most tidy-also extremely graceful.
But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.'
Rosier scarce demurred. 'I don't in the least desire that he should. But I 
may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.'
'The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune.'
'Mrs Osmond then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do something.'
'For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!' Madame Merle 
exclaimed with a laugh.
'I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.'
'Mrs Osmond,' Madame Merle went on, 'will probably prefer to keep her money 
for her own children.'
'Her own children? Surely she has none.'
'She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six 
months after his birth. Others therefore may come.'
'I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid woman.' 
Madame Merle failed to burst into speech. 'Ah, about her there's much to be 
said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out that you're a parti. 
The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.'
'Pardon me, I think it may be,' said Rosier quite lucidly. 'You'll be a 
touching couple, living on your innocence!' 'I think you underrate me.'
'You're not so innocent as that? Seriously,' said Madame Merle, 'of course 
forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a combination to be 
considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at, but there might be a worse 
offer. Mr Osmond, however, will probably incline to believe he can do 
better.'
'He can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do better 
than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,' Rosier added 
eagerly.
'She does-I know it.'
'Ah,' cried the young man, 'I said you were the person to come to.'
'But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her,' Madame Merle 
went on.
'In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say, we're an 
innocent couple. How did you know it?'
'I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find out 
for you.'
Rosier got up and stood smoothing his hat. 'You say that rather coldly.
Don't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.'
'I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages.'
'Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs
Osmond.'
'Gardez-vous-en bien!' And Madame Merle was on her feet. 'Don't set her 
going, or you'll spoil everything.'
Rosier gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess had been after 
all the right person to come to. 'I don't think I understand you. I'm an 
old friend of Mrs Osmond, and I think she would like me to succeed.'
'Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the 
better, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her new. But don't 
for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband 
may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you 
not to multiply points of difference between them.'
Poor Rosier's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand of 
Pansy Osmond was even a more complicated business than his taste for proper 
transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which he concealed 
under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner's 'best set' came to his 
assistance. 'I don't see that I'm bound to consider Mr Osmond so very 
much!' he exclaimed.
'No, but you should consider her. You say you're an old friend. Would you 
make her suffer?'
'Not for the world.'
'Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few 
soundings.'
'Let the matter alone, dear Madame Merle? Remember that I'm in love.'
'Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to heed what 
I say?'
'You're very kind; I'll be very good,' the young man promised. 'But I'm 
afraid Mr Osmond's pretty hard,' he added in his mild voice as he went to 
the door.
Madame Merle gave a short laugh. 'It has been said before. But his wife 
isn't easy either.'
'Ah, she's a splendid woman!' Ned Rosier repeated, for departure.
He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was 
already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he had 
given Madame Merle that made it improper he should keep himself in spirits 
by an occasional visit to Miss Osmond's home. He reflected constantly on 
what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his mind the 
impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her de confiance, 
as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been precipitate. He 
found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash-he had incurred this 
reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had known Madame 
Merle only for the last month, and that his thinking her a delightful woman 
was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for assuming that she 
would be eager to push Pansy Osmond into his arms, gracefully arranged as 
these members might be to receive her. She had indeed shown him 
benevolence, and she was a person of consideration among the girl's people, 
where she had a rather striking appearance (Rosier had more than once 
wondered how she managed it) of being intimate without being familiar. But 
possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. There was no particular 
reason why she should take trouble for him; a charming woman was charming 
to every one, and Rosier felt rather a fool when he thought of his having 
appealed to her on the ground that she had distinguished him. Very likely-
though she had appeared to say it in joke-she was really only thinking of 
his bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or 
three of the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry 
Miss Osmond he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say 
so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like her 
to believe it.
It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs Osmond's, Mrs Osmond 
having an 'evening' - she had taken the Thursday of each week when his 
presence could be accounted for on general principles of civility. The 
object of Mr Rosier's well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in the 
very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure overlooking a sunny 
piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace, too, 
little Pansy lived-a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to poor 
Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the young 
lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he doubted of his 
ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind of domestic fortress, a 
pile which bore a stern old Roman name, which smelt of historic deeds, of 
crime and craft and violence, which was mentioned in 'Murray' and visited 
by tourists who looked, on a vague survey, disappointed and depressed, and 
which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row of mutilated 
statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the 
damp court where a fountain gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less 
preoccupied frame of mind he could have done justice to the Palazzo 
Roccanera; he could have entered into the sentiment of Mrs Osmond, who had 
once told him that on settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had 
chosen this habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour 
enough, and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges 
enamels he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the 
details of the cornice had quite the grand air. But Rosier was haunted by 
the conviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up 
there to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of 
being thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There 
was one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he found 
himself in Mrs Osmond's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which were on 
the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very strong in 
'good things.' It was a taste of Osmond's own-not at all of hers; this she 
had told him the first time he came to the house, when, after asking 
himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even better 'French' than 
he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit that they had, very much, 
and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman should, to the point of expressing 
to his hostess his pure admiration of her treasures. He learned from Mrs 
Osmond that her husband had made a large collection before their marriage 
and that, though he had annexed a number of fine pieces within the last 
three years, he had achieved his greatest finds at a time when he had not 
the advantage of her advice. Rosier interpreted this information according 
to principles of his own. For 'advice' read 'cash,' he said to himself; and 
the fact that Gilbert Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his 
impecunious season confirmed his most cherished doctrine-the doctrine that 
a collector may freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when 
Rosier presented himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was 
for the walls of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes 
really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Merle he felt the 
extreme seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked 
about for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be 
permitted a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took 
everything comfortable for granted.



Chapter 37

Pansy was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a concave 
ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here Mrs Osmond 
usually sat-though she was not in her most customary place to-night-and 
that a circle of more special intimates gathered about the fire. The room 
was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it contained the larger 
things and-almost always-an odour of flowers. Pansy on this occasion was 
presumably in the next of the series, the resort of younger visitors, where 
tea was served. Osmond stood before the chimney, leaning back with his 
hands behind him; he had one foot up and was warming the sole. Half a dozen 
persons, scattered near him, were talking together; but he was not in the 
conversation; his eyes had an expression, frequent with them, that seemed 
to represent them as engaged with objects more worth their while than the 
appearances actually thrust upon them. Rosier, coming in unannounced, 
failed to attract his attention; but the young man, who was very 
punctilious, though he was even exceptionally conscious that it was the 
wife, not the husband, he had come to see, went up to shake hands with him. 
Osmond put out his left hand, without changing his attitude.
'How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about.'
'Never fear; I shall find her,' said Rosier cheerfully.
Osmond, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so 
efficiently looked at. 'Madame Merle has told him, and he doesn't like it,' 
he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Merle would be there, but she 
was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or would come 
later. He had never especially delighted in Gilbert Osmond, having a fancy 
he gave himself airs. But Rosier was not quickly resentful, and where 
politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of being quite in the 
right. He looked round him and smiled, all without help, and then in a 
moment, 'I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte to-day,' he said.
Osmond answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his boot-
sole, 'I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!' he returned.
'I hope you're not losing your interest?'
'In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest.'
Rosier for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. 'You're not 
thinking of parting with a-a piece or two?'
'No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr Rosier,' said 
Osmond, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.
'Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,' Rosier remarked brightly.
'Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match.'
Poor Rosier was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of 
assurance. 'Ah, well, I have!' was all he could murmur; and he knew his 
murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the 
adjoining room and met Mrs Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She was 
dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and 
yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr Rosier thought of her and the 
terms in which, to Madame Merle, he had expressed his admiration. Like his 
appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his eye 
for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a 
sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a 'lustre' beyond any 
recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had 
still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs Osmond, at present, might well 
have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; 
the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its 
stem. She had lost something of that quick eagerness to which her husband 
had privately taken exception-she had more the air of being able to wait. 
Now, at all events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man 
as the picture of a gracious lady. 'You see I'm very regular,' he said. 
'But who should be if I'm not?'
'Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in 
tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.'
'Ah, please, what young lady?' Rosier was immensely obliging; but this was 
not what he had come for.
'She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.'
Rosier hesitated a moment. 'Can't Mr Osmond speak to her? He's within six 
feet of her.'
Mrs Osmond also hesitated. 'She's not very lively, and be doesn't like dull 
people.'
'But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!'
'I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so obliging.'
'So is your husband.'
'No, he's not-to me.' And Mrs Osmond vaguely smiled.
'That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.'
'So I tell him,' she said, still smiling.
'You see I want some tea,' Rosier went on, looking wistfully beyond.
'That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.'
'Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple truth 
is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Osmond.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, turning away, 'I can't help you there!'
Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink, whom 
he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in making to Mrs 
Osmond the profession I have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of his 
promise to Madame Merle. Such a question was capable of occupying this 
young man's mind for a considerable time. At last, however, he became-
comparatively speaking-reckless; he cared little what promises he might 
break. The fate to which he had threatened to abandon the damsel in pink 
proved to be none so terrible; for Pansy Osmond, who had given him the tea 
for his companion-Pansy was as fond as ever of making tea-presently came 
and talked to her. Into this mild colloquy Edward Rosier entered little; he 
sat by moodily, watching his small sweetheart. If we look at her now 
through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of the 
obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before, was sent to walk 
short distances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Archer talked 
together of matters sacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall 
perceive that if at nineteen Pansy has become a young lady she doesn't 
really fill out the part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a 
deplorable degree the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of 
females as style; and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears 
her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it-very much as 
if it were lent her for the occasion. Edward Rosier, it would seem, would 
have been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there 
was not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted. 
Only he called her qualities by names of his own-some of which indeed were 
happy enough. 'No, she's unique-she's absolutely unique,' he used to say to 
himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he have admitted 
to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had the style of a 
little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye. It was not modern, 
it was not conscious, it would produce no impression in Broadway; the 
small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only looked like an 
Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Edward Rosier, who thought her 
delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her charming lips, her slip 
of a figure, were as touching as a childish prayer. He had now an acute 
desire to know just to what point she liked him-a desire which made him 
fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat 
his forehead with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. She 
was such a perfect jeune fille, and one couldn't make of a jeune fille the 
enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a point. A jeune fille was 
what Rosier had always dreamed of-a jeune fille who should yet not be 
French, for he had felt that this nationality would complicate the 
question. He was sure Pansy had never looked at a newspaper and that, in 
the way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. 
An American jeune fille-what could be better than that? She would be frank 
and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters 
from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. 
Rosier could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of 
hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but he was 
now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were the most 
sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he entertained for 
Miss Osmond of infinitely greater importance? Of greater importance to him-
yes; but not probably to the master of the house. There was one comfort; 
even if this gentleman had been placed on his guard by Madame Merle he 
would not have extended the warning to Pansy; it would not have been part 
of his policy to let her know that a prepossessing young man was in love 
with her. But he was in love with her, the prepossessing young man; and all 
these restrictions of circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had 
Gilbert Osmond meant by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Osmond 
was rude, surely he himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the 
dull girl in so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of 
her mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Rosier, that 
she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter departed 
together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be virtually 
alone with Pansy. He had never been alone with her before; he had never 
been alone with a jeune fille. It was a great moment; poor Rosier began to 
pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in which they 
stood-a small room that had been thrown open and lighted, but that, the 
company not being numerous, had remained empty all the evening. It was 
empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; there were several lamps; 
through the open door it looked the very temple of authorised love. Rosier 
gazed a moment through this aperture; he was afraid that Pansy would run 
away, and felt almost capable of stretching out a hand to detain her. But 
she lingered where the other maiden had left them, making no motion to join 
a knot of visitors on the far side of the room. For a little it occurred to 
him that she was frightened-too frightened perhaps to move; but a second 
glance assured him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too 
innocent indeed for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he 
might go and look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so 
virginal. He had been there already with Osmond, to inspect the furniture, 
which was of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock 
(which he didn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that 
period. He therefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.
'Certainly, you may go,' said Pansy; 'and if you like I'll show you.' She 
was not in the least frightened.
'That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind,' Rosier murmured.
They went in together; Rosier really thought the room very ugly, and it 
seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Pansy. 'It's not for 
winter evenings; it's for summer,' she said. 'It's papa's taste; he has so 
much.'
He had a good deal, Rosier thought; but some of it was very bad. He looked 
about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation.
'Doesn't Mrs Osmond care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste? he 
asked.
'Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature,' said Pansy-'and for 
conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows 
everything.'
Rosier was silent a little. 'There's one thing I'm sure he knows!' he broke 
out presently. 'He knows that when I come here it's, with all respect to 
him, with all respect to Mrs Osmond, who's so charming-it's really,' said 
the young man, 'to see you!'
'To see me?' And Pansy raised her vaguely-troubled eyes.
'To see you; that's what I come for,' Rosier repeated, feeling the 
intoxication of a rupture with authority.
Pansy stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not 
needed to make her face more modest. 'I thought it was for that.'
'And it was not disagreeable to you?'
'I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me,' said Pansy.
'I was afraid of offending you.'
'You don't offend me,' the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel had 
kissed her.
'You like me then, Pansy?' Rosier asked very gently, feeling very happy.
'Yes-I like you.'
They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock was 
perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from 
without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him the 
very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and 
hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with 
her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive. 
She liked him-she had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! 
She was ready-she had been ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he 
had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the word came she 
dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Rosier felt that if he should 
draw her toward him and hold her to his heart she would submit without a 
murmur, would rest there without a question. It was true that this would be 
a rash experiment in a yellow Empire salottino. She had known it was for 
her he came, and yet like what a perfect little lady she had carried it 
off!
'You're very dear to me,' he murmured, trying to believe that there was 
after all such a thing as hospitality.
She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. 'Did you say papa 
knows?'
'You told me just now he knows everything.'
'I think you must make sure,' said Pansy.
'Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of you!' Rosier murmured in her ear; 
whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of 
consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.
The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame 
Merle, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered. How 
she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for she 
neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor dressed 
with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the audience. 
Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very tranquillity 
that diffused itself, and when people looked 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 two-they always paid, in public, a 
certain formal tribute to the commonplace-and then Madame Merle, whose eyes 
had been wandering, asked if little Mr Rosier had come this evening.
'He came nearly an hour ago-but he has disappeared,' Osmond said.
'And where's Pansy?'
'In the other room. There are several people there.'
'He's probably among them,' said Madame Merle.
'Do you wish to see him?' Osmond asked in a provokingly pointless tone.
Madame Merle looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the 
eighth of a note. 'Yes, I should like to say to him that I've told you what 
he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.'
'Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more-which is exactly what I 
don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal.'
'But you don't hate it.'
'It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this 
evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's a great bore. 
There's no hurry.'
'I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over.'
'No, don't do that. He'll hang on.'
'If I discourage him he'll do the same.'
'Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain-which would be 
exceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold his tongue and go in 
for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a 
donkey.'
'Is that what you call poor Mr Rosier?'
'Oh, he's a nuisance-with his eternal majolica.'
Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. 'He's a gentleman, he 
has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand francs!'
'It's misery-'genteel' misery,' Osmond broke in. 'It's not what I've 
dreamed of for Pansy.'
'Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.'
'Do you believe him?' Osmond asked absent-mindedly.
'Perfectly. Pansy has thought a great deal about him; but I don't suppose 
you consider that that matters.'
'I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has 
thought of him.'
'That opinion's more convenient,' said Madame Merle quietly.
'Has she told you she's in love with him?'
'For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?' Madame Merle added 
in a moment.
Osmond had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other 
knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly-his long, fine forefinger 
and thumb could make a ring for it-and gazed a while before him. 'This kind 
of thing doesn't find me unprepared. It's what I educated her for. It was 
all for this-that when such a case should come up she should do what I 
prefer.'
'I'm not afraid that she'll not do it.'
'Well then, where's the hitch?'
'I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of Mr
Rosier. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.'
'I can't keep him. Keep him yourself.'
'Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.' Madame 
Merle had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing about her; 
it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit to interpose a 
good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the last words I have 
quoted; and before it had ended she saw Pansy come out of the adjoining 
room, followed by Edward Rosier. The girl advanced a few steps and then 
stopped and stood looking at Madame Merle and at her father.
'He has spoken to her,' Madame Merle went on to Osmond.
Her companion never turned his head. 'So much for your belief in his 
promises. He ought to be horse-whipped.'
'He intends to confess, poor little man!'
Osmond got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. 'It doesn't 
matter,' he murmured, turning away.
Pansy after a moment came up to Madame Merle with her little manner of 
unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was not more intimate; 
she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly smile.
'You're very late,' the young creature gently said.
'My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be.'
Madame Merle had not got up to be gracious to Pansy; she moved toward 
Edward Rosier. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it off 
his mind, 'I've spoken to her!' he whispered.
'I know it, Mr Rosier.'
'Did she tell you?'
'Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come 
and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.' She was severe, and in the 
manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of contempt 
which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.
He had no intention of speaking to Osmond; it was neither the time nor the 
place. But he instinctively wandered toward Isabel, who sat talking with an 
old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady was Italian, 
and Rosier took for granted she understood no English. 'You said just now 
you wouldn't help me,' he began to Mrs Osmond. 'Perhaps you'll feel 
differently when you know-when you know-!
Isabel met his hesitation. 'When I know what?'
'That she's all right.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Well, that we've come to an understanding.'
'She's all wrong,' said Isabel. 'It won't do.'
Poor Rosier gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush 
testified to his sense of injury. 'I've never been treated so,' he said. 
'What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually 
considered. I could have married twenty times.'
'It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once comfortably,' 
Isabel added, smiling kindly. 'You're not rich enough for Pansy.' 'She 
doesn't care a straw for one's money.'
'No, but her father does.'
'Ah yes, he has proved that!' cried the young man.
Isabel got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without 
ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending to 
look at Gilbert Osmond's collection of miniatures, which were neatly 
arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without seeing; 
his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was certain 
that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used to being 
thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such a fallacy had 
not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He searched again for 
Pansy, but she had disappeared, and his main desire was now to get out of 
the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to Isabel; it was not 
agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a rude thing to her-the 
only point that would now justify a low view of him.
'I referred to Mr Osmond as I shouldn't have done, a while ago,' he began. 
'But you must remember my situation.'
'I don't remember what you said,' she answered coldly.
'Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me.'
She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: 'It's not that I 
won't; I simply can't!' Her manner was almost passionate.
'If you could, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save as 
an angel.'
'The inducement's great,' said Isabel gravely-inscrutably, as he 
afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the eyes, 
a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow that he had 
known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked, and he took 
himself off.



Chapter 38

He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let him 
off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop there till 
something should have been decided. Mr Osmond had had higher expectations; 
it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his daughter a 
portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if one would, to 
ridicule. But she would advise Mr Rosier not to take that tone; if he would 
possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his felicity. Mr Osmond was 
not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be a miracle if he should 
gradually come round. Pansy would never defy her father, he might depend on 
that; so nothing was to be gained by precipitation. Mr Osmond needed to 
accustom his mind to an offer of a sort that he had not hitherto 
entertained, and this result must come of itself-it was useless to try to 
force it. Rosier remarked that his own situation would be in the meanwhile 
the most uncomfortable in the world, and 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 Mr Rosier to hear.
'He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy. Ah, he doesn't like it at 
all,' said Madame Merle.
'I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!
'If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the house, 
for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to me.'
'As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?'
'Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world, but 
don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I'll see that she 
understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take it 
quietly.'
Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was 
advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to Palazzo 
Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he went early 
the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the 
first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to be 
distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him.
'I'm glad that you can take a hint,' Pansy's father said, slightly closing 
his keen, conscious eyes.
'I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.'
'You took it? Where did you take it?'
It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment, 
asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. 'Madame Merle gave 
me, as I understood it, a message from you-to the effect that you declined 
to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes 
to you.' And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.
'I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to 
Madame Merle?'
'I asked her for an opinion-for nothing more. I did so because she had 
seemed to me to know you very well.'
'She doesn't know me so well as she thinks,' said Osmond.
'I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for hope.'
Osmond stared into the fire a moment. 'I set a great price on my daughter.'
'You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to marry 
her?'
'I wish to marry her very well,' Osmond went on with a dry impertinence 
which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.
'Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't marry a 
man who loves her more-or whom, I may venture to add, she loves more.'
'I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves' - and 
Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.
'I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.'
'Not to me,' Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping 
his eyes to his boot-toes.
'I have her promise, sir!' cried Rosier with the sharpness of exasperation.
As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted 
some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement 
had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: 'I think she has no 
recollection of having given it.'
They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had 
uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again to the 
room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a gentleman-a 
stranger-had just come in, unannounced, according to the Roman custom, and 
was about to present himself to his host. The latter smiled blandly, but 
somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face and a large, fair beard, 
and was evidently an Englishman.
'You apparently don't recognise me,' he said with a smile that expressed 
more than Osmond's.
'Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.'
Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as 
usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs Osmond in his 
path. He gave his hostess no greeting-he was too righteously indignant, but 
said to her crudely: 'Your husband's awfully cold-blooded.'
She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. 'You can't expect 
every one to be as hot as yourself.'
'I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his 
daughter?'
'I've no idea.'
'Don't you take any interest?' Rosier demanded with his sense that she too 
was irritating.
For a moment she answered nothing; then, 'No!' she said abruptly and with a 
quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.
'Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?'
'In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.'
Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by intervening 
groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely given to her 
occupation. 'What on earth has he done to her?' he asked again imploringly. 
'He declares to me she has given me up.'
'She has not given you up,' Isabel said in a low tone and without looking 
at him.
'Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think 
proper!'
He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that 
Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just 
entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and 
evident social experience, a little embarrassed. 'Isabel,' said her 
husband, 'I bring you an old friend.'
Mrs Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's, not 
perfectly confident. 'I'm very happy to see Lord Warburton,' she said. 
Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted, 
felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick 
impression that Mrs Osmond wouldn't notice what he did.
Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe 
him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a 
pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her, was 
plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes had 
still their fine original property of keeping recognition and attestation 
strictly sincere. He was 'heavier' than of yore and looked older; he stood 
there very solidly and sensibly.
'I suppose you didn't expect to see me,' he said; 'I've but just arrived. 
Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost no time in 
coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays.'
'You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,' Osmond remarked 
to his wife.
'It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly 
flattered,' Isabel said.
'Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,' Osmond 
went on.
'The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you four 
years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a long 
time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?' his lordship asked of 
his hostess. 'It was in the Capitol, in the first room.'
'I remember that myself,' said Osmond. 'I was there at the time.'
'Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome-so sorry that, 
somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never cared to 
come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,' her old friend 
went on to Isabel, 'and I assure you I've often thought of you. It must be 
a charming place to live in,' he added with a look, round him, at her 
established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his old 
ruefulness.
'We should have been glad to see you at any time,' Osmond observed with 
propriety.
'Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a 
month ago I really supposed my travels over.'
'I've heard of you from time to time,' said Isabel, who had already, with 
her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting 
him again meant for her.
'I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete 
blank.'
'Like the good reigns in history,' Osmond suggested. He appeared to think 
his duties as a host now terminated-he had performed them so 
conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely 
measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It was punctilious, 
it was explicit, it was everything but natural-a deficiency which Lord 
Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may be 
supposed to have perceived. 'I'll leave you and Mrs Osmond together,' he 
added. 'You have reminiscences into which I don't enter.'
'I'm afraid you lose a good deal!' Lord Warburton called after him, as he 
moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation of 
his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the deepest, 
consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious. 'I'm really 
very glad to see you.'
'It's very pleasant. You're very kind.'
'Do you know that you're changed-a little?'
She just hesitated. 'Yes-a good deal.'
'I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the 
better?'
'I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to you,' she bravely 
returned.
'Ah well, for me-it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't be 
something to show for it.' They sat down and she asked him about his 
sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He answered 
her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she saw-or 
believed she saw-that he would press with less of his whole weight than of 
yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without chilling it, given it a 
relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel felt her usual esteem for 
Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was certainly that of a contented 
man, one who would rather like people, or like her at least, to know him 
for such.
'There's something I must tell you without more delay,' he resumed.
'I've brought Ralph Touchett with me.'
'Brought him with you?' Isabel's surprise was great.
'He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.'
'I'll go to see him,' she immediately said.
'That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen much 
of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a-a little 
more formal. That's why I hesitated-like an awkward Briton.'
'I'm as fond of Ralph as ever,' Isabel answered. 'But why has he come to 
Rome?' The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.
'Because he's very far gone, Mrs Osmond.'
'Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined to 
give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England, indoors, 
in what he called an artificial climate.'
'Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him 
three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has been 
getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He smokes no 
more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was 
as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to 
start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it-neither did the doctors, nor any 
of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America, so there 
was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it would be the saving 
of him to spend the winter at Catania. He said he could take servants and 
furniture, could make himself comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't 
brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but 
he said he hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I 
thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as-
what do you call it in America? a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph's very 
moderate now. We left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on 
the way. He can't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he 
feels the cold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond 
human help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow-=I mean some 
sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my saying 
so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs Touchett to decide on 
going to America.'
Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. 'My aunt 
does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When the date 
comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Ralph had been 
dying.'
'I sometimes think he is dying,' Lord Warburton said.
Isabel sprang up. 'I'll go to him then now.'
He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his 
words. 'I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day, in the 
train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching Rome-he's very 
fond of Rome, you know-gave him strength. An hour ago, when I bade him good-
night, he told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to him in the 
morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was coming here; I didn't 
decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered he had told me you 
had an evening, and that it was this very Thursday. It occurred to me to 
come in and tell you he's here, and let you know you had perhaps better not 
wait for him to call. I think he said he hadn't written to you.' There was 
no need of Isabel's declaring that she would act upon Lord Warburton's 
information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged creature held 
back. 'Let alone that I wanted to see you myself,' her visitor gallantly 
added.
'I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild,' she said.
'I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.'
'He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.'
'You went to see him; you've been extremely kind.'
'Oh dear, I had nothing to do,' said Lord Warburton.
'We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one speaks 
of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name in the 
Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence. You're 
apparently as wild a radical as ever.'
'I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me. 
Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way from 
London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me the King of 
the Goths-says I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, every 
sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him yet.'
Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from asking 
them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived that after 
a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject-he had a conception of 
other possible topics. She was more and more able to say to herself that he 
had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was able to say it 
without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an image of urgency, 
of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned with, that his 
reappearance at first menaced her with a new trouble. But she was now 
reassured; she could see he only wished to live with her on good terms, 
that she was to understand he had forgiven her and was incapable of the bad 
taste of making pointed allusions. This was not a form of revenge, of 
course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to punish her by an exhibition 
of disillusionment; she did him the justice to believe it had simply 
occurred to him that she would now take a good-natured interest in knowing 
he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy, manly nature, in 
which sentimental wounds could never fester. British politics had cured 
him; she had known they would. She gave an envious thought to the happier 
lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of 
action. Lord Warburton of course spoke of the past, but he spoke of it 
without implications; he even went so far as to allude to their former 
meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he told her he had been immensely 
interested in hearing of her marriage and that it was a great pleasure for 
him to make Mr Osmond's acquaintance-since he could hardly be said to have 
made it on the other occasion. He had not written to her at the time of 
that passage in her history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The 
only thing he implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It 
was very much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a 
short pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like 
a person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of 
guesses
-'Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?'
Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her 
almost as the accent of comedy. 'Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell 
you?' 'Well, I don't know. I don't see why not.'
'I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy.'
'You've got an awfully good house.'
'Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit-it's my husband's.'
'You mean he has arranged it?'
'Yes, it was nothing when we came.'
'He must be very clever.'
'He has a genius for upholstery,' said Isabel.
'There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a taste 
of your own.'
'I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never propose 
anything.'
'Do you mean you accept what others propose?'
'Very willingly, for the most part.'
'That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.'
'It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small ways a 
certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you to some of 
these people.'
'Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady 
in the blue dress. She has a charming face.'
'The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter.'
'Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!
'You must make her acquaintance.'
'In a moment-with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.' He ceased to 
look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs 
Osmond. 'Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?' he 
presently went on. 'You seem to me, after all, very much the same.'
'And yet I find it a great change to be married,' said Isabel with mild 
gaiety.
'It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't 
gone in for that.'
'It rather surprises me.'
'You ought to understand it, Mrs Osmond. But I do want to marry,' he added 
more simply.
'It ought to be very easy,' Isabel said, rising-after which she reflected, 
with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the person to say 
this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the pang that he 
generously forbore to call her attention to her not having contributed then 
to the facility.
Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's tea-
table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she asked 
him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.
'He's an English lord,' said Rosier. 'I don't know more.'
'I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.'
'Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you.'
'Don't speak so loud-every one will hear,' said Pansy.
'They won't hear if you continue to look that way; as if your only thought 
in life was the wish the kettle would boil.'
'It has just been filled; the servants never know!' - she sighed with the 
weight of her responsibility.
'Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean 
what you said a week ago.'
'I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean 
what I say to you.'
'He told me you had forgotten me.'
'Ah no, I don't forget,' said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed 
smile.
'Then everything's just the very same?'
'Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.'
'What has he done to you?'
'He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he 
forbade me to marry you.'
'You needn't mind that.'
'Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa.'
'Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?'
She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment; 
then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. 'I love you just as 
much.'
'What good will that do me?'
'Ah,' said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, 'I don't know that.'
'You disappoint me,' groaned poor Rosier.
She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. 'Please don't 
talk any more.'
'Is this to be all my satisfaction?'
'Papa said I was not to talk with you.'
'Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!
'I wish you'd wait a little,' said the girl in a voice just distinct enough 
to betray a quaver.
'Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away.'
'I'll not give you up-oh no!' Pansy went on.
'He'll try and make you marry some one else.'
'I'll never do that.'
'What then are we to wait for?'
She hesitated again. 'I'll speak to Mrs Osmond and she'll help us.' It was 
in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.
'She won't help us much. She's afraid.'
'Afraid of what?'
'Of your father, I suppose.'
Pansy shook her little head. 'She's not afraid of any one. We must have 
patience.'
'Ah, that's an awful word,' Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted. 
Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his 
hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the 
carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about him and, 
as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey-it was still her little curtsey 
of the convent-to the English lord whom Mrs Osmond had introduced.



Chapter 39

It probably will not be surprising to the reflective reader that Ralph 
Touchett should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had 
done before that event - an event of which he took such a view as could 
hardly prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we 
know, and after this he had held his peace, Isabel not having invited him 
to resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That 
discussion had made a difference - the difference that he feared, rather 
than the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out 
her engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship. 
No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph's opinion of Gilbert 
Osmond; and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence, they managed 
to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a 
difference, as Ralph often said to himself - there was a difference. She 
had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him; that was all he had 
gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care; and 
as she was both very generous and very proud, these convictions represented 
a certain reality. But whether or not 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 a burden that would make her hate him. Such had been, 
during the year that followed his cousin's marriage, Ralph's rather dismal 
prevision of the future; and if his meditations appear morbid we must 
remember that 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 thoughts 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 best be preserved by 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, sent 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 took place somewhat later, and she affected a 
meeting with Isabel in the autumn, in Paris, when she indulged - perhaps a 
trifle too freely - her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the 
subject of it, protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare 
to Isabel that she had taken a step which erected a barrier between them. 
'It isn't in the least that you have married - it is that you have married 
him,' she 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 made in vain; for just at the moment when Osmond had declared to 
Isabel that he really must object to that newspaper - woman, and Isabel had 
answered that it seemed to her he took Henrietta too hard, the good Mr 
Bantling appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run 
down to Spain. Henrietta's letters from Spain proved to be the most 
picturesque she had yet published, and there was one in especial, dated 
from the Alhambra, and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally 
passed for her masterpiece. Isabel was secretly disappointed at her 
husband's not having been able to judge the poor girl more humorously. She 
even wondered whether his sense of humour 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 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 also pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter 
clause of the verdict Isabel protested with an ardour which 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 inquired; to which Isabel answered that she was 
afraid her washerwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much. 
Ralph saw nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that 
followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her 
residence in Rome he spent again at San Remo, where he was joined in the 
spring by his mother, who afterwards went with him to England, to see what 
they were doing at the bank - an operation she could not induce him to 
perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa, 
which he occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April of 
this second year he came 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 of the keenest. She had written to him from time to time, but her 
letters told him nothing that 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 suffficiently honourable way, but Mrs Touchett 
still remained of the opinion that her marriage was a shabby affair. It 
gave 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 about in these days; but Mrs Touchett 
augured no good of that; it only proved how she had been talked about 
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, without a symptom of irritation - Madame Merle now took a very 
high tone, and declared that this was an accusation from which she could 
not 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 that Isabel was not eager to marry, and that Osmond was 
not eager to please (his repeated visits were nothing; he was boring 
himself to death on his hill-top, and he came merely for amusement). Isabel 
had kept her sentiments to herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had 
effectually thrown dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the 
event - she was unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had 
played any part in it, double or single, was an imputation against which 
she proudly protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs Touchett's 
attitude, and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many 
charming seasons, that Madame Merle, after this, chose to pass many months 
in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs Touchett had done 
her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But Madame Merle 
suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite in her dignity. 
Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while he was engaged in 
this pursuit he 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 marriage, 
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. But now 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 upon it; this was not an expression, Ralph said - it 
was a representation. 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 
seemed to be leading a 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, recognised the hand of the master; 
for he knew that Isabel had no faculty for producing calculated 
impressions. She struck him as having a great love of movement, of gaiety, 
of late hours, of long drives, of fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, 
to be interested, even to be bored, to make acquaintances, to see people 
that 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 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, than before her marriage. Certainly she had 
fallen into exaggerations - she who used to care so much for the pure 
truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight in good-humoured 
argument, in intellectual play (she never looked so charming as when in the 
genial heat of discussion she received a crushing blow full in the face and 
brushed it away as a feather), she appeared now to think there was nothing 
worth people's either differing about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been 
curious, and now she was indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference 
her activity was greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than 
before, she had gained no great maturity of aspect; but there was a kind of 
amplitude and brilliancy in her personal arrangements which gave a touch of 
insolence to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had 
bitten her? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her 
intelligent head sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had 
become quite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed 
to represent something. 'What did Isabel represent?' Ralph asked himself; 
and he could answer only by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond. 
'Good heavens, what a function!' he exclaimed. He was lost in wonder at the 
mystery of things. He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at 
every turn. He saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, 
regulated, animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at 
last he had material to work with. He always had an eye to effect; and his 
effects were elaborately studied. They were produced by no vulgar means, 
but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior 
with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of 
exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every other, 
to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold originality - 
this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom Isabel had 
attributed a superior morality. 'He works with superior material,' Ralph 
said to himself; 'but it's rich abundance compared with his former 
resources.' Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never - to his own sense 
- been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the guise of 
caring only for intrinsic values, Osmond lived exclusively for the world. 
Far from being its master, as he pretended to be, he was its very humble 
servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success. 
He lived with his eye on it, from morning till night, and the world was so 
stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose -pose so 
deeply calculated that if one were not on the look-out one mistook it for 
impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of 
calculation. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, 
were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been a 
pose 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 made him feel great 
to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly 
to please himself was his marrying Isabel 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 are worth. It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting 
the facts to his theory - even the fact that during the month he spent in 
Rome at this period Gilbert Osmond appeared to regard him not in the least 
as an enemy. For Mr Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not 
that he had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at 
all. He was Isabel's cousin, and he was rather unpleasantly ill - it was on 
this basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper inquiries, 
asked about his health, about Mrs Touchett, about his opinion of winter 
climates, whether he was comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on the 
few oecasions 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, towards the end, an inward 
conviction that Osmond had made it uncomfortable for his wife that she 
should continue to receive her cousin. He was not jealous - he had not that 
excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. But he made Isabel pay for her 
old-time kindness, of which so much was still left; and as Ralph had no 
idea of her paying too much, when his suspicion had become sharp, he took 
himself off. In doing so he deprived Isabel of a very interesting 
occupation: she had been constantly wondering what fine principle kept him 
alive. She decided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation 
was better than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous 
stroller. He sat all day in a chair - almost any chair would do, 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 his cousin; he was not yet 
satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose 
that. He wished to see what she would make of her husband - or what he 
would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and he was 
determined to sit out the performance. His determination held good; it kept 
him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return to Rome 
with Lord Warburton. It gave him indeed such an air of intending to live 
indefinitely that Mrs Touchett, though more accessible to confusions of 
thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative - and unremunerated - 
son of hers than she had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not 
scrupled to embark for a distant land. If Ralph had been kept alive by 
suspense, it was with a good deal of the same emotion - the excitement of 
wondering in what state she should find him - that Isabel ascended to his 
apartment the day after Lord Warburton had notified her of his arrival in 
Rome. 
She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Gilbert 
Osmond called on him punctually, and on Isabel sending a carriage for him 
Ralph came more than once to the Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed, at 
the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought after 
all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together after a 
day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had left the 
table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar, which he 
instantly removed from his lips. 
'Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?' 
'Well, I guess I won't go anywhere,' said Ralph, from the sofa, in a tone 
of jocosity. 
'Do you mean that you will return to England?' 
'Oh dear no; I will stay in Rome.' 
'Rome won't do for you; it's not warm enough.' 
'It will have to do; I will make it do. See how well I have been.' 
Lord Warburton looked at him awhile, puffing his cigar, as if he were 
trying to see it. 
'You have been better than you were on the journey, certainly. I wonder how 
you lived through that. But I don't understand your condition. I recommend 
you to try Sicily.' 
'I can't try,' said poor Ralph; 'I can't move further. I can't face that 
journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don't want to die on the 
Sicilian plains - to be snatched away, like Proserpine in the same 
locality, to the Plutonian shades.' 
'What the deuce then did you come for?' his lordship inquired. 
'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 got any cousins in Sicily.' 
'Your cousin is certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?' 
'I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs Osmond will 
bury me. But I shall not die here.' 
'I hope not.' Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. 'Well, I must 
say,' he resumed, 'for myself I am very glad you don't go to Sicily. I had 
a horror of that journey.' 
'Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you in 
my train.' 
'I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone.' 
'My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,' Ralph 
cried. 
'I should have gone with you and seen you settled,' said Lord Warburton. 
'You are a very good fellow. You are very kind.' 
'Then I should have come back here.' 
'And then you would have gone to England.' 
'No, no; I should have stayed.' 
'Well,' said Ralph, 'if that's what we are both up to, I don't see where 
Sicily comes in!' 
His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking up: 
'I say, tell me this,' he broke out; 'did you really mean to go to Sicily 
when we started?' 
'Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you come 
with me quite - platonically?' 
'I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.' 
'I suspect we have each been playing our little game.' 
'Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my wanting to be here 
awhile.' 
'Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs.' 
'I have seen him three times; he is very amusing.' 
'I think you have forgotten what you came for,' said Ralph. 
'Perhaps I have,' his companion answered, rather gravely. 
These two gentlemen were children 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 that they had once discussed, but it had lost its 
recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival in Rome, 
where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half-diffident, 
half-confident silence. 
'I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same,' Lord Warburton 
went on, abruptly, after an interval. 
'The doctor's consent will spoil it; I never have it when I can help it!' 
'What does Mrs Osmond think?' 
'I have not told her. She will probably say that Rome is too cold, and even 
offer to go with me to Catania. She is capable of that.' 
'In your place I should like it.' 
'Her husband won't like it.' 
'Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you are not bound to mind 
it. It's his affair.' 
'I don't want to make any more trouble between them,' said Ralph. 
'Is there so much already?' 
'There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the 
explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin.' 
'Then of course he would make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop 
here?' 
'That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and 
then I thought it my duty to go away. Now I think it's my duty to stop and 
defend her.' 
'My dear Touchett, your defensive powers-' Lord Warburton began, with a 
smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him. 'Your 
duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,' he said. 
Ralph for a short time answered nothing. 
'It is true that my defensive powers are small,' he remarked at last; 'but 
as my aggressive ones are still smaller, Osmond may, after all, not think 
me worth his gunpowder. At any rate,' he added, 'there are things I am 
curious to see.' 
'You are sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?' 
'I am not much interested in my health, and I am deeply interested in Mrs 
Osmond.'
 'So am I. But not as I once was,' Lord Warburton added quickly. This was 
one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make. 
'Does she strike you as very happy?' Ralph inquired, emboldened by this 
confidence. 
'Well, I don't know; I have hardly thought. She told me the other night 
that she was happy.' 
'Ah, she told you, of course,' Ralph exclaimed, smiling. 
'I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she 
might have complained to.' 
'Complain? She will never complain. She has done it, and she knows it. She 
will complain to you least of all. She is very careful.' 
'She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again.' 
'I am delighted to hear it; there can be no doubt at least of your duty.' 
'Ah no,' said Lord Warburton, gravely; 'none!' 
'Permit me to ask,' Ralph went on, 'whether it is to bring out the fact 
that you don't mean to make love to her that you are so very civil to the 
little girl?' 
Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire, 
blushing a little. 
'Does that strike you as very ridiculous?' 
'Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.' 
'I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of that 
age has pleased me more.' 
'She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.' 
'Of course there's the difference in our ages - more than twenty years.' 
'My dear Warburton,' said Ralph, 'are you serious?' 
'Perfectly serious - as far as I've got.' 
'I am very glad. And, heaven help us,' cried Ralph, 'how tickled Gilbert 
Osmond will be!' 
His companion frowned. 
'I say, don't spoil it. I shan't marry his daughter to please him.' 
'He will have the perversity to be pleased all the same.' 
'He's not so fond of me as that,' said his lordship. 
'As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is that people 
needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you. Now, with 
me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that they loved me.' 
Lord Warburton seemed scarcely to be in the mood for doing justice to 
general axioms; he was thinking of a special case. 
'Do you think she'll be pleased?' 
'The girl herself? Delighted, surely.' 
'No, no; I mean Mrs Osmond.' 
Ralph looked at him a moment. 
'My dear fellow, what has she to do with it?' 
'Whatever she chooses. She is very fond of the girl.' 
'Very true - very true.' And Ralph slowly got up. 'It's an interesting 
question - how far her fondness for the girl will carry her.' He stood 
there a moment with his hands in his pockets, with a rather sombre eye. 'I 
hope, you know, that you are very - very sure - The deuce!' he broke off, 
'I don't know how to say it.' 
'Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.' 
'Well, it's awkward. I hope you are sure that among Miss Osmond's merits 
her being a - so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?' 
'Good heavens, Touchett!' cried Lord Warburton, angrily, 'for what do you 
take me?'


Chapter 40

Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage, this lady 
having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had spent 
six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a winter in 
Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and gave countenance 
to the idea that for the future she should be a less inveterate Roman than 
in the past. As she had been inveterate in the past only in the sense of 
constantly having an apartment in one of the sunniest niches of the Pincian 
- an apartment which often stood empty-this suggested a prospect of almost 
constant absence; a danger which Isabel at one period had been much 
inclined to deplore. Familiarity had modified in some degree her first 
impression of Madame Merle, but it had not essentially altered it; there 
was still much wonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all 
points; it was a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the 
social battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were 
polished steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more 
and more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with 
disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own 
ideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Isabel, who knew also 
that under an appearance of extreme self-control her highly-cultivated 
friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was mistress of her life; 
there was something gallant in the way she kept going. It was as if she had 
learned the secret of it-as if the art of life were some clever trick she 
had guessed. Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with 
revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and 
she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending 
to live for. Her old habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love 
with suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. 
As a younger person she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation 
to the other: there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Merle 
had suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she 
lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Isabel would 
have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant friend had 
been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had become aware more 
than before of the advantage of being like that-of having made one's self a 
firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.
But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed 
acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again a 
continuous stay in Rome. Isabel now saw more of her than she had done since 
her marriage; but by this time Isabel's needs and inclinations had 
considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Merle that she would 
have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this lady's 
clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself, and if 
life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself beaten. 
Madame Merle was doubtless of great use to herself and an ornament to any 
circle; but was she-would she be-of use to others in periods of refined 
embarrassment? The best way to profit by her friend-this indeed Isabel had 
always thought-was to imitate her, to be as firm and bright as she. She 
recognised no embarrassments, and Isabel, considering this fact, determined 
for the fiftieth time to brush aside her own. It seemed to her too, on the 
renewal of an intercourse which had virtually been interrupted, that her 
old ally was different, was almost detached-pushing to the extreme a 
certain rather artificial fear of being indiscreet. Ralph Touchett, we 
know, had been of the opinion that she was prone to exaggeration, to 
forcing the note-was apt, in the vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Isabel had 
never admitted this charge-had never indeed quite understood it; Madame 
Merle's conduct, to her perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, 
was always 'quiet.' But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the 
inner life of the Osmond family it at last occurred to our young woman that 
she overdid a little. That of course was not the best taste; that was 
rather violent. She remembered too much that Isabel was married; that she 
had now other interests; that though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert 
Osmond and his little Pansy very well, better almost than any one, she was 
not after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of 
their affairs till she was asked, even pressed when her opinion was wanted; 
she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid as we 
know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Isabel.
'I must be on my guard,' she said; 'I might so easily, without suspecting 
it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my intention 
should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew your husband 
long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you were a silly 
woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I know that 
perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I'm determined not to get into 
trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made before one knows 
it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had ten years 
to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't likely I shall begin to-
day, when I'm so much less attractive than I was. But if I were to annoy 
you by seeming to take a place that doesn't belong to me, you wouldn't make 
that reflection; you'd simply say I was forgetting certain differences. I'm 
determined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend isn't always 
thinking of that; one doesn't suspect one's friends of injustice. I don't 
suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect human nature. Don't think 
I make myself uncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think I 
sufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, 
however, that if you were to be jealous-that's the form it would take-I 
should be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be 
your husband's.'
Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs Touchett's theory that Madame 
Merle had made Gilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had at first 
received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond's marriage, but 
she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was the work of-Isabel 
scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery 
of things. It was true her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame 
Merle's activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange 
event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been 
great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make a crime of Madame Merle's having 
been the producing cause of the most important friendship she had ever 
formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage, after her little 
discussion with her aunt and at a time when she was still capable of that 
large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to 
her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state she 
could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she 
had been perfectly straightforward; she had never concealed her high 
opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her 
husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to 
finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary.
'Don't you like Madame Merle?' Isabel had once said to him. 'She thinks a 
great deal of you.'
'I'll tell you once for all,' Osmond had answered. 'I liked her once better 
than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of it. She's so 
almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; it's a sort of rest. 
Don't talk of her too much; it seems to bring her back. She'll come back in 
plenty of time.'
Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late-too late, I 
mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime, if, 
as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel's feelings were also not 
quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as acute as of old, 
but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may 
miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in 
June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a hand in Gilbert Osmond's 
marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration; it might have 
been written, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As 
time went on there was less and less, and Isabel once said to herself that 
perhaps without her these things would not have been. That reflection 
indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an immediate horror at having made 
it. 'Whatever happens to me let me not be unjust,' she said; 'Let me bear 
my burdens myself and not shift them upon others!' This disposition was 
tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for her present conduct which 
Madame Merle saw fit to make and of which I have given a sketch; for there 
was something irritating-there was almost an air of mockery-in her neat 
discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there was 
nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. 
She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had just made the 
statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking 
of! She was herself moreover so unable to explain. jealous of her-jealous 
of her with Gilbert? The idea just then suggested no near reality.
She almost wished jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a 
manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner one of the symptoms of 
happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she might have 
been pretending to know Isabel better than Isabel knew herself. This young 
woman had always been fertile in resolutions-many of them of an elevated 
character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy of her 
heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family 
likeness; they might have been summed up in the determination that if she 
was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged 
spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet 
been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice-
not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its 
disappointment would be a petty revenge-especially as the pleasure to be 
derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of 
bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend 
that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever a girl was a free agent 
she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; but the sole 
source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no 
snare; she had looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such 
a mistake, there was only one way to repair it-just immensely (oh, with the 
highest grandeur! to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it 
was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vow 
of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but 
Madame Merle had been right, for all that, in taking her precautions.
One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel came 
back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general 
determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for Pansy-it 
was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak. Pansy 
was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the 
rightness of the young creature's attachment or the sweetness of her own 
clearness about it. It was like a soft presence-like a small hand in her 
own; on Pansy's part it was more than an affection-it was a kind of ardent 
coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl's dependence was more 
than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason when motives threatened 
to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take our duty where we 
find it, and that we must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy 
was a direct admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not 
eminent perhaps, but unmistakable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could 
hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child was 
able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to 
remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she now 
perceived that Pansy's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of vision. 
She had been unable to believe any one could care so much-so 
extraordinarily much-to please. But since then she had seen this delicate 
faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It was the 
whole creature-it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to interfere 
with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests she took no 
credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs Osmond was rarely 
seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her company; it had the effect 
of one's carrying a nosegay composed all of the same flower. And then not 
to neglect Pansy, not under any provocation to neglect her-this she had 
made an article of religion. The young girl had every appearance of being 
happier in Isabel's society than in that of any one save her father, whom 
she admired with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was 
an exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously 
mild. Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the 
means of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her 
was negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble-a conviction which 
certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She was 
therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was 
careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Isabel's 
propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought 
otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, and though 
she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale when it came to 
her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward it wistfully-an 
attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the 
world. When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go 
to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs Osmond 
should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Isabel appreciated the 
sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a 
passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a 
conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked 
even the tiresome parts-the heat of ball-rooms, the dullness of dinners, 
the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the 
day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, 
appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had 
been taken to drive for the first time.
On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the 
city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await them by 
the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the Campagna, 
which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This 
was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a 
swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming to 
Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she 
liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter 
undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their return to 
Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit of the 
Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a 
sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo Roccanera 
she went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel passed into 
the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the second in order 
from the large ante-chamber which was entered from the staircase and in 
which even Gilbert Osmond's rich devices had not been able to correct a 
look of rather grand nudity. just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room 
she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being that she had received 
an impression. The impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; 
but she felt it as something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave 
her time to take in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was 
there in her bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute 
they were unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, 
certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that 
their colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar 
silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would startle 
them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; 
Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head was 
erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first 
was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in 
this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had arrived at a 
desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, 
with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without 
uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in 
fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden 
flicker of light. Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, 
struck her as something detected. But it was all over by the time she had 
fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and had welcomed her without 
moving; her husband, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He 
presently murmured something about wanting a walk and, after having asked 
their visitor to excuse him, left the room.
'I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I 
waited for you,' Madame Merle said.
'Didn't he ask you to sit down?' Isabel asked with a smile.
Madame Merle looked about her. 'Ah, it's very true; I was going away.'
'You must stay now.'
'Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind.'
'I've told you that before,' Isabel said-'that it takes something 
extraordinary to bring you to this house.'
'And you know what I've told you; that whether I come or whether I stay 
away, I've always the same motive-the affection I bear you.'
'Yes, you've told me that.'
'You look just now as if you didn't believe it,' said Madame Merle.
'Ah,' Isabel answered, 'the profundity of your motives, that's the last 
thing I doubt!'
'You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.'
Isabel shook her head gravely. 'I know you've always been kind to me.'
'As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has to 
let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however, that I've come to-
day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of my own-
to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about it.'
'I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles.'
'Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I 
suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It's about 
poor Mr Rosier.'
'Ah,' said Isabel reflectively, 'it's his trouble then, not yours.'
'He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a 
week, to talk about Pansy.'
'Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.'
Madame Merle hesitated. 'I gathered from your husband that perhaps you 
didn't.'
'How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.'
'It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it.'
'It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault.'
'Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think.
To-day he doesn't.'
'Haven't you been telling him?' Isabel asked.
Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. 'Do you know you're a little 
dry?'
'Yes; I can't help it. Mr Rosier has also talked to me.'
'In that there's some reason. You're so near the child.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me 
dry, I wonder what he thinks.'
'I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.'
'I can do nothing.'
'You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious connection 
he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to me from the 
first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps coming back, to 
spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.'
'He's very much in love,' said Isabel.
'Very much-for him.'
'Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.'
Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. 'Don't you think she's attractive?'
'The dearest little person possible-but very limited.'
'She ought to be all the easier for Mr Rosier to love. Mr Rosier's not 
unlimited.'
'No,' said Isabel, 'he has about the extent of one's pocket-handkerchief-
the small ones with lace borders.' Her humour had lately turned a good deal 
to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent 
an object as Pansy's suitor. 'He's very kind, very honest,' she presently 
added; 'and he's not such a fool as he seems.'
'He assures me that she delights in him,' said Madame Merle.
'I don't know; I've not asked her.'
'You've never sounded her a little?'
'It's not my place; it's her father's.'
'Ah, you're too literal!' said Madame Merle.
'I must judge for myself.'
Madame Merle gave her smile again. 'It isn't easy to help you.'
'To help me?' said Isabel very seriously. 'What do you mean?'
'It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful? I 
notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the 
love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr Edward Rosier. Je n'y peux rien, moi! I 
can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially,' added Madame Merle, 'as I don't 
think him a paragon of husbands.'
Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, 'You don't wash your 
hands then!' she said. After which again she added in another tone: 'You 
can't-you're too much interested.'
Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the 
intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before. Only 
this time the latter saw nothing. 'Ask him the next time, and you'll see.'
'I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him 
know that he's not welcome.'
'Ah yes,' said Madame Merle, 'I forgot that-though it's the burden of his 
lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,' she went on, 
'Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as he thinks.' She had got up as if to 
close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and had 
evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the point she had 
in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not opening the way.
'That must have pleased him, if you've told him,' she answered, smiling.
'Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've 
preached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only 
hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head 
to be jealous.'
'Jealous?
'Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.'
Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose. 
'Ah!' she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Merle 
observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the mantel-
glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.
'Poor Mr Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord Warburton's 
falling in love with Pansy,' Madame Merle went on.
Isabel was silent a little; she turned away from the glass.
'It's true-there's nothing impossible,' she returned at last, gravely and 
more gently.
'So I've had to admit to Mr Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.'
'That I don't know.'
'Ask him and you'll see.'
'I shall not ask him,' said Isabel.
'Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,' Madame Merle 
added, 'you've had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton's 
behaviour than I.'
'I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter 
very much.'
Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. 'Likes her, you mean-Mr 
Rosier means?'
'I don't know how Mr Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know that 
he's charmed with Pansy.'
'And you've never told Osmond?' This observation was immediate, 
precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle's lips.
Isabel's eyes rested on her. 'I suppose he'll know in time; Lord Warburton 
has a tongue and knows how to express himself.'
Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly 
than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave 
the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been 
thinking it over a little: 'That would be better than marrying poor Mr 
Rosier.'
'Much better, I think.'
'It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really 
very kind of him.'
'Very kind of him?'
'To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.'
'I don't see that.'
'It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond-'
'After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever known!' 
Isabel exclaimed.
Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. 'Ah, a moment 
ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.'
'I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton.'
'So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy deserves, 
all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr Rosier I won't admit 
that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.'
'Mr Rosier's a nuisance!' Isabel cried abruptly.
'I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected to 
feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be 
closed to him.' And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared to 
depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an 
inconsequent request from Isabel.
'All the same, you know, be kind to him.'
She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. 'I 
don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan't be kind to him, 
for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord 
Warburton.'
'You had better wait till he asks her.'
'If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially,' said Madame Merle in a 
moment, 'if you make him.'
'If I make him?'
'It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him.'
Isabel frowned a little. 'Where did you learn that?'
'Mrs Touchett told me. Not you-never!' said Madame Merle, smiling.
'I certainly never told you anything of the sort.'
'You might have done far as opportunity went-when we were by way of being 
confidential with each other. But you really told me very little; I've 
often thought so since.'
Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But 
she didn't admit it now-perhaps because she wished not to appear to exult 
in it. 'You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,' she simply 
returned.
'She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord Warburton, 
because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of course I 
think you've done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn't marry 
Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry 
some one else.'
Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the 
bright expressiveness of Madame Merle's. But in a moment she said, 
reasonably and gently enough: 'I should be very glad indeed if, as regards 
Pansy, it could be arranged.' Upon which her companion, who seemed to 
regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might 
have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.



Chapter 41

Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very 
late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent the 
evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had been sitting 
since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his books and 
which he called his study. At ten o'clock Lord Warburton had come in, as he 
always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at home; he was 
going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Isabel, after asking him 
for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on purpose; she wished him to 
talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to read; she even went after a 
little to the piano; she asked herself if she mightn't leave the room. She 
had come little by little to think well of the idea of Pansy's becoming the 
wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at first it had not 
presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that 
afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation of inflammable 
material. When Isabel was unhappy she always looked about her-partly from 
impulse and partly by theory-for some form of positive exertion. She could 
never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease-of 
suffering as opposed to doing. To 'do' - it hardly mattered what-would 
therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she 
wished to convince herself that she had done everything possible to content 
her husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife's 
limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married to 
an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was so 
sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her duty 
to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good wife. She 
wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely, and with 
proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking had other 
recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired occupation. It would 
even amuse her, and if she could really amuse herself she perhaps might be 
saved. Lastly, it would be a service to Lord Warburton, who evidently 
pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little 'weird' he 
should-being what he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. 
Pansy might captivate any one-any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel 
would have thought her too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial 
for that. There was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not 
what he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were 
looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them 
only when they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was 
more unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for 
her it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different; but 
he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had 
completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair had failed, 
he should think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, 
as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her 
feel almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find 
in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, 
however, that Edward Rosier had crossed their path!
At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path lost 
something of its brightness. Isabel was unfortunately as sure that Pansy 
thought Mr Rosier the nicest of all the young men sure as if she had held 
an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome she should be so 
sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing herself; almost as 
tiresome as that poor Mr Rosier should have taken it into his own head. He 
was certainly very inferior to Lord Warburton. It was not the difference in 
fortune so much as the difference in the men; the young American was really 
so light a weight. He was much more of the type of the useless fine 
gentleman than the English nobleman. It was true that there was no 
particular reason why Pansy should marry a statesman; still, if a statesman 
admired her, that was his affair, and she would make a perfect little pearl 
of a peeress.
It may seem to the reader that Mrs Osmond had grown of a sudden strangely 
cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this difficulty could 
probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied in poor Rosier could 
not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there were always means of 
levelling secondary obstacles. Isabel was perfectly aware that she had not 
taken the measure of Pansy's tenacity, which might prove to be 
inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her as rather letting go, 
under suggestion, than as clutching under deprecation-since she had 
certainly the faculty of assent developed in a very much higher degree than 
that of protest. She would cling, yes, she would cling; but it really 
mattered to her very little what she clung to. Lord Warburton would do as 
well as Mr Rosier-especially as she seemed quite to like him; she had 
expressed this sentiment to Isabel without a single reservation; she had 
said she thought his conversation most interesting-he had told her all 
about India. His manner to Pansy had been of the rightest and easiest-
Isabel noticed that for herself, as she also observed that he talked to her 
not in the least in a patronising way, reminding himself of her youth and 
simplicity, but quite as if she understood his subjects with that 
sufficiency with which she followed those of the fashionable operas. This 
went far enough for attention to the music and the baritone. He was careful 
only to be kind-he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young 
chit at Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered 
how she herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been 
as simple as Pansy the impression would have been deeper still. She had not 
been simple when she refused him; that operation had been as complicated 
as, later, her acceptance of Osmond had been. Pansy, however, in spite of 
her simplicity, really did understand, and was glad that Lord Warburton 
should talk to her, not about her partners and bouquets, but about the 
state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the 
pellagra, his impressions of Roman society. She looked at him, as she drew 
her needle through her tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she 
lowered them she gave little quiet oblique glances at his person, his 
hands, his feet, his clothes, as if she were considering him. Even his 
person, Isabel might have reminded her, was better than Mr Rosier's. But 
Isabel contented herself at such moments with wondering where this 
gentleman was; he came no more at all to Palazzo Roccanera. It was 
surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken of her-the idea of assisting 
her husband to be pleased.
It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch 
upon. On the evening I speak of, while Lord Warburton sat there, she had 
been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and 
leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this 
light that Gilbert Osmond would have regarded it, and Isabel was trying as 
much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded after a fashion, 
but she fell short of the point I mention. After all she couldn't rise to 
it; something held her and made this impossible. It was not exactly that it 
would be base or insidious; for women as a general thing practise such 
manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience, and Isabel was instinctively 
much more true than false to the common genius of her sex. There was a 
vague doubt that interposed-a sense that she was not quite sure. So she 
remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Lord Warburton went off to 
his party, of which he promised to give Pansy a full account on the morrow. 
After he had gone she wondered if she had prevented something which would 
have happened if she had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and 
then she pronounced-always mentally-that when their distinguished visitor 
should wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know it. 
Pansy said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Isabel 
studiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after he 
should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to this than 
might seem to accord with the description he had given Isabel of his 
feelings. Pansy went to bed, and Isabel had to admit that she could not now 
guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her transparent little 
companion was for the moment not to be seen through.
She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an hour, 
her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and then sat down; 
he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had transferred her eyes 
from the flickering flame in the chimney to Osmond's face, and she watched 
him while he kept his silence. Covert observation had become a habit with 
her; an instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say that it was 
allied to that of self-defence, had made it habitual. She wished as much as 
possible to know his thoughts, to know what he would say, beforehand, so 
that she might prepare her answer. Preparing answers had not been her 
strong point of old; she had rarely in this respect got further than 
thinking afterwards of clever things she might have said. But she had 
learned caution-learned it in a measure from her husband's very 
countenance. It was the same face she had looked into with eyes equally 
earnest perhaps, but less penetrating, on the terrace of a Florentine 
villa; except that Osmond had grown slightly stouter since his marriage. He 
still, however, might strike one as very distinguished.
'Has Lord Warburton been here?' he presently asked.
'Yes, he stayed half an hour.'
'Did he see Pansy?'
'Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.'
'Did he talk with her much?'
'He talked almost only to her.'
'It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?'
'I don't call it anything,' said Isabel; 'I've waited for you to give it a 
name.'
'That's a consideration you don't always show,' Osmond answered after a 
moment.
'I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've so often 
failed of that.'
Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. 'Are you trying to quarrel 
with me?'
'No, I'm trying to live at peace.'
'Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself.'
'What do you call it when you try to make me angry?' Isabel asked.
'I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing in the 
world. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now.'
Isabel smiled. 'It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be angry 
again.'
'That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good.'
'No-it's not good.' She pushed away the book she had been reading and took 
up the band of tapestry Pansy had left on the table.
'That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of my 
daughter's,' Osmond said, designating Pansy in the manner that was most 
frequent with him. 'I was afraid I should encounter opposition-that you too 
would have views on the subject. I've sent little Rosier about his 
business.'
'You were afraid I'd plead for Mr Rosier? Haven't you noticed that I've 
never spoken to you of him?'
'I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these days. 
I know he was an old friend of yours.'
'Yes; he's an old friend of mine.' Isabel cared little more for him than 
for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an 
old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate 
such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified her 
loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in themselves 
insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for 
memories which had no other merit than that they belonged to her unmarried 
life. 'But as regards Pansy,' she added in a moment, 'I've given him no 
encouragement.'
'That's fortunate,' Osmond observed.
'Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.'
'There's no use talking of him,' Osmond said. 'As I tell you, I've turned 
him out.'
'Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even more of 
one. Mr Rosier still has hope.'
'He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit perfectly 
quiet to become Lady Warburton.'
'Should you like that?' Isabel asked with a simplicity which was not so 
affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for Osmond 
had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her. The 
intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady Warburton 
had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But that was for 
herself; she would recognise nothing until Osmond should have put it into 
words; she would not take for granted with him that he thought Lord 
Warburton a prize worth an amount of effort that was unusual among the 
Osmonds. It was Gilbert's constant intimation that for him nothing in life 
was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal with the most 
distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter had only to look 
about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore a lapse from 
consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Lord Warburton and that 
if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might not be found; with 
which moreover it was another of his customary implications that he was 
never inconsistent. He would have liked his wife to glide over the point. 
But strangely enough, now that she was face to face with him and although 
an hour before she had almost invented a scheme for pleasing him, Isabel 
was not accommodating, would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect 
on his mind of her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never 
mind; he was terribly capable of humiliating her-all the more so that he 
was also capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing 
sometimes an almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Isabel 
perhaps took a small opportunity because she would not have availed herself 
of a great one.
Osmond at present acquitted himself very honourably. 'I should like it 
extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Lord Warburton has 
another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for 
him to come into the family. It's very odd Pansy's admirers should all be 
your old friends.'
'It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they see 
Pansy. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in love with her.'
'So I think. But you're not bound to do so.'
'If she should marry Lord Warburton I should be very glad,' Isabel went on 
frankly. 'He's an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only to sit 
perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit perfectly still. If she loses Mr 
Rosier she may jump up!'
Osmond appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire.
'Pansy would like to be a great lady,' he remarked in a moment with a 
certain tenderness of tone. 'She wishes above all to please,' he added.
'To please Mr Rosier, perhaps.'
'No, to please me.'
'Me too a little, I think,' said Isabel.
'Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like.'
'If you're sure of that, it's very well,' she went on.
'Meantime,' said Osmond, 'I should like our distinguished visitor to 
speak.'
'He has spoken-to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to him to 
believe she could care for him.'
Osmond turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, 'Why 
didn't you tell me that?' he asked sharply.
'There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first 
chance that has offered.'
'Did you speak to him of Rosier?'
'Oh yes, a little.'
'That was hardly necessary.'
'I thought it best he should know, so that, so that-' And Isabel paused.
'So that what?'
'So that he might act accordingly.'
'So that he might back out, do you mean?'
'No, so that he might advance while there's yet time.'
'That's not the effect it seems to have had.'
'You should have patience,' said Isabel. 'You know Englishmen are shy.'
'This one's not. He was not when he made love to you.'
She had been afraid Osmond would speak of that; it was disagreeable to her. 
'I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,' she returned.
He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the pages 
while she sat silent and occupied herself with Pansy's tapestry. 'You must 
have a great deal of influence with him,' Osmond went on at last. 'The 
moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.'
This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of his 
saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said to 
herself. 'Why should I have influence?' she asked. 'What have I ever done 
to put him under an obligation to me?'
'You refused to marry him,' said Osmond with his eyes on his book.
'I must not presume too much on that,' she replied.
He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire with 
his hands behind him. 'Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I shall 
leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think that over 
and remember how much I count on you.' He waited a little, to give her time 
to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of the 
room.



Chapter 42

She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before her 
and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them that 
suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust herself 
to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and closed her 
eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still further, she sat in 
the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation. A servant came in to 
attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh candles and then go to 
bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had said; and she did so 
indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion from another that she had 
a definite influence on Lord Warburton-this had given her the start that 
accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it true that there was something 
still between them that might be a handle to make him declare himself to 
Pansy-a susceptibility, on his part, to approval, a desire to do what would 
please her? Isabel had hitherto not asked herself the question, because she 
had not been forced; but now that it was directly presented to her she saw 
the answer, and the answer frightened her. Yes, there was something-
something on Lord Warburton's part. When he had first come to Rome she 
believed the link that united them to be completely snapped; but little by 
little she had been reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was 
as thin as a hair, but there were moments when she seemed to hear it 
vibrate. For herself nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she 
always thought; it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to 
her in fact a better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that 
she might be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the 
memory of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed? 
Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But what 
were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they mingled 
with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was he in love 
with Gilbert Osmond's wife, and if so what comfort did he expect to derive 
from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in love with her 
stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother he was not in love 
with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed in order to 
make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would do so for her sake and 
not for the small creature's own-was this the service her husband had asked 
of her? This at any rate was the duty with which she found herself 
confronted-from the moment she admitted to herself that her old friend had 
still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was not an agreeable 
task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She asked herself with dismay whether 
Lord Warburton were pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to 
cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of 
this refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to 
believe him in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a 
delusion this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel 
wandered among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her 
way; some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. 
Then she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that 
her imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband's did him 
even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she was 
no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till the 
contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical 
intimation of Osmond's.
Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace, for 
her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of 
thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set them 
into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange impression 
she had received in the afternoon of her husband's being in more direct 
communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That impression came 
back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it had never come 
before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond half an hour ago was 
a striking example of his faculty for making everything wither that he 
touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was very well to 
undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the 
knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It was 
as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a blight and his 
favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust 
she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the clearest result of 
their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they 
looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a declaration of 
the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition, of the like of which 
she had never dreamed-an opposition in which the vital principle of the one 
was a thing of contempt to the other. It was not her fault-she had 
practised no deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken 
all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly 
found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley 
with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of 
happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one 
could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and 
choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of 
restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier and 
freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the feeling 
of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband-this was what darkened 
the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not so easily 
explained, and so composite in its character that much time and still more 
suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual perfection. Suffering, 
with Isabel, was an active condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a 
despair; it was a passion of thought, of speculation, of response to every 
pressure. She flattered herself that she had kept her failing faith to 
herself, however-that no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and 
there were times when she thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually-it 
was not till the first year of their life together, so admirably intimate 
at first, had closed that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had 
begun to gather; it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had 
put the lights out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and 
she could still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and 
again it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect 
that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from her 
own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be just and 
temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were a kind of 
creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They were not his 
misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing-that is but of one 
thing, which was not a crime. She knew of no wrong he had done; he was not 
violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated her. That was all 
she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was 
not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had 
discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had believed 
she would prove to be. He had thought at first he could change her, and she 
had done her best to be what he would like. But she was, after all, herself-
she couldn't help that; and now there was no use pretending, wearing a mask 
or a dress, for he knew her and had made up his mind. She was not afraid of 
him; she had no apprehension he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore 
her was not of that sort. He would if possible never give her a pretext, 
never put himself in the wrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed 
eyes, saw that he would have the better of her there. She would give him 
many pretexts, she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times 
when she almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention 
she understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had 
effaced herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, 
pretending there was less of her than there really was. It was because she 
had been under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken 
pains to put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, 
during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only 
half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly 
masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now-she saw the 
whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free 
field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.
Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it was 
there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond 
delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love to 
her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he had 
succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never occurred 
to her now to deny him that. He admired her-he had told her why: because 
she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might very well have 
been true; for during those months she had imagined a world of things that 
had no substance. She had had a more wondrous vision of him, fed through 
charmed senses and oh such a stirred fancy!-she had not read him right. A 
certain combination of features had touched her, and in them she had seen 
the most striking of figures. That he was poor and lonely and yet that 
somehow he was noble-that was what had interested her and seemed to give 
her opportunity. There had been an indefinable beauty about him-in his 
situation, in his mind, in his face. She had felt at the same time that he 
was helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a 
tenderness which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical 
voyager strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking 
seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her 
occasion. She would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; 
it would be a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so 
anxiously and yet so ardently given herself-a good deal for what she found 
in him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich 
the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she 
perceived in it a kind of maternal strain-the happiness of a woman who felt 
that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her 
money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then her mind 
wandered off to poor Mr Touchett, sleeping under English turf, the 
beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At 
bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled 
with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to 
some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her own conscience more 
effectually than to make it over to the man with the best taste in the 
world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital there would have been 
nothing better she could do with it; and there was no charitable 
institution in which she had been as much interested as in Gilbert Osmond. 
He would use her fortune in a way that would make her think better of it 
and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good luck of an unexpected 
inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy 
thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr Touchett's leaving them to 
her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring him such a portion-in that there 
would be delicacy for her as well. There would be less for him-that was 
true; but that was his affair, and if he loved her he wouldn't object to 
her being rich. Had he not had the courage to say he was glad she was rich?
Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married on a 
factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with her 
money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was only half 
the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of her-a sense 
of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in his personal 
qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme conviction had 
filled her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to her 
that she could not have done otherwise. The finest-in the sense of being 
the subtlest-manly organism she had ever known had become her property, and 
the recognition of her having but to put out her hands and take it had been 
originally a sort of act of devotion. She had not been mistaken about the 
beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with 
it, she had lived in it almost-it appeared to have become her habitation. 
If she had been captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that 
reflection perhaps had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more 
cultivated, more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; 
and it was this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost 
herself in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of his 
deception. It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate 
her more. She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it-it had 
been like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of 
their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she 
must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their marriage; 
but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only afterwards. 
This time she might well have noticed it, because he had really meant it. 
The words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of 
deepening experience she had looked into them they had then appeared 
portentous. He had really meant it-he would have liked her to have nothing 
of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had too many ideas; 
she had more even than he had supposed, many more than she had expressed to 
him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she had been hypocritical; she 
had liked him so much; She had too many ideas for herself; but that was 
just what one married for, to share them with some one else. One couldn't 
pluck them up by the roots, though of course one might suppress them, be 
careful not to utter them. It had not been this, however, his objecting to 
her opinions; this had been nothing. She had no opinions-none that she 
would not have been eager to sacrifice in the satisfaction of feeling 
herself loved for it. What he had meant had been the whole thing-her 
character, the way she felt, the way she judged. This was what she had kept 
in reserve; this was what he had not known until he had found himself-with 
the door closed behind, as it were-set down face to face with it. She had a 
certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven 
knew that now at least it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange 
thing was that she should not have suspected from the first that his own 
had been so different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so 
perfectly that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that 
he had no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost 
their freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open 
air of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for 
truth and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look 
for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least some 
happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional; but 
there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that sense, 
that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the stately 
offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had contained 
nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him 
further and he had led her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, 
then she had seen where she really was.
She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had 
taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived 
ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the 
house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. 
Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond's beautiful 
mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. 
Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there 
might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her 
husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was 
something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, 
under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay 
hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him seriously, 
but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she-especially 
when she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought of 
himself as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of 
him at first, and that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when 
she began to see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond 
than she had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for 
every one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and 
for everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was 
very well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for he 
pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life, opened 
her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance of mankind, 
that she had been properly impressed with the infinite vulgarity of things 
and of the virtue of keeping one's self unspotted by it. But this base, 
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 care for society as 
Osmond cared for it.
He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really done 
so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared to be most 
detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have hers; 
only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such different 
quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity and propriety, of 
the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he deemed himself always, in 
essence at least, to have led. He had never lapsed from it for an hour; he 
would never have recovered from the shame of doing so. That again was very 
well; here too she would have agreed; but they attached such different 
ideas, such different associations and desires, to the same formulas. Her 
notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great knowledge 
with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and the 
liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it was altogether a thing of 
forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. He was fond of the old, the 
consecrated, the transmitted; so was she, but she pretended to do what she 
chose with it. He had an immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once 
that the best thing in the world was to have it, but that if one was so 
unfortunate as not to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She 
knew that he meant by this that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; 
though from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He 
had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain, and 
after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in accordance 
with them; the great thing not only for him but for her. Isabel had an 
undefined conviction that to serve for another person than their proprietor 
traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but she nevertheless 
assented to this intimation that she too must march to the stately music 
that floated down from unknown periods in her husband's past; she who of 
old had been so free of step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse 
of processional. There were certain things they must do, a certain posture 
they must take, certain people they must know and not know. When she saw 
this rigid system close about her, draped though it was in pictured 
tapestries, that sense of darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken 
took possession of her; she seemed shut up with an odour of mould and 
decay. She had resisted of course; at first very humorously, ironically, 
tenderly; then, as the situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, 
pleadingly. She had pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, 
of not caring for the aspect and denomination of their life-the cause of 
other instincts and longings, of quite another ideal.
Then it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never had been, 
stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were answered only 
by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed of her-did he 
think of her-that she was base, vulgar, ignoble? He at least knew now that 
she had no traditions! It had not been in his prevision of things that she 
should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were worthy of a radical 
newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real offence, as she ultimately 
perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his-
attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake 
the soil gently and water the flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an 
occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor 
already far-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it 
was because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her 
intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring 
her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would be richly 
receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for him, to enter 
into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and Isabel was obliged 
to confess that this was no great insolence on the part of a man so 
accomplished and a husband originally at least so tender. But there were 
certain things she could never take in. To begin with, they were hideously 
unclean. She was not a daughter of the Puritans, but for all that she 
believed in such a thing as chastity and even as decency. It would appear 
that Osmond was far from doing anything of the sort; some of his traditions 
made her push back her skirts. Did all women have lovers? Did they all lie 
and even the best have their price? Were there only three or four that 
didn't deceive their husbands? When Isabel heard such things she felt a 
greater scorn for them than for the gossip of a village parlour-a scorn 
that kept its freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint of her 
sister-in-law: did her husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady 
very often lied, and she had practised deceptions that were not simply 
verbal. It was enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions-
it was enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her 
scorn of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He had 
plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; 
but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own 
conception of things-this was a danger he had not allowed for. He believed 
he should have regulated her emotions before she came to it; and Isabel 
could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his discovering he had 
been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there 
was nothing left but to hate her.
She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first had 
been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and comfort of 
his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he had had the 
revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If to herself the 
idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of 
infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be 
expected to have had upon him? It was very simple; he despised her; she had 
no traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, 
who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This was the certitude 
she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to measure. 
What was coming-what was before them? That was her constant question. What 
would he do-what ought she to do? When a man hated his wife what did it 
lead to? She didn't hate him, that she was sure of, for every little while 
she felt a passionate wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, 
however, she felt afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have 
intimated, that she had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely 
married, at all events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he 
had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-
out fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph 
Touchett's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her cousin-he 
had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to him at his 
hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph's invalid state had not 
appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had to contain 
himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this as she would 
have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly aware that the 
sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's rage as if Osmond 
had locked her into her room-which she was sure was what he wanted to do. 
It was her honest belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she 
certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to Ralph. She believed he was 
dying at last and that she should never see him again, and this gave her a 
tenderness for him that she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure 
to her now; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she 
had thrown away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart-
there was a livid light on everything. But Ralph's little visit was a lamp 
in the darkness; for the hour that she sat with him her ache for herself 
became somehow her ache for him. She felt to-day as if he had been her 
brother. She had never had a brother, but if she had and she were in 
trouble and he were dying, he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if 
Gilbert was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make 
Gilbert look better to sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that 
they talked of him-it was not that she complained. His name was never 
uttered between them. It was simply that Ralph was generous and that her 
husband was not. There was something in Ralph's talk, in his smile, in the 
mere fact of his being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which 
she walked more spacious. He made her feel the' good of the world; he made 
her feel what might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond-
quite apart from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of 
devotion to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she 
was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and arranging screens. 
It lived before her again-it had never had time to die-that morning in the 
garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond. She had only to 
close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to feel the warm, sweet 
air. How could he have known? What a mystery, what a wonder of wisdom! As 
intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more intelligent-to arrive at such a 
judgement as that. Gilbert had never been so deep, so just. She had told 
him then that from her at least he should never know if he was right; and 
this was what she was taking care 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 him.
For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire had 
gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in a fever. 
She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but her vigil 
took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of 
extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to her there, 
where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of rest. 
As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could be a 
better proof of it than that she should linger there half the night, trying 
to persuade herself that there was no reason why Pansy shouldn't be married 
as you would put a letter in the post-office? When the clock struck four 
she got up; she was going to bed at last, for the lamp had long since gone 
out and the candles burned down to their sockets. But even then she stopped 
again in the middle of the room and stood there gazing at a remembered 
vision-that of her husband and Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly 
associated.




Chapter 43

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 generalising turn and had not extended to other 
pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on those of love. If she was 
biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a 
prevision of success. Isabel thought this unlikely; it was much more likely 
that Pansy had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never had such 
a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried herself no 
less attentively than usual and kept no less anxious an eye upon her 
vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet very tight and counted over the 
flowers for the twentieth time. She made Isabel feel old; it seemed so long 
since she had been in a flutter about a ball. Pansy, who was greatly 
admired, was never in want of partners, and very soon after their arrival 
she gave Isabel, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Isabel had 
rendered her this service for some minutes when she became aware of the 
near presence of Edward Rosier. He stood before her; he had lost his 
affable smile and wore a look of almost military resolution. The change in 
his appearance would have made Isabel smile if she had not felt his case to 
be at bottom a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope 
than of gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to 
notify her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. 
After he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: 'It's 
all pansies; it must be hers!'
Isabel smiled kindly. 'Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to hold.'
'May I hold it a little, Mrs Osmond?' the poor young man asked.
'No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back.'
'I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly.
But may I not at least have a single flower?'
Isabel hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the bouquet.
'Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for you.'
'Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs Osmond!' Rosier exclaimed with his 
glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.
'Don't put it into your button-hole,' she said. 'Don't for the world!
'I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I wish 
to show her that I believe in her still.'
'It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show it to 
others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.'
'And is that all you can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs Osmond,' 
said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. 'You know our 
acquaintance goes back very far-quite into the days of our innocent 
childhood.'
'Don't make me out too old,' Isabel patiently answered. 'You come back to 
that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must tell you that, old 
friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry you I 
should have refused you on the spot.'
'Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere 
Parisian trifler!'
'I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I mean by that, 
of course, is that I'm not in love with you for Pansy.'
'Very good; I see. You pity me-that's all.' And Edward Rosier looked all 
round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to him 
that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he was at least too proud to 
show that the deficiency struck him as general.
Isabel for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the 
dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things, was 
against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness, after 
all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more than 
before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the most 
affecting thing in the world-young love struggling with adversity. 'Would 
you really be very kind to her?' she finally asked in a low tone.
He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held in 
his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. 'You pity me; but don't you 
pity her a little?'
'I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life.'
'It will depend on what you call life!' Mr Rosier effectively said. 'She 
won't enjoy being tortured.'
'There'll be nothing of that.'
'I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see.'
'I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming 
back to me,' Isabel added, 'and I must beg you to go away.'
Rosier lingered a moment till Pansy came in sight on the arm of her 
cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he walked 
away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved this 
sacrifice to expediency convinced Isabel he was very much in love.
Pansy, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh and 
cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her bouquet. 
Isabel watched her and saw she was counting the flowers; whereupon she said 
to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at play than she had 
recognised. Pansy had seen Rosier turn away, but she said nothing to Isabel 
about him; she talked only of her partner, after he had made his bow and 
retired; of the music, the floor, the rare misfortune of having already 
torn her dress. Isabel was sure, however, she had discovered her lover to 
have abstracted a flower; though this knowledge was not needed to account 
for the dutiful grace with which she responded to the appeal of her next 
partner. That perfect amenity under acute constraint was part of a larger 
system. She was again led forth by a flushed young man, this time carrying 
her bouquet; and she had not been absent many minutes when Isabel saw Lord 
Warburton advancing through the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her 
good-evening; she had not seen him since the day before. He looked about 
him, and then 'Where's the little maid?' he asked. It was in this manner 
that he had formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Osmond.
'She's dancing,' said Isabel. 'You'll see her somewhere.'
He looked among the dancers and at last caught Pansy's eye. 'She sees me, 
but she won't notice me,' he then remarked. 'Are you not dancing?'
'As you see, I'm a wall-flower.'
'Won't you dance with me?'
'Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid.'
'One needn't prevent the other-especially as she's engaged.'
'She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She dances 
very hard, and you'll be the fresher.'
'She dances beautifully,' said Lord Warburton, following her with his eyes. 
'Ah, at last,' he added, 'she has given me a smile.' He stood there with 
his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Isabel observed him it 
came over her, as it had done before, that it was strange a man of his 
mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It struck her as a great 
incongruity; neither Pansy's small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his 
good-nature, not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and 
constant, were sufficient to account for it. 'I should like to dance with 
you,' he went on in a moment, turning back to Isabel; 'but I think I like 
even better to talk with you.'
'Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen 
oughtn't to waltz.'
'Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss Osmond?'
'Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like a 
piece of kindness-as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you dance 
with me you'll look as if you were doing it for your own.'
'And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?'
'No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.'
'The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it.'
'Amuse yourself with talking to me,' said Isabel.
'I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've always to 
be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous to-
night. Will you absolutely not dance?'
'I can't leave my place. Pansy must find me here.'
He was silent a little. 'You're wonderfully good to her,' he said suddenly.
Isabel stared a little and smiled. 'Can you imagine one's not being?'
'No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a 
great deal for her.'
'I've taken her out with me,' said Isabel, smiling still. 'And I've seen 
that she has proper clothes.'
'Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've talked to her, 
advised her, helped her to develop.'
'Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it.'
She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain visible 
preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete hilarity. 'We all 
try to live as near it as we can,' he said after a moment's hesitation.
Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she welcomed 
the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she thought him 
pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there was something 
in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case of indefinite 
need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She felt happier when 
he was in the room; there was something reassuring in his approach; the 
sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of nature. Yet for all 
that it didn't suit her that he should be too near her, that he should take 
too much of her good-will for granted. She was afraid of that; she averted 
herself from it; she wished he wouldn't. She felt that if he should come 
too near, as it were, it might be in her to flash out and bid him keep his 
distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with another rent in her skirt, which 
was the inevitable consequence of the first and which she displayed to 
Isabel with serious eyes. There were too many gentlemen in uniform; they 
wore those dreadful spurs, which were fatal to the dresses of little maids. 
It hereupon became apparent that the resources of women are innumerable. 
Isabel devoted herself to Pansy's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin 
and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her 
adventures. Her attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they 
were in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way 
connected-a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying 
to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others 
as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought 
about while she pinned up Pansy's dress. If it were so, as she feared, he 
was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken account of his intention. 
But this made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none the less 
impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with things 
the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy-on whom it was certainly 
mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy 
replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to 
bend toward her a good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, 
wandered up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to her for 
exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not 
of the painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked 
as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a 
little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she 
talked till the music of the following dance began, for which she knew 
Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little 
fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond's view of his 
daughter's complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary 
loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own 
imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy's extreme 
adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond had 
given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter's duenna, which 
consisted of gracious alternations of concession and contraction; and there 
were directions of his which she liked to think she obeyed to the letter. 
Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her doing so appeared to 
reduce them to the absurd.
After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her 
again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound his 
thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. 'She has promised to dance 
with me later,' he said.
'I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion.'
At this he looked a little awkward. 'No, I didn't ask her for that. It's a 
quadrille.'
'Ah, you're not clever!' said Isabel almost angrily. 'I told her to keep 
the cotillion in case you should ask for it.'
'Poor little maid, fancy that!' And Lord Warburton laughed frankly.
'Of course I will if you like.'
'If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it-!
'I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her 
book.'
Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there 
looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined to 
ask him to remove them. She didn't do so, however; she only said to him, 
after a minute, with her own raised:
'Please let me understand.'
'Understand what?'
'You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my stepdaughter.
You've not forgotten it!'
'Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr Osmond about it this morning.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'he didn't mention to me that he had heard from you.'
Lord Warburton stammered a little. 'I-I didn't send my letter.'
'Perhaps you forgot that.'
'No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to write, 
you know. But I shall send it to-night.'
'At three o'clock in the morning?'
'I mean later, in the course of the day.'
'Very good. You still wish then to marry her?'
'Very much indeed.'
'Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?' And as her companion stared at 
this enquiry Isabel added: 'If she can't dance with you for half an hour 
how will she be able to dance with you for life?'
'Ah,' said Lord Warburton readily, 'I'll let her dance with other people! 
About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you-that you-'
'That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing.'
'Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner where 
we may sit down and talk.'
'Oh,' said Isabel gravely, 'you're much too considerate of me.'
When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself, thinking, 
in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions. Isabel 
recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that he would 
dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite of the 
remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the ground that 
she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an 
exception in Lord Warburton's favour.
'After all I don't care to dance,' he said; 'it's a barbarous amusement: 
I'd much rather talk.' And he intimated that he had discovered exactly the 
corner he had been looking for-a quiet nook in one of the smaller rooms, 
where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere with 
conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished 
to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though she 
knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his daughter. It was 
with his daughter's pretendant, however; that would make it right for 
Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon Edward Rosier, who 
was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance in the 
attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped a moment and asked 
him if he were not dancing.
'Certainly not, if I can't dance with her!' he answered.
'You had better go away then,' said Isabel with the manner of good counsel.
'I shall not go till she does!' And he let Lord Warburton pass without 
giving him a look.
This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked 
Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere 
before.
'It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with Pansy.'
'Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.'
'He has reason. My husband won't listen to him.'
'What's the matter with him?' Lord Warburton enquired. 'He seems very 
harmless.'
'He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever.'
Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account 
of Edward Rosier. 'Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.'
'So he is, but my husband's very particular.'
'Oh, I see.' And Lord Warburton paused a moment. 'How much money has he 
got?' he then ventured to ask.
'Some forty thousand francs a year.'
'Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know.'
'So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.'
'Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an 
idiot, the young man?'
'An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old I 
myself was in love with him.'
'He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day,' Lord Warburton rejoined 
vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, 'Don't you think we might 
sit here?' he asked.
'Wherever you please.' The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a 
subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our 
friends came in.
'It's very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr Rosier,' Isabel said.
'He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered 
what ailed him.'
'You're a just man,' said Isabel. 'You've a kind thought even for a rival.'
Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. 'A rival! Do you call him my 
rival?'
'Surely-if you both wish to marry the same person.'
'Yes-but since he has no chance!'
'I like you, however that may be, for putting 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 you're laughing at me for it.'
'Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh 
at.'
'Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you 
suppose one could do for him?'
'Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine that 
yourself,' Isabel said. 'Pansy too would like you for that.'
'Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.'
'Very much, I think.'
He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. 'Well then, I don't 
understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?'
'Surely I've told you I thought she did.'
A quick blush sprang to his brow. 'You told me she would have no wish apart 
from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would favour me-!' He 
paused a little and then suggested 'Don't you see?' through his blush.
'Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it 
would probably take her very far.'
'That seems to me a very proper feeling,' said Lord Warburton.
'Certainly; it's a very proper feeling.' Isabel remained silent for some 
moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them with 
its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said: 
'But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish 
to be indebted for a wife.'
'I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!
'Yes, of course you must think that.'
'I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course.'
'No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I 
don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in love.'
'Ah, yes I am, Mrs Osmond!'
Isabel shook her head. 'You like to think you are while you sit here with 
me. But that's not how you strike me.'
'I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it 
so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss 
Osmond?'
'No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.'
'I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons.'
'Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw 
for them.'
'Ah, really in love-really in love!' Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his 
arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. 'You must 
remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I once 'Well, 
if you're sure,' said Isabel, 'it's all right.'
He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. 
Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his 
friend. 'Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?'
She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If 
she wished to be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in 
his expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account-
that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but 
such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant 
should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her 
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 than they were conscious 
of at the moment.
'My dear Lord Warburton,' she said, smiling, 'you may do, as far as I'm 
concerned, whatever comes into your head.'
And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where, 
within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of 
gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had 
been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself 
regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away-all the more 
as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however, and at 
any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing 
back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still planted in the 
doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. 'You did right not to go away. 
I've some comfort for you.'
'I need it,' the young man softly wailed, 'when I see you so awfully thick 
with him!'
'Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be 
much, but what I can I'll do.'
He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. 'What has suddenly brought you 
round?'
'The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!' she answered, 
smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy, 
and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing 
guests, waited a while for their carriage. just as it approached Lord 
Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle. 
He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and 
she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then 
Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured 
gently: 'Don't forget to send your letter to her father!'



Chapter 44

The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored-bored, in her own phrase, to 
extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled 
bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating 
Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed 
such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing 
at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. 
The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore 
a name, which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local 
coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the 
peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not 
remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a place 
where, to carry it off, his dullness needed more explanation than was 
convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the 
constant grievance of her life that she had not an habitation there. She 
was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that city; it 
scarcely made the matter better that there were other members of the 
Florentine nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever she 
could; that was all she could say. Or rather not all, but all she said she 
could say. In fact she had much more to say about it, and had often set 
forth the reasons why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the 
shadow of Saint Peter's. They are reasons, however, that do not closely 
concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, in 
short, was the Eternal City and that Florence was simply a pretty little 
place like any other. The Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of 
eternity with her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely 
more interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening 
parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one had 
heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly 
increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than herself. 
She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to 
do justice to Rome-not to the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to 
the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but 
certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law 
and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed 
seen it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the 
hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the 
first winter of her brother's marriage, but she had not been encouraged to 
renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want her-that she was perfectly 
aware of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn't 
care two straws about Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn't let her, and 
the money question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the 
Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been 
blinded by envy to Isabel's personal merits. She had always observed that 
she got on better with clever women than with silly ones like herself; the 
silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones-the 
really clever ones-always understood her silliness. It appeared to her 
that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and 
she had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet 
upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should both 
know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived, with Mrs 
Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was constantly 
expecting that Isabel would 'look down' on her, and she as constantly saw 
this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-
works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but she 
wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law regarded her with none 
but level glances and expressed for the poor Countess as little contempt as 
admiration. In reality Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her 
as of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not indifferent 
to her husband's sister, however; she was rather a little afraid of her. 
She wondered at her; she thought her very extraordinary. The Countess 
seemed to her to have no soul; she was like a bright rare shell, with a 
polished surface and a remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle 
when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess's spiritual 
principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her. She was too 
odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited 
her again (there was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after 
his marriage, had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the 
worst species-a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He 
said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that 
she had given it all away-in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The 
fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the 
Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history 
has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks 
at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote 
to his sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she 
found in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it I am unable to say; 
but she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; 
for one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother 
had found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so 
sorry as to have had serious thoughts-if any of the Countess's thoughts 
were serious-of putting her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and 
after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife 
would not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at 
measurements, but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up 
she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was 
whether Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to 
see Osmond overtopped.
Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the 
card of a visitor-a card with the simple superscription 'Henrietta C. 
Stackpole.' The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she 
didn't remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant then 
remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the Countess should 
not recognise her name she would know her well enough on seeing her. By the 
time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded herself that 
there was once a literary lady at Mrs Touchett's; the only woman of letters 
she had ever encountered-that is the only modern one, since she was the 
daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognised Miss Stackpole immediately, 
the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly unchanged; and the 
Countess, who was thoroughly good-natured, thought it rather fine to be 
called on by a person of that sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss 
Stackpole had come on account of her mother-whether she had heard of the 
American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like Isabel's friend; the 
Countess could see at a glance that this lady was much more contemporary; 
and she received an impression of the improvements that were taking place-
chiefly in distant countries-in the character (the professional character) 
of literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown 
over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet (oh 
the old clothes! and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of glossy 
ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of her 
'Creole' ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal and 
was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was 
always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something brisk 
and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost conscientiously 
familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever vaguely sighing as to 
imagine a letter posted without its address. The Countess could not but 
feel that the correspondent of the Interviewer was much more in the 
movement than the American Corinne. She explained that she had called on 
the Countess because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that 
when she visited a foreign city she liked to see something more than 
superficial travellers. She knew Mrs Touchett, but Mrs Touchett was in 
America, and even if she had been in Florence Henrietta would not have put 
herself out for her, since Mrs Touchett was not one of her admirations.
'Do you mean by that that I am?' the Countess graciously asked.
'Well, I like you better than I do her,' said Miss Stackpole. 'I seem to 
remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don't know 
whether it was an accident or whether it's your usual style. At any rate I 
was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it afterwards in 
print.'
'Dear me!' cried the Countess, staring and half alarmed; 'I had no idea I 
ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.'
'It was about the position of woman in this city,' Miss Stackpole remarked. 
'You threw a good deal of light upon it.'
'The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And you 
wrote it down and published it?' the Countess went on. 'Ah, do let me see 
it!'
'I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like,' Henrietta said. 'I 
didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I 
quoted your views.'
The Countess threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped hands. 
'Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention my name? I should have 
rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my views were; I 
have so many! But I'm not ashamed of them. I'm not at all like my brother-I 
suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of scandal to be put in 
the papers; if you were to quote him he'd never forgive you.
'He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him,' said Miss Stackpole 
with bland dryness. 'That's another reason,' she added, 'why I wanted to 
come to see you. You know Mr Osmond married my dearest friend.'
'Ah, yes; you were a friend of Isabel's. I was trying to think what I knew 
about you.'
quite willing to be known by that,' Henrietta declared. 'But that isn't 
what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my 
relations with Isabel.'
'Don't permit it,' said the Countess.
'That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome.'
'So am I!' the Countess cried. 'We'll go together.'
'With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you by 
name as my companion.'
The Countess sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside her 
visitor. 'Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won't like it, but he 
need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know how to read.'
Henrietta's large eyes became immense. 'Doesn't know how to read?
May I put that into my letter?
'Into your letter?'
'In the Interviewer. That's my paper.'
'Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?'
Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess. 'She 
has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered that she 
would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.'
The Countess listened with extreme interest. 'The reason's Osmond,' she 
pregnantly remarked.
'Isabel ought to make a stand,' said Miss Stackpole. 'I'm afraid she has 
changed a great deal. I told her she would.'
'I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't my 
brother like you?' the Countess ingenuously added.
'I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me; I 
don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some 
people did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a good 
deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's just the 
same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Isabel.'
'Do you mean that she hates you?' the Countess enquired.
'I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for.' 'Dear me, 
what a tiresome errand!' the Countess exclaimed.
'She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a 
difference. If you know anything,' Miss Stackpole went on, 'I should like 
to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.'
The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. 'I know 
very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn't like me any 
better than he appears to like you.'
'Yet you're not a lady correspondent,' said Henrietta pensively.
'Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me-I'm to stay 
in the house!' And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her exultation, for 
the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's disappointment.
This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. 'I shouldn't have gone if 
she had asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't to 
make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I shouldn't 
have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have been happy under 
her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's not all.'
'Rome's very good just now,' said the Countess; 'there are all sorts of 
brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?'
'Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?' 
Henrietta enquired.
'I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur. He's making 
love to Isabel.'
'Making love to her?'
'So I'm told; I don't know the details,' said the Countess lightly. 'But 
Isabel's pretty safe.'
Henrietta gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said nothing. 
'When do you go to Rome?' she enquired abruptly.
'Not for a week, I'm afraid.'
'I shall go to-morrow,' Henrietta said. 'I think I had better not wait.'
'Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told Isabel receives 
immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you at your pension.' 
Henrietta sat still-she was lost in thought; and suddenly the Countess 
cried: 'Ah, but if you don't go with me you can't describe our journey!'
Miss Stackpole seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking of 
something else and presently expressed it. 'I'm not sure that I understand 
you about Lord Warburton.'
'Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all.'
'Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?' Henrietta enquired 
with unprecedented distinctness.
The Countess stared, and then with a little violent laugh: 'It's certain 
all the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!' she added.
'That idea would be enough to prevent me,' said Miss Stackpole. 'I should 
want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's. Do you mean that 
Isabel's guilty-guilty-?' And she paused a little, choosing her expression.
'Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that 
Osmond's very tiresome and that Lord Warburton, as I hear, is a great deal 
at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised.'
'No, I'm just anxious,' Henrietta said.
'Ah, you're not very complimentary to Isabel! You should have more 
confidence. I'll tell you,' the Countess added quickly: 'if it will be a 
comfort to you I engage to draw him off.'
Miss Stackpole answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her 
gaze. 'You don't understand me,' she said after a while. 'I haven't the 
idea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for Isabel-in that way. I'm only 
afraid she's unhappy-that's what I want to get at.'
The Countess gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and 
sarcastic. 'That may very well be; for my part I should like to know 
whether Osmond is.' Miss Stackpole had begun a little to bore her.
'If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it,' Henrietta went 
on.
'You'll see; she'll tell you,' said the Countess.
'Ah, she may not tell me-that's what I'm afraid of!' 'Well, if Osmond isn't 
amusing himself-in his own old way-I flatter myself I shall discover it,' 
the Countess rejoined.
'I don't care for that,' said Henrietta.
'I do immensely! If Isabel's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but I can't 
help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I can't 
tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and marry him 
for? If she had listened to me she'd have got rid of him. I'll forgive her, 
however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she has simply 
allowed him to trample upon her I don't know that I shall even pity her. 
But I don't think that's very likely. I count upon finding that if she's 
miserable she has at least made him so.'
Henrietta got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful 
expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr Osmond 
unhappy; and indeed he could not be, for her the subject of a flight of 
fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Countess, whose mind 
moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a capacity 
for coarseness even there. 'It will be better if they love each other,' she 
said for edification.
'They can't. He can't love any one.'
'I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for Isabel.
I shall positively start to-morrow.'
'Isabel certainly has devotees,' said the Countess, smiling very vividly.
'I declare I don't pity her.'
'It may be I can't assist her,' Miss Stackpole pursued, as if it were well 
not to have illusions.
'You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I believe that's 
what you came from America for,' the Countess suddenly added.
'Yes, I wanted to look after her,' Henrietta said serenely.
Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an eager-
looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come. 'Ah, that's 
very pretty - c'est bien gentil! Isn't it what they call friendship?'
'I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come.'
'She's very happy-she's very fortunate,' the Countess went on. 'She has 
others besides.' And then she broke out passionately. 'She's more fortunate 
than I! I'm as unhappy as she-I've a very bad husband; he's a great deal 
worse than Osmond. And I've no friends. I thought I had, but they're gone. 
No one, man or woman, would do for me what you've done for her.'
Henrietta was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She gazed 
at her companion a moment, and then: 'Look here, Countess, I'll do anything 
for you that you like. I'll wait over and travel with you.'
'Never mind,' the Countess answered with a quick change of tone: only 
describe me in the newspaper!'
Henrietta, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her understand 
that she could give no fictitious representation of her journey to Rome. 
Miss Stackpole was a strictly veracious reporter. On quitting her she took 
the way to the Lung' Arno, the sunny quay beside the yellow river where the 
bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had learned 
her way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very quick in 
such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great decision of step 
out of the little square which forms the approach to the bridge of the Holy 
Trinity. She proceeded to the left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped 
in front of one of the hotels which overlook that delightful structure. 
Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil 
and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to 
look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: 
'Could I see you this evening for a few moments on a very important 
matter?' Henrietta added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. 
Armed with this little document she approached the porter, who now had 
taken up his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr Goodwood were at home. 
The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about 
twenty minutes before; whereupon Henrietta presented her card and begged it 
might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her course 
along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which she 
presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings. Making 
her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the upper 
chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with antique 
busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an empty vista 
in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble floor. The 
gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but scantily visited. 
Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of artistic beauty than 
she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had after all her preferences 
and admirations. One of the latter was the little Correggio of the Tribune-
the Virgin kneeling down before the sacred infant, who lies in a litter of 
straw, and clapping her hands to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. 
Henrietta had a special devotion to this intimate scene-she thought it the 
most beautiful picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York 
to Rome, she was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded 
herself that they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her 
favourite work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it 
involved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn into 
the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a little 
exclamation and stood before Caspar Goodwood.
'I've just been at your hotel,' she said. 'I left a card for you.'
'I'm very much honoured,' Caspar Goodwood answered as if he really meant 
it.
'It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and I know 
you don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.'
He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. 'I shall be very glad to 
hear what you wish to say.'
'You don't like to talk with me,' said Henrietta. 'But I don't care for 
that; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come 
and see me; but since I've met you here this will do as well.'
'I was just going away,' Goodwood stated; 'but of course I'll stop.' He was 
civil, but not enthusiastic.
Henrietta, however, never looked for great professions, and she was so much 
in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on any terms. She 
asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the pictures.
'All I want to. I've been here an hour.'
'I wonder if you've seen my Correggio,' said Henrietta. 'I came up on 
purpose to have a look at it.' She went into the Tribune and he slowly 
accompanied her.
'I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't remember 
pictures-especially that sort.' She had pointed out her favourite work, and 
he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk with him.
'No,' said Henrietta, it's about something less harmonious!' They the 
small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves; 
there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus. 'I want you to 
do me a favour,' Miss Stackpole went on.
Caspar Goodwood frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at the 
sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man than our 
earlier friend. 'I'm sure it's something I shan't like,' he said rather 
loudly.
'No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no favour.'
'Well, let's hear it,' he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious of 
his patience.
'You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a favour. 
Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me I'd gladly do you 
one.' Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had an 
extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a hard 
surface, couldn't help being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely 
showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked 
away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly; he 
seemed to consider with added firmness. Henrietta continued therefore 
disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. 'I may say now, indeed-
it seems a good time-that if I've ever annoyed you (and I think sometimes I 
have) it's because I knew I was willing to suffer annoyance for you. I've 
troubled you - doubtless. But I'd take trouble for you.'
Goodwood hesitated. 'You're taking trouble now.'
'Yes, I am-some. I want you to consider whether it's better on the whole 
that you should go to Rome.'
'I thought you were going to say that!' he answered rather artlessly. 'You 
have considered it then?'
'Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise I 
shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I stayed in Paris two 
months for. I was thinking it over.'
'I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you 
were so much attracted.'
'Best for whom, do you mean?' Goodwood demanded.
'Well, for yourself first. For Mrs Osmond next.'
'Oh, it won't do her any good! I don't flatter myself that.'
'Won't it do her some harm?-that's the question.'
'I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs Osmond.
But if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.'
'Yes, and that's why you go.'
'Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?'
'How will it help you?-that's what I want to know,' said Miss Stackpole.
'That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about in 
Paris.'
'It will make you more discontented.'
'Why do you say 'more' so?' Goodwood asked rather sternly. 'How do you know 
I'm discontented?'
'Well,' said Henrietta, hesitating a little, 'you seem never to have cared 
for another.'
'How do you know what I care for?' he cried with a big blush. 'Just now I 
care to go to Rome.'
Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression. 
'Well,' she observed at last, 'I only wanted to tell you what I think; I 
had it on my mind. Of course you think it's none of my business. But 
nothing is any one's business on that principle.'
'It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest,' said 
Caspar Goodwood. 'I shall go to Rome and I shan't hurt Mrs Osmond.'
'You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?-that's the real 
issue.'
'Is she in need of help?' he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
'Most women always are,' said Henrietta with conscientious evasiveness and 
generalising less hopefully than usual. 'If you go to Rome,' she added, 'I 
hope you'll be a true friend-not a selfish one!' And she turned off and 
began to look at the pictures.
Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round 
the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. 'You've heard something about 
her here,' he then resumed. 'I should like to know what you've heard.'
Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion 
there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking 
some minutes, to make no superficial exception. 'Yes, I've heard,' she 
answered; 'but as I don't want you to go to Rome I won't tell you.'
'Just as you please. I shall see for myself,' he said. Then inconsistently, 
for him, 'You've heard she's unhappy!' he added.
'Oh, you won't see that!' Henrietta exclaimed.
'I hope not. When do you start?'
'To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?'
Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss 
Stackpole's company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the same 
character as Gilbert Osmond's, but it had at this moment an equal 
distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole's virtues than a 
reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, 
and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. 
Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things 
in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he 
supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was this 
very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Stackpole didn't 
take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for 
some allusion to Mrs Osmond; she had done so when they met in Paris, six 
weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption with 
every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to allude to Mrs 
Osmond; he was not always thinking of her; he was perfectly sure of that. 
He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of men, and this enquiring 
authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of 
his soul. He wished she didn't care so much; he even wished, though it 
might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. In spite 
of this, however, he just now made other reflections-which show how widely 
different, in effect, his ill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond's. He desired 
to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-
train. He hated the European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours 
in a vice, knee to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one 
presently found one's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's 
wish to have the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by 
day, at least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. 
But he couldn't take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the 
morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected 
woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait 
longer than he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day. She 
worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a European 
railway-carriage with her offered a complication of irritations. Still, she 
was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to put himself out for her. 
There could be no two questions about that; it was a perfectly clear 
necessity. He looked extremely grave for some moments and then said, wholly 
without the flourish of gallantry but in a tone of extreme distinctness, 
'Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll go too, as I may be of assistance 
to you.'
'Well, Mr Goodwood, I should hope so!' Henrietta returned imperturbably.



Chapter 45

I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew that her husband was 
displeased by the continuance of Ralph's visit to Rome. This 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 displeasure. 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 disapproval; that is, she partook of it, as she 
flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in 
direct opposition to Osmond's wishes; he was her 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 when she gave 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, 
however, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back 
something that she had solemnly given. 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. 
He had not yet formally forbidden her to go and see 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; to be just, 
she didn't see how he could like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never 
said a word against him; but Osmond's objections were none the less 
founded. If Osmond should positively interpose, then she should have to 
decide, and that would not 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 with her husband, she found herself wishing that 
Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching 
herself in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a 
coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything 
seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act - the single sacred 
act - of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous. To break 
with Osmond once would be to break forever; 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 is no substitute for that success. For the 
moment, Isabel went to the Hotel de Paris as often as she thought well; the 
measure of expediency resided in her moral consciousness. It had been very 
liberal 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 business as well as her own. 
She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. 
'I want you to answer me a question,' she said. 'It's about Lord 
Warburton.' 
'I think I know it,' Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out of which his 
thin legs protruded at greater length than ever. 
'It's very possible,' said Isabel. 'Please then answer it.' 
'Oh, I don't say I can do that.' 
'You are intimate with him,' said Isabel; 'you have a great deal of 
observation of him.' 
'Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!' 
'Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature.' 
'Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,' said Ralph, 
with an air of private amusement. 
'To a certain extent - yes. But is he really in love?' 
'Very much, I think. I can make that out.' 
'Ah!' said Isabel, with a certain dryness. 
Ralph looked at her a moment; a shade of perplexity mingled with his mild 
hilarity. 
'You said that as if you were disappointed.' 
Isabel got up, slowly, smoothing her gloves, and eyeing them thoughtfully. 
'It's after all no business of mine.' 
'You are very philosophic,' said her cousin. And then in a moment - 'May I 
inquire what you are talking about?' 
Isabel stared a little. 'I thought you knew. Lord Warburton tells me he 
desires to marry Pansy. I have told you that before, without eliciting a 
comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I think. Is it your 
belief that he really cares for her?' 
'Ah, for Pansy, no!' cried Ralph, very positively. 
'But you said just now that he did.' 
Ralph hesitated a moment. 'That he cared for you, Mrs Osmond.' 
Isabel shook her head, gravely. 'That's nonsense, you know.' 
'Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton's, not mine.' 
'That would be very tiresome,' Isabel said, speaking, as she flattered 
herself, with much subtlety. 
'I ought to tell you indeed,' Ralph went on, 'that to me he has denied it.' 
'It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you that 
he is in love with Pansy?' 
'He has spoken very well of her - very properly. He has let me know, of 
course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.' 
'Does he really think it?' 
'Ah, what Warburton really thinks - !' said Ralph. 
Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves 
upon which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked up, 
and then: 'Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!' she cried, abruptly, 
passionately. 
It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the words 
shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of relief, of 
pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf between them 
had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a moment: 'How 
unhappy you must be!' 
He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the 
first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. 
'When I talk of your helping me, I talk great nonsense,' she said, with a 
quick smile. 'The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments! 
The matter is very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can't 
undertake to help him.'
 'He ought to succeed easily,' said Ralph. 
Isabel hesitated a moment. 'Yes - but he has not always succeeded.' 
'Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss Osmond 
capable of giving us a surprise?' 
'It will come from him, rather. I suspect that after all he will let the 
matter drop.' 
'He will do nothing dishonourable,' said Ralph. 
'I am very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to 
leave the poor child alone. She cares for some one else, and it is cruel to 
attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.' 
'Cruel to the other person perhaps - the one she cares for. But Warburton 
isn't obliged to mind that.' 
'No, cruel to her,' said Isabel. 'She would be very unhappy if she were to 
allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr Rosier. That idea seems to 
amuse you; of course you are not in love with him. He has the merit of 
being in love with her. She can see at a glance that Lord Warburton is 
not.' 
'He would be very good to her,' said Ralph. 
'He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a 
word to disturb her. He could come and bid her goodbye tomorrow with 
perfect propriety.' 
'How would your husband like that?' 
'Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain 
satisfaction himself.' 
'Has he commissioned you to obtain it?' Ralph ventured to ask. 
'It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton's - an older 
friend, that is, than Osmond - I should take an interest in his 
intentions.' 
'Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean.' 
Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. 'Let me understand. Are you pleading 
his cause?' 
'Not in the least. I am very glad he should not become your stepdaughter's 
husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!' said Ralph, smiling. 
'But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven't pushed 
him enough.' 
Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he. 
'He knows me well enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no 
intention of pushing, I presume. I am not afraid I shall not be able to 
justify myself!' she said, lightly. 
Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to 
Ralph's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural 
face, and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage 
desire to hear her complain of her husband - hear her say that she should 
be held accountable for Lord Warburton's defection. Ralph was certain that 
this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form that in 
such an event Osmond's displeasure would take. It could only take the 
meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of it - to let 
her see at least that he knew it. It little mattered that Isabel would know 
it much better; it was for his own satisfaction more than for hers that he 
longed to show her that he was not deceived. He tried and tried again to 
make her betray Osmond; he felt cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, 
in doing so. But it scarcely mattered, for he only failed. What had she 
come for then, and why did she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate 
their tacit convention? Why did she ask him his advice, if she gave him no 
liberty to answer her? How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, 
as it pleased her humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was 
not to be mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication 
of her trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he 
was bound to consider. 
'You will be decidedly at variance, all the same,' he said, in a moment. 
And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarcely understood - 'You 
will find yourselves thinking very differently,' he continued. 
'That may easily happen, among the most united couples!' She took up her 
parasol; he saw that 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 is very natural. Pansy is after all his 
daughter - not mine.' And she put out her hand to wish him good-bye. 
Ralph took an inward resolution that she should not leave him without his 
letting her know that he knew everything; it seemed too great an 
opportunity to lose. 'Do you know what his interest will make him say?' he 
asked, as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly - not 
discouragingly - and he went on, 'It will make him say that your want of 
zeal is owing to jealousy.' He stopped a moment; her face made him afraid. 
'To jealousy?' 
'To jealousy of his daughter.' 
She blushed red and threw back her head. 
'You are not kind,' she said, in a voice that he had never heard on her 
lips. 
'Be frank with me, and you'll see,' said Ralph. 
But she made no answer; she only shook her hand out of his own, which he 
tried still to hold, and rapidly went out of the room. She made up her mind 
to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to the 
young 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 the Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were 
numerous, and Pansy's virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark, 
heavily timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, 
appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, 
to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with her shy 
sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task - the only thing was to perform it 
as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself 
against betraying it to Pansy. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or 
at least too stern; she was afraid of frightening her. But Pansy seemed to 
have guessed that she had come a little 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 inquiry something of the effect of an admonition. As she 
knelt there in the vague firelight, with her pretty dress vaguely 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 to Isabel's, 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 diffficult for me to advise you,' Isabel rejoined. 'I don't know how 
I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must get his advice, and, 
above all, you must act upon it.' 
At this Pansy dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. 
'I think I should like your advice better than papa's,' she presently 
remarked. 
'That's not as it should be,' said Isabel, coldly. 'I love you very much, 
but your father loves you better.' 
'It isn't because you love me - it's because you're a lady,' Pansy 
answered, with the air of saying something very reasonable. 'A lady can 
advise a young girl better than a man.' 
'I advise you, then, to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes.' 
'Ah, yes,' said Pansy, eagerly, 'I must do that.' 
'But if I speak to you now about your getting married, it's not for your 
own sake, it's for mine,' Isabel went on. 'If I try to learn from you what 
you expect, what you desire, it is only that I may act accordingly.' 
Pansy stared, and then, very quickly: 'Will you do everything I desire?' 
she asked. 
'Before I say yes, I must know what such things are.' 
Pansy presently told her that the only thing she wished in life was to 
marry Mr Rosier. He had asked her, and she had told him that she would do 
so if her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn't allow it. 
'Very well, then, it's impossible,' said Isabel. 
'Yes, it's impossible,' said Pansy, without a sigh, and with the same 
extreme attention in her clear little face. 
'You must think of something else, then,' Isabel went on; but Pansy, 
sighing then, told her that she had attempted this feat without the least 
success. 
'You think of those that think of you,' she said, with a faint smile. 'I 
know that Mr Rosier thinks of me.' 
'He ought not to,' said Isabel, loftily. 'Your father has expressly 
requested he shouldn't.' 
'He can't help it, because he knows that I think of him.' 
'You shouldn't think of him. There is some excuse for him, perhaps; but 
there is none for you!' 
'I wish you would try to find one,' the girl exclaimed, as if she were 
praying to the Madonna. 
'I should be very sorry to attempt it,' said the Madonna, with unusual 
frigidity. 'If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think 
of him?' 
'No one can think of me as Mr Rosier does; no one has the right.' 
'Ah, but I don't admit Mr Rosier's right,' Isabel cried, hypocritically. 
Pansy only gazed at her; she was evidently deeply puzzled; and Isabel, 
taking advantage of it, began to represent to her the miserable 
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 
did not lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness towards her father; 
there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only the sweetness of 
fidelity to Edward Rosier, and a strange, exquisite intimation that she 
could prove it better by remaining single than even by marrying him. 'Your 
father would like you to make a better marriage,' said Isabel. 'Mr Rosier's 
fortune is not very large.' 
'How do you mean better - if that would be good enough? And I have very 
little money; why should I look for a fortune?' 
'Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.' Isabel was 
grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face were 
hideously insincere. She was doing this for Osmond; this was what one had 
to do for Osmond! Pansy's solemn eyes, fixed on her own, almost embarrassed 
her; she was ashamed to think that she had made so light of the girl's 
preference. 
'What should you like me to do?' said Pansy, softly. 
The question was a terrible one, and Isabel pusillanimously took refuge in 
a generalisation. 
'To remember all the pleasure it is in your power to give your father.' 
'To marry some one else, you mean - if he should ask me?' 
For a moment Isabel's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she heard 
herself utter it, in the stillness that Pansy's attention seemed to make. 
'Yes - to marry some one else.' 
Pansy's eyes grew more penetrating; Isabel believed that she was doubting 
her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting up 
from her cushion. She stood there a moment, with her small hands unclasped, 
and then she said, with a timorous sigh: 'Well, I hope no one will ask me!' 
'There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready to 
ask you.' 
'I don't think he can have been ready,' said Pansy. 
'It would appear so - if he had been sure that he would succeed.' 
'If he had been sure? Then he was not ready!' 
Isabel thought this rather sharp; she also got up, and stood a moment, 
looking into the fire. 'Lord Warburton has shown you great attention,' she 
said; 'of course you know it's of him I speak.' She found herself, against 
her expectation, almost placed in the position of justifying herself; which 
led her to introduce this nobleman more crudely than she had intended. 
'He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean 
that he will ask me to marry him, I think you are mistaken.' 'Perhaps I am. 
But your father would like it extremely.' 
Pansy shook her head, with a little wise smile. 'Lord Warburton won't ask 
me simply to please papa.' 
'Your father would like you to encourage him,' Isabel went on, 
mechanically. 
'How can I encourage him?' 
'I don't know. Your father must tell you that.' 
Pansy said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if she were 
in possession of a bright assurance. 'There is no danger - no danger!' she 
declared at last. 
There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her 
believing it, which made Isabel feel very awkward. She felt accused of 
dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect, she 
was on the point of saying that Lord Warburton had let her know that there 
was a danger. But she did not; she only said - in her embarrassment rather 
wide of the mark - that he surely had been most kind, most friendly. 
'Yes, he has been very kind,' Pansy answered. 'That's what I like him for.' 
'Why then is the difficulty so great?' 
'I have always felt sure that he knows that I don't want - what did you say 
I should do? - to encourage him. He knows I don't want to marry, and he 
wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble me. That's the meaning of 
his kindness. It's as if he said to me, 'I like you very much, but if it 
doesn't please you I will never say it again.' I think that is very kind, 
very noble,' Pansy went on, with deepening positiveness. 'That is all we 
have said to each other. And he doesn't care for me, either. Ah no, there 
is no danger!' 
Isabel was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this 
submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Pansy's wisdom - 
began almost to retreat before it. 'You must tell your father that,' she 
remarked, reservedly. 
'I think I would rather not,' Pansy answered. 
'You ought not to let him have false hopes.' 
'Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he 
believes that Lord Warburton intends anything of the kind you say, papa 
won't propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,' said 
Pansy, very lucidly. 
There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made Isabel draw a 
long breath. It relieved her of a heavy responsibility. Pansy had a 
sufficient illumination of her own, and Isabel felt that she herself just 
now had no light to spare from her small stock. Nevertheless it still clung 
to her that she must be loyal to Osmond, that she was on her honour in 
dealing with his daughter. Under the influence of this sentiment she threw 
out another suggestion before she retired - a suggestion with which it 
seemed to her that she should have done her utmost. 'Your father takes for 
granted at least that you would like to marry a nobleman.' 
Pansy stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for Isabel 
to pass. 'I think Mr Rosier looks like one!' she remarked, very gravely.


Chapter 46

Lord Warburton was not seen in Mrs Osmond's drawing-room for several days, 
and Isabel couldn't fail to observe that her husband said nothing to her 
about having received a letter from him. She couldn't fail to observe, 
either, that Osmond was in a state of expectancy and that, though it was 
not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend 
kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four days he alluded to his 
absence.
'What has become of Warburton? What does he mean by treating one like a 
tradesman with a bill?'
'I know nothing about him,' Isabel said. 'I saw him last Friday at the 
German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.'
'He has never written to me.'
'So I supposed, from your not having told me.'
'He's an odd fish,' said Osmond comprehensively. And on Isabel's making no 
rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five days to 
indite a letter. 'Does he form his words with such difficulty?'
'I don't know,' Isabel was reduced to replying. 'I've never had a letter 
from him.'
'Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate 
correspondence.'
She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation 
drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the 
afternoon, her husband took it up again.
'When Lord Warburton told you of his intention of writing what did you say 
to him?' he asked.
She just faltered. 'I think I told him not to forget it.'
'Did you believe there was a danger of that?'
'As you say, he's an odd fish.'
'Apparently he has forgotten it,' said Osmond. 'Be so good as to remind 
'Should you like me to write to him?' she demanded.
'I've no objection whatever.'
'You expect too much of me.'
'Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.'
'I'm afraid I shall disappoint you,' said Isabel.
'My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.'
'Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself! If you 
really wish hands laid on Lord Warburton you must lay them yourself.'
For a couple of minutes Osmond answered nothing; then he said: 'That won't 
be easy, with you working against me.'
Isabel started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of 
looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of her 
but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully cruel 
intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable necessity of 
thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence. That effect had 
never been so marked as now. 'I think you accuse me of something very 
base,' she returned.
'I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all come 
forward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know that it's 
base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I've no 
doubt you've the finest ideas about it.'
'I told you I would do what I could,' she went on.
'Yes, that gained you time.'
It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him 
beautiful. 'How much you must want to make sure of him!' she exclaimed in a 
moment.
She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her words, of 
which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made a comparison 
between Osmond and herself, recalled the fact that she had once held this 
coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich enough to let it fall. A 
momentary exultation took possession of her-a horrible delight in having 
wounded him; for his face instantly told her that none of the force of her 
exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing otherwise, however; he only said 
quickly: 'Yes, I want it immensely.'
At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed 
the next by Lord Warburton, who received a visible check on seeing Osmond. 
He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress; a movement 
that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a perception of 
ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English address, in which a 
vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element of good breeding; in 
which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving transitions. Osmond was 
embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel remarked, promptly enough, 
that they had been in the act of talking about their visitor. Upon this her 
husband added that they hadn't known what was become of him-they had been 
afraid he had gone away. 'No,' he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; 
'I'm only on the point of going.' And then he mentioned that he found 
himself suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow or the 
day after. 'I'm awfully sorry to leave poor Touchett!' he ended by 
exclaiming.
For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Osmond only leaned back in 
his chair, listening. Isabel didn't look at him; she could only fancy how 
he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were the more 
free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Isabel 
was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it expressive. 
'You had better take poor Touchett with you,' she heard her husband say, 
lightly enough, in a moment.
'He had better wait for warmer weather,' Lord Warburton answered. 'I 
shouldn't advise him to travel just now.'
He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see them 
again-unless indeed they should come to England, a course he strongly 
recommended. Why shouldn't they come to England in the autumn?-that struck 
him as a very happy thought. It would give him such pleasure to do what he 
could for them-to have them come and spend a month with him. Osmond, by his 
own admission, had been to England but once; which was an absurd state of 
things for a man of his leisure and intelligence. It was just the country 
for him-he would be sure to get on well there. Then Lord Warburton asked 
Isabel if she remembered what a good time she had had there and if she 
didn't want to try it again. Didn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? 
Gardencourt was really very good. Touchett didn't take proper care of it, 
but it was the sort of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. 
Why didn't they come and pay Touchett a visit? He surely must have asked 
them. Hadn't asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!-and Lord Warburton 
promised to give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course 
it was a mere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a 
month with Touchett and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of 
the people they must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. 
Lord Warburton added that it would amuse Miss Osmond as well, who had told 
him that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a 
country she deserved to see. Of course she didn't need to go to England to 
be admired-that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense 
success there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked if 
she were not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked good-byes-
he always funked them. When he left England the other day he hadn't said 
good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind to leave Rome 
without troubling Mrs Osmond for a final interview. What could be more 
dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted-one 
remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said 
a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense that one had to say 
something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled one's wits. He had it at 
present, and that was the effect it produced on him. If Mrs Osmond didn't 
think he spoke as he ought she must set it down to agitation; it was no 
light thing to part with Mrs Osmond. He was really very sorry to be going. 
He had thought of writing to her instead of calling-but he would write to 
her at any rate, to tell her a lot of things that would be sure to occur to 
him as soon as he had left the house. They must think seriously about 
coming to Lockleigh.
If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the 
announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Lord 
Warburton talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other manner, 
and Isabel saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was capable of 
executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked him quite well 
enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He would do that on any 
occasion-not from impudence but simply from the habit of success; and 
Isabel felt it out of her husband's power to frustrate this faculty. A 
complex operation, as she sat there, went on in her mind. On one side she 
listened to their visitor; said what was proper to him; read, more or less, 
between the lines of what he said himself; and wondered how he would have 
spoken if he had found her alone. On the other she had a perfect 
consciousness of Osmond's emotion. She felt almost sorry for him; he was 
condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of cursing. He had 
had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged 
to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to 
smile very brightly; he treated their friend on the whole to as vacant a 
countenance as so clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part 
of Osmond's cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His 
present appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was 
simply a part of Osmond's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive 
exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on this 
prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to irradiate 
his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he treated 
every one-with an air of being interested in him only for his own 
advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so 
perfectly provided as Gilbert Osmond. He would give no sign now of an 
inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain-not the 
faintest nor subtlest. Isabel could be sure of that, if it was any 
satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction; she 
wished Lord Warburton to triumph before her husband, and at the same time 
she wished her husband to be very superior before Lord Warburton. Osmond, 
in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the advantage of an 
acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it was something almost 
as good-that of not attempting. As he leaned back in his place, listening 
but vaguely to the other's friendly offers and suppressed explanations if 
it were only proper to assume that they were addressed essentially to his 
wife-he had at least (since so little else was left him) the comfort of 
thinking how well he personally had kept out of it, and how the air of 
indifference, which he was now able to wear, had the added beauty of 
consistency. It was something to be able to look as if the leave-taker's 
movements had no relation to his own mind. The latter did well, certainly; 
but Osmond's performance was in its very nature more finished. Lord 
Warburton's position was after all an easy one; there was no reason in the 
world why he shouldn't leave Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but 
they had stopped short of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his 
honour was safe. Osmond appeared to take but a moderate interest in the 
proposal that they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the 
success Pansy might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, 
but left Isabel to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration. 
Isabel, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista which 
had suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Pansy's little figure 
marching up the middle of it.
Lord Warburton had asked leave to bid good-bye to Pansy, but neither Isabel 
nor Osmond had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of giving 
out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if it were 
only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed and stayed; 
Isabel wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it was not to see 
Pansy; she had an impression that on the whole he would rather not see 
Pansy. It was of course to see herself alone-he had something to say to 
her. Isabel had no great wish to hear it, for she was afraid it would be an 
explanation, and she could perfectly dispense with explanations. Osmond, 
however, presently got up, like a man of good taste to whom it had occurred 
that so inveterate a visitor might wish to say just the last word of all to 
the ladies. 'I've a letter to write before dinner,' he said; 'you must 
excuse me. I'll see if my daughter's disengaged, and if she is she shall 
know you're here. Of course when you come to Rome you'll always look us up. 
Mrs Osmond will talk to you about the English expedition: she decides all 
those things.'
The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little speech 
was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole it was all 
the occasion demanded. Isabel reflected that after he left the room Lord 
Warburton would have no pretext for saying, 'Your husband's very angry'; 
which would have been extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless, if he 
had done so, she would have said: 'Oh, don't be anxious. He doesn't hate 
you: it's me that he hates!'
It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend showed a 
certain vague awkwardness-sitting down in another chair, handling two or 
three of the objects that were near him. 'I hope he'll make Miss Osmond 
come,' he presently remarked. 'I want very much to see her.'
'I'm glad it's the last time,' said Isabel.
'So am I. She doesn't care for me.'
'No, she doesn't care for you.'
'I don't wonder at it,' he returned. Then he added with inconsequence:
'You'll come to England, won't you?'
'I think we had better not.'
'Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come to 
Lockleigh once, and you never did?'
'Everything's changed since then,' said Isabel.
'Not changed for the worse, surely-as far as we're concerned. To see you 
under my roof' - and he hung fire but an instant-'would be a great 
satisfaction.'
She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred. 
They talked a little of Ralph, and in another moment Pansy came in, already 
dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek. She shook 
hands with Lord Warburton and stood looking up into his face with a fixed 
smile-a smile that Isabel knew, though his lordship probably never 
suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.
'I'm going away,' he said. 'I want to bid you good-bye.'
'Good-bye, Lord Warburton.' Her voice perceptibly trembled.
'And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.'
'Thank you, Lord Warburton,' Pansy answered.
He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Isabel. 'You ought to be very 
happy-you've got a guardian angel.'
'I'm sure I shall be happy,' said Pansy in the tone of a person whose 
certainties were always cheerful.
'Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should ever 
fail you, remember-remember-' And her interlocutor stammered a little. 
'Think of me sometimes, you know!' he said with a vague laugh. Then he 
shook hands with Isabel in silence, and presently he was gone.
When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her 
stepdaughter; but Pansy in fact treated her to something very different.
'I think you are my guardian angel!' she exclaimed very sweetly.
Isabel shook her head. 'I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most your 
good friend.'
'You're a very good friend then-to have asked papa to be gentle with me.'
'I've asked your father nothing,' said Isabel wondering.
'He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a 
very kind kiss.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'that was quite his own idea!
She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she was 
to see a great deal more of it. Even with Pansy he couldn't put himself the 
least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after their dinner 
they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till late in the 
evening that Isabel saw him alone. When Pansy kissed him before going to 
bed he returned her embrace with even more than his usual munificence, and 
Isabel wondered if he meant it as a hint that his daughter had been injured 
by the machinations of her stepmother. It was a partial expression, at any 
rate, of what he continued to expect of his wife. She was about to follow 
Pansy, but he remarked that he wished she would remain; he had something to 
say to her. Then he walked about the drawing-room a little, while she stood 
waiting in her cloak.
'I don't understand what you wish to do,' he said in a moment. 'I should 
like to know-so that I may know how to act.'
'Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired.'
'Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there-take a comfortable 
place.' And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were scattered in 
picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not, however, where she 
seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair. The fire had gone out; 
the lights in the great room were few. She drew her cloak about her; she 
felt mortally cold. 'I think you're trying to humiliate me,' Osmond went 
on. 'It's a most absurd undertaking.'
'I haven't the least idea what you mean,' she returned.
'You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully.'
'What is it that I've managed?'
'You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.' And he 
stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her 
thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know that she 
was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of thought.
'If you mean that Lord Warburton's under an obligation to come back you're 
wrong,' Isabel said. 'He's under none whatever.'
'That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't 
mean he'll come from a sense of duty.'
'There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.'
'Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible.' And Osmond began 
to walk about again. 'However, about that perhaps there's no hurry,' he 
added. 'It's rather a good idea of his that we should go to England. If it 
were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I think I should try to 
persuade you.'
'It may be that you'll not find my cousin,' said Isabel.
'I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as possible. 
At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told me so much 
about at one time: what do you call it?-Gardencourt. It must be a charming 
thing. And then, you know, I've a devotion to the memory of your uncle: you 
made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to see where he lived and 
died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was right. Pansy ought to see 
England.'
'I've no doubt she would enjoy it,' said Isabel.
'But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off,' Osmond continued; 
'and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you think 
me so very proud?' he suddenly asked.
'I think you very strange.'
'You don't understand me.'
'No, not even when you insult me.'
'I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of certain facts, 
and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's not mine. It's surely a 
fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own hands.'
'Are you going back to Lord Warburton?' Isabel asked. 'I'm very tired of 
his name.'
'You shall hear it again before we've done with it.'
She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that 
this ceased to be a pain. He was going down-down; the vision of such a fall 
made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange, too 
different; he didn't touch her. Still, the working of his morbid passion 
was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in what light he 
saw himself justified. 'I might say to you that I judge you've nothing to 
say to me that's worth hearing,' she returned in a moment. 'But I should 
perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be worth my hearing-to know in 
the plainest words of what it is you accuse me.'
'Of having prevented Pansy's marriage to Warburton. Are those words plain 
enough?'
'On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when 
you told me that you counted on me-that I think was what you said-I 
accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.'
'You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me more 
willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get him out 
of the way.'
'I think I see what you mean,' said Isabel.
'Where's the letter you told me he had written me?' her husband demanded.
'I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him.'
'You stopped it on the way,' said Osmond.
Isabel slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered her 
to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first cousin 
to that of pity. 'Oh, Gilbert, for a man who was so fine-!' she exclaimed 
in a long murmur.
'I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted. You've got 
him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you've placed me in the 
position in which you wished to see me-that of a man who has tried to marry 
his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.'
'Pansy doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone,' Isabel said.
'That has nothing to do with the matter.'
'And he doesn't care for Pansy.'
'That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted this 
particular satisfaction,' Osmond continued; 'you might have taken some 
other. It doesn't seem to me that I've been presumptuous-that I have taken 
too much for granted. I've been very modest about it, very quiet. The idea 
didn't originate with me. He began to show that he liked her before I ever 
thought of it. I left it all to you.'
'Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend to 
such things yourself.'
He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. 'I thought you were very 
fond of my daughter.'
'I've never been more so than to-day.'
'Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that perhaps 
is natural.'
'Is this all you wished to say to me?' Isabel asked, taking a candle that 
stood on one of the tables.
'Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?'
'I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another 
opportunity to try to stupefy me.'
'It's not that. It's proved that Pansy can aim high.'
'Poor little Pansy!' said Isabel as she turned away with her candle.



Chapter 47

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 Isabel-the temporary absence, once again, of Madame Merle, 
who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a 
villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel's 
happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of women 
might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at night, she 
had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her friend-his 
friend-in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to her that she had 
not done with her; this lady had something in reserve. Isabel's imagination 
applied itself actively to this elusive point, but every now and then it 
was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming woman was away 
from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She had already 
learned from Miss Stackpole that Caspar Goodwood was in Europe, Henrietta 
having written to make it known to her immediately after meeting him in 
Paris. He himself never wrote to Isabel, and though he was in Europe she 
thought it very possible he might not desire to see her. Their last 
interview, before her marriage, had had quite the character of a complete 
rupture; if she remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last 
look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant survival of her 
earlier time-the only one in fact with which a permanent pain was 
associated. He had left her that morning with a sense of the most 
superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels in broad 
daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden current to excuse it, and she 
herself had only wished to steer wide. He had bumped against her prow, 
however, while her hand was on the tiller, and-to complete the metaphor-had 
given the lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally betrayed itself 
in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to see him, because he represented 
the only serious harm that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: 
he was the only person with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him 
unhappy, she couldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She 
had cried with rage, after he had left her, at-she hardly knew what: she 
tried to think it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her 
with his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his 
best to darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent, 
and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a 
violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own 
fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted three 
or four days.
The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first 
year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless 
subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who 
was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. 
It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, 
of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Lord Warburton's; 
unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising 
look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to 
herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to 
say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr Goodwood's 
compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton-factory was not a 
compensation for anything-least of all for having failed to marry Isabel 
Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had-save of course 
his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never thought of 
his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended his business-that, to 
the best of her belief, was the only form exertion could take with him-it 
would be because it was an enterprising thing, or good for the business; 
not in the least because he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave 
his figure a kind of bareness and bleakness which made the accident of 
meeting it in memory or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was 
deficient in the social drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, 
the sharpness of human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact 
that she never heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, 
deepened this impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, 
from time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston-her imagination was all 
bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel had thought 
of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more than once the 
idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband about him-never let 
Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; a reserve not dictated in the 
early period by a want of confidence in Osmond, but simply by the 
consideration that the young man's disappointment was not her secret but 
his own. It would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to 
another, and Mr Goodwood's affairs could have, after all, little interest 
for Gilbert. When it had come to the point she had never written to him; it 
seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least she could do was 
to let him alone. Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way 
nearer to him. It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have 
married him; even after the consequences of her actual union had grown 
vivid to her that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, 
had not had the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in 
trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with which she 
wished to set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed 
to feel that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own 
fault. She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her 
peace with the world-to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to 
her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled with 
Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day on terms 
easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was coming to 
Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for him than for 
any one else to make out-since he would make it out, as over a falsified 
balance-sheet or something of that sort-the intimate disarray of her 
affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had invested his all in 
her happiness, while the others had invested only a part. He was one more 
person from whom she should have to conceal her stress. She was reassured, 
however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent several days without coming 
to see her.
Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was 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 superficial-
the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than 
blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by 
persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to 
give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was as keen and quick and fresh 
as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her remarkably open eyes, lighted 
like great glazed railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had 
lost none of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference. 
She was by no means quite unchanged, however; it struck Isabel she had 
grown vague. Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking many 
enquiries at once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each. She 
had a reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. 
Formerly, when she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but 
now, having already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a 
moment pretend that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had 
anything to do with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an 
expression of her independence of the old world than of a sense of further 
obligations to it. 'It's nothing to come to Europe,' she said to Isabel; 
'it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something 
to stay at home; this is much more important.' It was not therefore with a 
sense of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another 
pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected 
it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing all 
about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be there. This 
was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had a perfect right to 
be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after all a better reason 
for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend easily 
recognised it, and with it the worth of the other's fidelity. She had 
crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Isabel 
was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed so 
happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions just now were few, but even if they 
had been more numerous there would still have been something of individual 
joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought highly of 
Henrietta. She had made large concessions with regard to her, and had yet 
insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her 
own triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the relief of 
confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, 
that she was not in the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached 
this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her 
face of being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not 
Ralph, nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.
'Yes, I'm wretched,' she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say 
it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.
'What does he do to you?' Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were 
enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.
'He does nothing. But he doesn't like me.'
'He's very hard to please!' cried Miss Stackpole. 'Why don't you leave 
him?'
'I can't change that way,' Isabel said.
'Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a 
mistake. You're too proud.'
'I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I 
don't think that's decent. I'd much rather die.'
'You won't think so always,' said Henrietta.
'I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me 
I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I married him 
before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do 
anything more deliberate. One can't change that way,' Isabel repeated.
'You have changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't mean to 
say you like him.'
Isabel debated. 'No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm weary of 
my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops.'
Henrietta gave a laugh. 'Don't you think you're rather too considerate?'
'It's not of him that I'm considerate-it's of myself!' Isabel answered.
It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort in Miss 
Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a young lady 
capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal roof.
When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped she would 
leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answered that he at 
least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henrietta that as Osmond 
didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but they could easily see 
each other in other ways. Isabel received Miss Stackpole freely in her own 
sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to drive, face to face with Pansy, 
who, bending a little forward, on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed 
at the celebrated authoress with a respectful attention which Henrietta 
occasionally found irritating. She complained to Isabel that Miss Osmond 
had a little look as if she should remember everything one said. 'I don't 
want to be remembered that way,' Miss Stackpole declared; 'I consider that 
my conversation refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your 
stepdaughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers 
and would bring them out some day against me.' She could not teach herself 
to think favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, 
of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even 
uncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a 
little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her, so 
that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate 
acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong-it being in 
effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot 
enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond held to 
his credit, and yet he held to his objections-all of which were elements 
difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that Miss Stackpole 
should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice, so that (in spite 
of his superficial civility, always so great) she might judge for herself 
how little pleasure it gave him. From the moment, however, that both the 
ladies were so unaccommodating, there was nothing for Osmond but to wish 
the lady from New York would take herself off. It was surprising how little 
satisfaction he got from his wife's friends; he took occasion to call 
Isabel's attention to it.
'You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make a 
new collection,' he said to her one morning in reference to nothing visible 
at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark 
of all brutal abruptness. 'It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out 
the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I 
have always thought a conceited ass-besides his being the most ill-favoured 
animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that one can't tell him so; 
one must spare him on account of his health. His health seems to me the 
best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's 
so desperately ill there's only one way to prove it; but he seems to have 
no mind for that. I can't say much more for the great Warburton. When one 
really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that performance was something 
rare! He comes and looks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of 
apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on 
the walls and almost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to 
draw up a lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too 
small; he doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out 
for a piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in 
the poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your 
most wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't a 
nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never have 
admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of a new 
steel pen-the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes; 
aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks and moves and 
walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that she doesn't hurt me, 
inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but I hear her; I hear her 
all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't get rid of it. I know 
exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone in which she says 
it. She says charming things about me, and they give you great comfort. I 
don't like at all to think she talks about me-I feel as I should feel if I 
knew the footman were wearing my hat.'
Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, rather less 
than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of which the 
reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let her friend know 
that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself that she was unhappy, 
though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he hoped to 
give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice 
in the street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were driving, 
and he had a habit of looking straight in front of him, as if he proposed 
to take in but one object at a time. Isabel could have fancied she had seen 
him the day before; it must have been with just that face and step that he 
had walked out of Mrs Touchett's door at the close of their last interview. 
He was dressed just as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered 
the colour of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was 
a strangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh to 
be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and more 
overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached high 
enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back after him; 
but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like a February 
sky.
Miss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel the latest 
news about Mr Bantling. He had been out in the United States the year 
before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him considerable 
attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, but she would 
undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn't the same man when he left 
as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and shown him that 
England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked in most places, and 
thought extremely simple-more simple than the English were commonly 
supposed to be. There were people who had thought him affected; she didn't 
know whether they meant that his simplicity was an affectation. Some of his 
questions were too discouraging; he thought all the chambermaids were 
farmers' daughters-or all the farmers' daughters were chambermaids-she 
couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemed able to grasp the great 
school system; it had been really too much for him. On the whole he had 
behaved as if there were too much of everything-a if he could only take in 
a small part. The part he had chosen was the hotel system and the river 
navigation. He had seemed really fascinated with the hotels; he had a 
photograph of every one he had visited. But the river steamers were his 
principal interest; he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They 
had travelled together from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most 
interesting cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had 
wanted to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea 
of geography-had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was 
perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never to 
have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was unprepared 
to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to confess at last 
that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent some pleasant hours in 
the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream from the coloured man. He 
could never get used to that idea-that you could get ice-cream in the cars. 
Of course you couldn't, nor fans, nor candy, nor anything in the English 
cars! He found the heat quite overwhelming, and she had told him she indeed 
expected it was the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England, 
hunting-'hunting round' Henrietta called it. These amusements were those of 
the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the pleasures of 
the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England that we wore 
tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in keeping with English 
habits. Mr Bantling would not have time to join her in Italy, but when she 
should go to Paris again he expected to come over. He wanted very much to 
see Versailles again; he was very fond of the ancient regime.
They didn't agree about that, but that was what she liked Versailles for, 
that you could see the ancient regime had been swept away. There were no 
dukes and marquises there now; she remembered on the contrary one day when 
there were five American families, walking all round. Mr Bantling was very 
anxious that she should take up the subject of England again, and he 
thought she might get on better with it now; England had changed a good 
deal within two or three years. He was determined that if she went there he 
should go to see his sister, Lady Pensil, and that this time the invitation 
should come to her straight. The mystery about that other one had never 
been explained.
Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabel a 
note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be at 
home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what he was 
coming for-what good he expected to get of it. He had presented himself 
hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who would take 
what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality, however, 
raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in appearing happy 
enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at least that she deceived 
him, made him say to himself that he had been misinformed. But she also 
saw, so she believed, that he was not disappointed, as some other men, she 
was sure, would have been; he had not come to Rome to look for an 
opportunity. She never found out what he had come for; he offered her no 
explanation; there could be none but the very simple one that he wanted to 
see her. In other words he had come for his amusement. Isabel followed up 
this induction with a good deal of eagerness, and was delighted to have 
found a formula that would lay the ghost of this gentleman's ancient 
grievance. If he had come to Rome for his amusement this was exactly what 
she wanted; for if he cared for amusement he had got over his heartache. If 
he had got over his heartache everything was as it should be and her 
responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he took his recreation a 
little stiffly, but he had never been loose and easy and she had every 
reason to believe he was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in 
his confidence, though he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no 
side-light upon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on 
general topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years 
before, 'Mr Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk.' He spoke a 
good deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that 
is, how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not 
calculated to simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr Osmond 
didn't like her friends Mr Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save as 
having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say of 
him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis exhausted 
the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert; it was 
impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday evenings, of 
which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband still held for the 
sake not so much of inviting people as of not inviting them.
To the Thursdays Mr Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early; he 
appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel every now and 
then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about him; she 
thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him. But she 
couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was only 
extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very different 
from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with him. She made 
this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering herself she had 
persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of women. He never threw 
any doubt on this point, never asked her any personal questions. He got on 
much better with Osmond than had seemed probable. Osmond had a great 
dislike to being counted on; in such a case he had an irresistible need of 
disappointing you. It was in virtue of this principle that he gave himself 
the entertainment of taking a fancy to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he 
had been depended upon to treat with coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr 
Goodwood also had wanted to marry her, and expressed surprise at her not 
having accepted him. It would have been an excellent thing, like living 
under some tall belfry which would strike all the hours and make a queer 
vibration in the upper air. He declared he liked to talk with the great 
Goodwood; it wasn't easy at first, you had to climb up an interminable 
steep staircase, up to the top of the tower; but when you got there you had 
a big view and felt a little fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had 
delightful qualities, and he gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. 
Isabel could see that Mr Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had 
ever wished to; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of 
being inaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly to 
dinner, and Mr Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even desired 
to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he was very 
original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English portmanteau-
he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear out, and a 
capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on the Campagna and 
devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly in the evening 
that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying to him one day that if 
he were willing he could render her a service. And then she added smiling:
'I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.'
'You're the person in the world who has most right,' he answered.
'I've given you assurances that I've never given any one else.'
The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was ill at 
the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr Goodwood 
had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow was; if she was 
not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt. Caspar remembered 
the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a man of 
imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of a poor gentleman who 
lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the Hotel de Paris and, on being 
shown into the presence of the master of Gardencourt, found Miss Stackpole 
sitting beside his sofa. A singular change had in fact occurred in this 
lady's relations with Ralph Touchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to 
go and see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to come out had 
immediately gone of her own motion. After this she had paid him a daily 
visit-always under the conviction that they were great enemies. 'Oh yes, 
we're intimate enemies,' Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely-as 
freely as the humour of it would allow-of coming to worry him to death. In 
reality they became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she 
should never have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he 
had always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an 
excellent fellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about 
everything, that is, but Isabel-a topic as to which Ralph always had a thin 
forefinger on his lips. Mr Bantling on the other hand proved a great 
resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr Bantling with Henrietta for 
hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their inevitable difference 
of view-Ralph having amused himself with taking the ground that the genial 
ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli. Caspar Goodwood could contribute 
nothing to such a debate; but after he had been left alone with his host he 
found there were various other matters they could take up. It must be 
admitted that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Caspar 
granted all Miss Stackpole's merits in advance, but had no further remark 
to make about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men 
expatiate upon Mrs Osmond-a theme in which Goodwood perceived as many 
dangers as Ralph. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he 
couldn't bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so 
beyond anything to be done. There was always something to be done, for 
Goodwood, and he did it in this case by repeating several times his visit 
to the Hotel de Paris. It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; 
she had artfully disposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an 
occupation; she had converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan 
of making him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild 
weather should allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr 
Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this, and 
she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had a constant 
fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the occurrence of 
this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely entered. Ralph 
must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in one of those deep, dim 
chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would cluster round the edges of 
the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabel in these days something 
sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more perfectly 
irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent there the tears 
rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, upon her ingenuity, but 
she had need of all she could muster; for several events occurred which 
seemed to confront and defy her. The Countess Gemini arrived from Florence-
arrived with her trunks, her dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her 
frivolity, the strange, the unholy legend of the number of her lovers. 
Edward Rosier, who had been away somewhere-no one, not even Pansy, knew 
where-reappeared in Rome and began to write her long letters, which she 
never answered. Madame Merle returned from Naples and said to her with a 
strange smile: 'What on earth did you do with Lord Warburton?' As if it 
were any business of hers!



Chapter 48

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, however; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by his sofa:
'I suppose you know you can't go alone?'
'I've no idea of doing that,' Ralph answered. 'I shall have people with 
me.'
'What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?'
'Ah,' said Ralph jocosely, 'after all, they're human beings.'
'Are there any women among them?' Miss Stackpole desired to know.
'You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a soubrette in my 
employment.'
'Well,' said Henrietta calmly, 'you can't go to England that way. You must 
have a woman's care.'
'I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a 
good while.'
'You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you,' said 
Henrietta.
'Go with me?' Ralph slowly raised himself from his sofa.
'Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It would 
be better for your health to lie down again.'
Ralph looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. 'I like you very 
much,' he said in a moment.
Miss Stackpole gave one of her infrequent laughs. 'You needn't think that 
by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you, and what is more I'll 
take care of you.'
'You're a very good woman,' said Ralph.
'Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be easy.
But you had better go, all the same.'
Before she left him, Ralph said to her: 'Do you really mean to take care of 
me?'
'Well, I mean to try.'
'I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!' And it was perhaps a sign 
of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he burst into 
a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent, such a conclusive 
proof of his having abdicated all functions and renounced all exercise, 
that he should start on a journey across Europe under the supervision of 
Miss Stackpole. And the great oddity was that the prospect pleased him; he 
was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt even impatient to start; and 
indeed he had an immense longing to see his own house again. The end of 
everything was at hand; it seemed to him he could stretch out his arm and 
touch the goal. But he wanted to die at home; it was the only wish he had 
left-to extend himself in the large quiet room where he had last seen his 
father lie, and close his eyes upon the summer dawn.
That same day Caspar Goodwood came to see him, and he informed his visitor 
that Miss Stackpole had taken him up and was to conduct him back to 
England. 'Ah then,' said Caspar, 'I'm afraid I shall be a fifth wheel to 
the coach. Mrs Osmond has made me promise to go with you.'
'Good heavens-it's the golden age! You're all too kind.'
'The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you.'
'Granting that, she's kind,' smiled Ralph.
'To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness,' Goodwood 
answered without lending himself to the joke. 'For myself, however,' he 
added, 'I'll go as far as to say that I would much rather travel with you 
and Miss Stackpole than with Miss Stackpole alone.'
'And you'd rather stay here than do either,' said Ralph. 'There's really no 
need of your coming. Henrietta's extraordinarily efficient.'
'I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs Osmond.'
'You can easily get her to let you off.'
'She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you, but 
that isn't the principal thing. The principal thing is that she wants me to 
leave Rome.'
'Ah, you see too much in it,' Ralph suggested.
'I bore her,' Goodwood went on; 'she has nothing to say to me, so she 
invented that.'
'Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you with me. 
Though I don't see why it should be a convenience,' Ralph added in a 
moment.
'Well,' said Caspar Goodwood simply, 'she thinks I'm watching her.'
'Watching her?'
'Trying to make out if she's happy.'
'That's easy to make out,' said Ralph. 'She's the most visibly happy woman 
I know.'
'Exactly so; I'm satisfied,' Goodwood answered dryly. For all his dryness, 
however, he had more to say. 'I've been watching her; I was an old friend 
and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was 
what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself 
what it amounts to. I've seen,' he continued with a harsh ring in his 
voice, 'and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite ready to go.'
'Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?' Ralph rejoined. And 
this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Isabel Osmond.
Henrietta made her preparations for departure, and among them she found it 
proper to say a few words to the Countess Gemini, who returned at Miss 
Stackpole's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in Florence.
'You were very wrong about Lord Warburton,' she remarked to the Countess. 
'I think it right you should know that.'
'About his making love to Isabel? My poor lady, he was at her house three 
times a day. He has left traces of his passage!' the Countess cried.
'He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house.'
The Countess stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: 'Is that the 
story that Isabel tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes to 
marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy the 
wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone.'
'No, he'll not come back. Miss Osmond doesn't wish to marry him.'
'She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Isabel, but I didn't know 
she carried it so far.'
'I don't understand you,' said Henrietta coldly, and reflecting that the 
Countess was unpleasantly perverse. 'I really must stick to my point-that 
Isabel never encouraged the attentions of Lord Warburton.'
'My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my 
brother's capable of everything.'
'I don't know what your brother's capable of,' said Henrietta with dignity.
'It's not her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending 
him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought I 
would make him faithless?' the Countess continued with audacious 
insistence. 'However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The house 
is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces; 
I'm sure I shall see him yet.'
'Well,' said Henrietta after a little, with one of those inspirations which 
had made the fortune of her letters to the Interviewer, 'perhaps he'll be 
more successful with you than with Isabel!'
When she told her friend of the offer she had made Ralph Isabel replied 
that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It had 
always been her faith that at bottom Ralph and this young woman were made 
to understand each other. 'I don't care whether he understands me or not,' 
Henrietta declared. 'The great thing is that he shouldn't die in the cars.'
'He won't do that,' Isabel said, shaking her head with an extension of 
faith.
'He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't know what 
you want to do.'
'I want to be alone,' said Isabel.
'You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home.'
'Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators.'
'Do you call it a comedy, Isabel Archer?' Henrietta rather grimly asked.
'The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes me 
uncomfortable.'
Henrietta engaged in this act for a while. 'You're like the stricken deer, 
seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of 
helplessness!' she broke out.
'I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.'
'It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come on 
purpose, to leave you just as I find you.'
'You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed,' Isabel said.
'Very mild refreshment-sour lemonade! I want you to promise me something.'
'I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a solemn 
one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping it.'
'You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the greatest. 
Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what I want you to 
promise.'
'The worst? What do you call the worst?'
'Before your character gets spoiled.'
'Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled,' Isabel answered, 
smiling. 'I'm taking very good care of it. I'm extremely struck,' she 
added, turning away, 'with the off-hand way in which you speak of a woman's 
leaving her husband. It's easy to see you've never had one!'
'Well,' said Henrietta as if she were beginning an argument, 'nothing is 
more common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we 
must look in the future.' Her argument, however, does not concern this 
history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to Ralph 
Touchett that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might designate, 
and Ralph immediately pulled himself together for departure. Isabel went to 
see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta had made. 
It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get rid of them all.
For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low 
tone, with a quick smile: 'My dear Ralph-!'
It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the 
same way, jocosely, ingenuously: 'I've seen less of you than I might, but 
it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a great deal about you.'
'I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done.'
'From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other people 
speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and that's so flat.'
'I might have seen more of you certainly,' Isabel said. 'But when one's 
married one has so much occupation.'
'Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England I shall be 
able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.' He continued to 
talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded in making the 
assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to his term being near, 
to the probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he preferred 
it so, Isabel was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently distinct 
without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had been well 
enough for the earlier time, though about this, as about his other affairs, 
Ralph had never been egotistic. Isabel spoke of his journey, of the stages 
into which he should divide it, of the precautions he should take. 
'Henrietta's my greatest precaution,' he went on. 'The conscience of that 
woman's sublime.'
'Certainly she'll be very conscientious.'
'Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that she 
goes with me. There's a conception of duty for you.'
'Yes, it's a generous one,' said Isabel, 'and it makes me deeply ashamed.
I ought to go with you, you know.'
'Your husband wouldn't like that.'
'No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same.'
'I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause 
of disagreement between a lady and her husband!'
'That's why I don't go,' said Isabel simply-yet not very lucidly.
Ralph understood well enough, however. 'I should think so, with all those 
occupations you speak of.'
'It isn't that. I'm afraid,' said Isabel. After a pause she repeated, as if 
to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: 'I'm afraid.'
Ralph could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely deliberate-
apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public penance for a 
fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her words simply an 
attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this might be, Ralph could 
not resist so easy an opportunity. 'Afraid of your husband?'
'Afraid of myself! ' she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and 
then added: 'If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty. 
That's what women are expected to be.'
'Ah yes,' laughed Ralph; 'but to make up for it there's always some man 
awfully afraid of some woman!'
She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different turn. 
'With Henrietta at the head of your little band,' she exclaimed abruptly, 
'there will be nothing left for Mr Goodwood!'
'Ah, my dear Isabel,' Ralph answered, 'he's used to that. There is nothing 
left for Mr Goodwood.'
She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They 
stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. 'You've been 
my best friend,' she said.
'It was for you that I wanted-that I wanted to live. But I'm of no use to 
you.'
Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again. 
She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. 'If you 
should send for me I'd come,' she said at last.
'Your husband won't consent to that.'
'Oh yes, I can arrange it.'
'I shall keep that for my last pleasure!' said Ralph.
In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that 
evening Caspar Goodwood came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the first 
to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Gilbert Osmond, who 
almost always was present when his wife received. They sat down together, 
and Osmond, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed possessed with a 
kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his legs crossed, lounging 
and chatting, while Goodwood, more restless, but not at all lively, shifted 
his position, played with his hat, made the little sofa creak beneath him. 
Osmond's face wore a sharp, aggressive smile; he was as a man whose 
perceptions have been quickened by good news. He remarked to Goodwood that 
he was sorry they were to lose him; he himself should particularly miss 
him. He saw so few intelligent men-they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. 
He must be sure to come back; there was something very refreshing, to an 
inveterate Italian like himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.
'I'm very fond of Rome, you know,' Osmond said, 'but there's nothing I like 
better than to meet people who haven't that superstition. The modern 
world's after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet are not 
at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If 
they're the children of the future we're willing to die young. Of course 
the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything 
that's really new-not the mere pretence of it. There's nothing new, 
unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms 
that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of 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 to-day the air has grown so dense 
that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you-!' 
With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee 
and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. 'I'm going to 
say something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me have 
the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because-because you've reconciled 
us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain number of people 
like you-a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as well as for myself, 
you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't I speak for her? We're 
as united, you know, as the candlestick and the snuffers. Am I assuming too 
much when I say that I think I've understood from you that your occupations 
have been-a-commercial? There's a danger in that, you know; but it's the 
way you have escaped that strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment 
seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean 
is that you might have been-a-what I was mentioning just now. The whole 
American world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've 
something about you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; 
the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you 
again.'
I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give 
ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he 
usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more 
closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather 
odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what he was 
about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness 
not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Goodwood had 
only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he scarcely knew where 
the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew what Osmond was talking 
about; he wanted to be alone with Isabel, and that idea spoke louder to him 
than her husband's perfectly-pitched voice. He watched her talking with 
other people and wondered when she would be at liberty and whether he might 
ask her to go into one of the other rooms. His humour was not, like 
Osmond's, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in his 
consciousness of things. Up to this time he had not disliked Osmond 
personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and 
more than he had supposed like the person whom Isabel Archer would 
naturally marry. His host had won in the open field a great advantage over 
him, and Goodwood had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved to 
underrate him on that account. He had not tried positively to think well of 
him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even in the 
days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, 
Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant 
personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure 
which it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But 
he only half trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond 
should lavish refinements of any sort upon him. It made him suspect that he 
found some private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general 
impression that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of 
perversity. He knew indeed that Osmond could have no reason to wish him 
evil; he had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme 
advantage and could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It 
was true that Goodwood had at times grimly wished he were dead and would 
have liked to kill him; but Osmond had no means of knowing this, for 
practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing 
inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order 
to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated 
it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no better 
proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his soul when he heard 
Osmond speak of his wife's feelings as if he were commissioned to answer 
for them.
That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this 
evening; he had been conscious that Osmond made more of a point even than 
usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo Roccanera. 
He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his wife had all 
things in sweet community and it were as natural to each of them to say 
'we' as to say 'I.' In all this there was an air of intention that had 
puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect for his 
comfort that Mrs Osmond's relations with her husband were none of his 
business. He had no proof whatever that her husband misrepresented her, and 
if he judged her by the surface of things was bound to believe that she 
liked her life. She had never given him the faintest sign of discontent. 
Miss Stackpole had told him that she had lost her illusions, but writing 
for the papers had made Miss Stackpole sensational. She was too fond of 
early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been much on her 
guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, 
it may be said for her, would have been quite against her conscience. She 
had now seen the reality of Isabel's situation, and it had inspired her 
with a just reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful 
form of assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense 
of her wrongs. Miss Stackpole continued to take a deep interest in the 
state of Mr Goodwood's feelings, but she showed it at present only by 
sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American 
journals, of which she received several by every post and which she always 
perused with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she 
placed in an envelope addressed to Mr Goodwood, which she left with her own 
hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Isabel: hadn't he 
come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the least 
authorised to think Mrs Osmond unhappy; but the very absence of 
authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harshness with 
which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now recognised 
that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing more for him. He 
had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth; apparently he could not 
even be trusted to respect her if she were unhappy. He was hopeless, 
helpless, useless. To this last character she had called his attention by 
her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome. He had no objection whatever 
to doing what he could for her cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to 
think that of all the services she might have asked of him this was the one 
she had been eager to select. There had been no danger of her choosing one 
that would have kept him in Rome.
To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave-her to-
morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge that he 
was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no knowledge; she 
was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, 
which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he 
knew there are disappointments that last as long as life. Osmond went on 
talking; Goodwood was vaguely aware that he was touching again upon his 
perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a moment that the man 
had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible that without malice he 
should have selected so unusual a topic. But what did it matter, after all, 
whether he were demonic or not, and whether she loved him or hated him? She 
might hate him to the death without one's gaining a straw one's self. 'You 
travel, by the by, with Ralph Touchett,' Osmond said. 'I suppose that means 
you'll move slowly?'
'I don't know. I shall do just as he likes.'
'You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you must really 
let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we feel. Touchett 
has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than once as if he 
would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it's worse than an 
imprudence for people in that state to travel; it's a kind of indelicacy. I 
wouldn't for the world be under such an obligation to Touchett as he has 
been to-to my wife and me. Other people inevitably have to look after him, 
and every one isn't so generous as you.'
'I've nothing else to do,' Caspar said dryly.
Osmond looked at him a moment askance. 'You ought to marry, and then you'd 
have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you wouldn't be quite so 
available for deeds of mercy.'
'Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?' the young man 
mechanically asked.
'Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't always 
active; it's often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my 
wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music, we 
walk, we drive-we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I delight, 
to this hour, in my wife's conversation. If you're ever bored take my 
advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that case; but 
you'll never bore yourself. You'll always have something to say to yourself-
always have a subject of reflection.'
'I'm not bored,' said Goodwood. 'I've plenty to think about and to say to 
myself.'
'More than to say to others!' Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh. 'Where 
shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned Touchett to his natural 
caretakers-I believe his mother's at last coming back to look after him. 
That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a finish-! Perhaps 
you'll spend the summer in England?'
'I don't know. I've no plans.'
'Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free.'
'Oh yes, I'm very free.'
'Free to come back to Rome I hope,' said Osmond as he saw a group of new 
visitors enter the room. 'Remember that when you do come we count on you!'
Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without his 
having a chance to speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several 
associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy 
with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an 
intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was 
absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear hospitable 
smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help her to 
entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he opposed 
but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked to the few 
people he knew, who found him for the first time rather self-contradictory. 
This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood, though he often contradicted 
others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera, and it was usually very 
good. Under cover of the music he managed to contain himself; but toward 
the end, when he saw the people beginning to go, he drew near to Isabel and 
asked her in a low tone if he might not speak to her in one of the other 
rooms, which he had just assured himself was empty. She smiled as if she 
wished to oblige him but found herself absolutely prevented. 'I'm afraid 
it's impossible. People are saying good-night, and I must be where they can 
see me.'
'I shall wait till they are all gone then.'
She hesitated a moment.
'Ah, that will be delightful!' she exclaimed.
And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several people, 
at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Countess Gemini, who was 
never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no consciousness that 
the entertainment was over; she had still a little circle of gentlemen in 
front of the fire, who every now and then broke into a united laugh. Osmond 
had disappeared - he never bade good-bye to people; and as the Countess was 
extending her range, according to her custom at this period of the evening, 
Isabel sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a little apart; she too appeared to 
wish her sister-in-law would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers 
depart in peace.
'May I not say a word to you now?' Goodwood presently asked her.
She got up immediately, smiling. 'Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you 
like.' They went together, leaving the Countess with her little circle, and 
for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them spoke. 
Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room slowly 
fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to 
wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the passion he 
had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and made 
things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and blurred, and 
through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with gleaming eyes 
and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would have perceived her 
smile was fixed and a trifle forced-that she was frightened at what she saw 
in his own face. 'I suppose you wish to bid me good-bye?' she said.
'Yes - but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome,' he answered with 
almost plaintive honesty.
'I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how 
kind I think you.'
For a moment more he said nothing. 'With a few words like that you make me 
go.'
'You must come back some day,' she brightly returned. 'Some day? You mean 
as long a time hence as possible.' 'Oh no; I don't mean all that.'
'What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go,'
Goodwood added.
'Come back whenever you like,' said Isabel with attempted lightness.
'I don't care a straw for your cousin!' Caspar broke out.
'Is that what you wished to tell me?'
'No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything. I wanted to ask you-' he 
paused a moment, and then-'what have you really made of your life?' he 
said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but she 
said nothing, and he went on: 'I can't understand, I can't penetrate you! 
What am I to believe-what do you want me to think?' Still she said nothing; 
she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to ease. 'I'm 
told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it. That would be 
something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and you're somehow so 
still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed. You conceal 
everything; I haven't really come near you.'
'You come very near,' Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
'And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?'
'You ask a great deal.'
'Yes-I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I shall 
never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business.' He had 
spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a considerate form 
to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it was his last 
chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool 
whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration 
to his low voice. 'You're perfectly inscrutable, and that's what makes me 
think you've something to hide. I tell you I don't care a straw for your 
cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him. I mean that it isn't 
because I like him that I go away with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and 
you should have asked me. If you should ask me I'd go to Siberia to-morrow. 
Why do you want me to leave the place? You must have some reason for that; 
if you were as contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd 
rather know the truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here 
for nothing. That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came 
because I wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I 
haven't thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go 
away. But if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a 
single moment, is there? If you're really hurt-if he hurts you-nothing I 
say will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. 
I thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't say 
it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last time-let 
me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say that, I know; and you've no 
right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen, you're always 
thinking of something else. After this I must go, of course; so I shall at 
least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can't 
judge by your husband,' he went on irrelevantly, almost incoherently; 'I 
don't understand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he tell me 
that? What business is it of mine? When I say that to you, you look 
strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you've something to hide. It's 
none of my business-very true. But I love you,' said Caspar Goodwood.
As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which 
they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning. 'You've behaved so 
well; don't spoil it,' she uttered softly.
'No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I love 
you as I've never loved you.'
'I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.'
'You can't help it-of course not. You would if you could, but you can't, 
unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing-nothing, that 
is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole satisfaction: that you tell me-that 
you tell me-!'
'That I tell you what?'
'Whether I may pity you.'
'Should you like that?' Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
'To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something.
I'd give my life to it.'
She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes. They 
rested a moment on his. 'Don't give your life to it; but give a thought to 
it every now and then.' And with that she went back to the Countess Gemini.



Chapter 49

Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the 
evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents, 
and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it. 
Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability, and 
to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been mentioned 
that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord Warburton had 
left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel (whom, to do her 
justice, she came immediately to see) her first utterance had been an 
enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she appeared to 
hold her dear friend accountable.
'Please don't talk of him,' said Isabel for answer; 'we've heard so much of 
him of late.'
Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and smiled 
at the left corner of her mouth. 'You've heard, yes. But you must remember 
that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be able to 
congratulate Pansy.'
'You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.'
'How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?' Madame Merle 
asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation of good 
humour.
Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too. 
'You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to 
watch the affair.'
'I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?'
'You had better ask Pansy,' said Isabel.
'I shall ask her what you've said to her.'
These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused on 
Isabel's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a critical 
one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto; she had 
never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling. But 
apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since she now 
had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation which even 
her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had suffered a 
disappointment which excited Isabel's surprise-our heroine having no 
knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy's marriage; and she betrayed it 
in a manner which quickened Mrs Osmond's alarm. More clearly than ever 
before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not where, 
in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong, 
definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal, 
the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny. She was nearer to her 
than Isabel had yet discovered, and her nearness was not the charming 
accident she had so long supposed. The sense of accident indeed had died 
within her that day when she happened to be struck with the manner in which 
the wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No definite 
suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was enough to make her view 
this friend with a different eye, to have been led to reflect that there 
was more intention in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the 
time. Ah yes, there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel 
said to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What 
was it that brought home to her that Madame Merle's intention had not been 
good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which 
married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's 
challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge 
which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless 
vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's 
professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to 
interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere 
with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in casting 
doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several years of good 
offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a strange truth was 
filtering into her soul. Madame Merle's interest was identical with 
Osmond's: that was enough. 'I think Pansy will tell you nothing that will 
make you more angry,' she said in answer to her companion's last remark.
I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the 
situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?'
'I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it 
rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I've nothing more 
to say or to hear. I've no doubt,' Isabel added, 'that he'll be very happy 
to discuss the subject with you.'
'I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.'
'As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't 
apply to me for information.'
'It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my heart 
on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do-it satisfied the 
imagination.'
'Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.'
'You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not directly. 
But when one's such an old friend one can't help having something at stake. 
You forget how long I've known Pansy. You mean, of course,' Madame Merle 
added, 'that you are one of the persons concerned.'
'No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all.'
Madame Merle hesitated a little. 'Ah yes, your work's done.'
'Take care what you say,' said Isabel very gravely.
'Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your 
husband judges you severely.'
Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with 
bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle's informing her that 
Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife that 
struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was meant for 
insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was 
exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet. What 
touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was the 
knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his 
thoughts. 'Should you like to know how I judge him?' she asked at last.
'No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to know.'
There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel 
thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her. 
'Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't despair,' she said abruptly, 
with a desire that this should close their interview.
But Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only 
gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the 
air a faint, agreeable fragrance. 'I don't despair; I feel encouraged. And 
I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I know 
you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that one can 
count upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in it.'
'What truth do you speak of?' Isabel asked, wondering.
'Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own 
movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to 
please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite of 
having lost a little of it,' Madame Merle continued with a smile, 'to ask 
such a question as that!' She sat looking at her friend, to judge the 
effect of her words, and then went on: 'Now don't be heroic, don't be 
unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in 
speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven't 
the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don't you 
see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's true that he 
doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract it; he 
has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't alter the fact 
that it would make a difference in his view of his daughter's prospects to 
know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord Warburton simply got tired of 
the poor child, that's one thing, and it's a pity. If he gave her up to 
please you it's another. That's a pity too, but in a different way. Then, 
in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased-to 
simply seeing your stepdaughter married. Let him off-let us have him!'
Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and 
apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew 
pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her 
visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was 
not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. 'Who are you-
what are you?' Isabel murmured. 'What have you to do with my husband?' It 
was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as if she had loved 
him.
'Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however, 
that I shall do so.'
'What have you to do with me?' Isabel went on.
Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes 
from Isabel's face. 'Everything!' she answered.
Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a 
prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's eyes seemed only a 
darkness. 'Oh misery!' she murmured at last; and she fell back, covering 
her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave that 
Mrs Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married her. Before she uncovered 
her face again that lady had left the room.
Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under 
the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the 
daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for 
in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural 
catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for 
centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into 
the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself 
and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter's 
day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost 
smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman 
record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily 
carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly 
acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion. But she had 
grown to think of it chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This 
was what came to her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, 
transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in 
endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered 
prayers. There was no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the 
firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, 
could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor 
have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy, as 
we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess Gemini, 
balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage; but she 
still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her mood and where it 
suited the place. On such occasions she had several resorts; the most 
accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which edges the 
wide grassy space before the high, cold front of Saint John Lateran, whence 
you look across the Campagna at the far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount 
and at that mighty plain, between, which is still so full of all that has 
passed from it. After the departure of her cousin and his companions she 
roamed more than usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar 
shrine to the other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she 
felt the touch of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome 
behind, rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to 
tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where the 
fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the flower-
freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and gazed through 
the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene-at 
the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, 
the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloud-
shadows had the lightness of a blush.
On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution not 
to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this lady's 
image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an almost 
childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of 
several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. 
She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best 
of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. She had 
desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her having 
flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success this elementary 
privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it was not wicked-in the historic 
sense-to be even deeply false; for that was what Madame Merle had been 
deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt Lydia had made this discovery long 
before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Isabel had flattered herself 
at this time that she had a much richer view of things, especially of the 
spontaneity of her own career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, 
than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she 
wanted; she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection 
which could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much 
have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making 
passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great artist 
as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of marriage, too 
ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage but had not 
desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain, and Isabel 
asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her naturally a long 
time to discover, and even then her discovery was imperfect. It came back 
to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed to like her from their 
first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly affectionate after Mr 
Touchett's death and after learning that her young friend had been subject 
to the good old man's charity. She had found her profit not in the gross 
device of borrowing money, but in the more refined idea of introducing one 
of her intimates to the young woman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had 
naturally chosen her closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to 
Isabel that Gilbert occupied this position. She found herself confronted in 
this manner with the conviction that the man in the world whom she had 
supposed to be the least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, 
for her money. Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she 
had thought a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this 
particular injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been 
saying to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a 
woman for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least 
he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her 
money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let her 
go? Ah, if Mr Touchett's great charity would but help her 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 to-day in regard to his too 
zealous benefactress, and what expression must they have found on the part 
of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but a characteristic, fact 
that before Isabel returned from her silent drive she had broken its 
silence by the soft exclamation:
'Poor, poor Madame Merle!'
Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same afternoon 
she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of time-softened 
damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the lady to whom it 
referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which we once paid a visit in 
company with the discreet Mr Rosier. In that apartment, towards six 
o'clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his hostess stood before him as 
Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion commemorated in this history with 
an emphasis appropriate not so much to its apparent as to its real 
importance.
'I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it,' said Madame Merle.
'Did I say I was unhappy?' Osmond asked with a face grave enough to suggest 
that he might have been.
'No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.'
'Don't talk about gratitude,' he returned dryly. 'And don't aggravate me,' 
he added in a moment.
Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white 
hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to 
the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. 'On your side, 
don't try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my thoughts.'
'I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite enough of my 
own.'
'That's because they're so delightful.'
Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at his 
companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an expression 
of fatigue. 'You do aggravate me,' he remarked in a moment. 'I'm very 
tired.'
'Eh moi donc!' cried Madame Merle.
'With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my own 
fault.'
'When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's a 
great gift.'
'Do you call it an interest?' Osmond enquired with detachment.
'Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.'
'The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.'
'You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so brilliant.'
'Damn my brilliancy!' he thoughtfully murmured. 'How little, after all, you 
know me!'
'If I don't know you I know nothing,' smiled Madame Merle. 'You've the 
feeling of complete success.'
'No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me.'
'I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself 
more too.'
Osmond just hung fire. 'I wish you'd express yourself less!'
'You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never been a 
chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to say 
to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself,' she went on 
with a change of tone.
'Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means to 
carry out her ideas.'
'Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.'
'Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.'
'She was unable to show me any this morning,' said Madame Merle. 'She 
seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was 
completely bewildered.'
'You had better say at once that she was pathetic.'
'Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much.'
He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one foot 
rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. 'I should like to know 
what's the matter with you,' he said at last.
'The matter-the matter-!' And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went on 
with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a clear 
sky: 'The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to weep, and 
that I can't!'
'What good would it do you to weep?'
'It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.'
'If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you shed them.'
'Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a wolf. 
I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile this morning; I 
was horrid,' she said.
'If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably didn't 
perceive it,' Osmond answered.
'It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I was 
full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know. You've 
not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul.'
'It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition,' Osmond said. 
'It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your influence upon 
her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle? How can it suffer 
alteration?'
'I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it can 
perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which was a very 
good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it. You're very 
bad,' she added with gravity in her emphasis.
'Is this the way we're to end?' Osmond asked with the same studied 
coldness.
'I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did! How do bad people end?-
especially as to their common crimes. You have made me as bad as yourself.'
'I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,' said Osmond, 
his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.
Madame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and she 
was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the pleasure 
of meeting her. The glow of her eye turned sombre; her smile betrayed a 
painful effort. 'Good enough for anything that I've done with myself? I 
suppose that's what you mean.'
'Good enough to be always charming!' Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.
'Oh God!' his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe freshness, 
she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on Isabel's part in 
the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her hands.
'Are you going to weep after all?' Osmond asked; and on her remaining 
motionless he went on:
'Have I ever complained to you?'
She dropped her hand quickly. 'No, you've taken your revenge otherwise-you 
have taken it on her.'
Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling and 
might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the 
heavenly powers. 'Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at 
bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.'
'Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph too much.'
'I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph.'
'You've made your wife afraid of you.'
Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his 
knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He 
had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation of anything, even of 
time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him 
at moments an irritating person to converse with. 'Isabel's not afraid of 
me, and it's not what I wish,' he said at last. 'To what do you want to 
provoke me when you say such things as that?'
'I've thought over all the harm you can do me,' Madame Merle answered. 
'Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she 
feared.'
'You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not responsible 
for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at all: you're 
capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of me that I can 
see,' he went on; 'how then should I have made her? You're at least as 
brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish; one might suppose 
you knew me by this time.' He got up as he spoke and walked to the chimney, 
where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them for the 
first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which it was 
covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then, still 
holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he pursued: 'You always see 
too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I'm much 
simpler than you think.'
'I think you're very simple.' And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup. 
'I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's only 
since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what you 
have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be very 
careful of that precious object.'
'It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,' said Osmond dryly as he put it 
down. 'If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly rash of 
you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself; I 
thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked 
that she should like me.'
'That she should like you so much!'
'So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should 
adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.'
'I never adored you,' said Madame Merle.
'Ah, but you pretended to!'
'It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,' Madame 
Merle went on.
'My wife has declined-declined to do anything of the sort,' said Osmond. 
'If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's hardly for 
her.'
'The tragedy's for me!' Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long low sigh 
but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her mantel-shelf. 
'It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false 
position.'
'You express yourself like a sentence in a copy-book. We must look for our 
comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least my child 
does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven't a 
fault to find with her.'
'Ah,' she said softly, 'if I had a child-!'
Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, 'The children of others 
may be a great interest!' he announced.
'You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all that 
holds us together.'
'Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?' Osmond asked.
'No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that,' Madame Merle 
pursued, 'that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be my work,' she 
added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing to its 
habit of smoothness.
Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former 
article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, 'On the whole, I think,' 
he said, 'you had better leave it to me.'
After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the mantel-
shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the existence of 
a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. 'Have I been so vile all 
for nothing?' she vaguely wailed.



Chapter 50

As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments Isabel 
occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics and to 
give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who professed 
to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, 
and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had been 
mounds of modern drapery. She was not an antiquarian; but she was so 
delighted to be in Rome that she only desired to float with the current. 
She would gladly have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the 
Baths of Titus if it had been a condition of her remaining at Palazzo 
Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe cicerone; she used to visit 
the ruins chiefly because they offered an excuse for talking about other 
matters than the love-affairs of the ladies of Florence, as to which her 
companion was never weary of offering information. It must be added that 
during these visits the Countess forbade herself every form of active 
research; her preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that 
everything was most interesting. It was in this manner that she had 
hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who-
with all the respect that she owed her-could not see why she should not 
descend from the vehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance 
to ramble that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be 
divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents' guest 
might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the 
Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat-a mild afternoon 
in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of 
spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left 
her companions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to those 
desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and 
where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep 
crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled 
arena. It made an intermission too, for the Countess often asked more from 
one's attention than she gave in return; and Isabel believed that when she 
was alone with her niece she let the dust gather for a moment on the 
ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so remained below therefore, while 
Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt to the steep brick staircase at the 
foot of which the custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great 
enclosure was half in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone 
of the great blocks of travertine-the latent colour that is the only living 
element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a 
tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a 
multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became 
aware that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, 
had turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with a 
certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before perceived 
to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such an 
attitude, 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 his watch and sat down upon a broken block.
'It's very soon told,' said Edward Rosier. 'I've sold all my bibelots!' 
Isabel gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had 
told her he had had all his teeth drawn. 'I've sold them by auction at the 
Hotel Drouot,' he went on. 'The sale took place three days ago, and they've 
telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent.'
'I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.'
'I have the money instead-fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr Osmond think me 
rich enough now?'
'Is it for that you did it?' Isabel asked gently.
'For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I think of. 
I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the sale; I 
couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed me. But I 
put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you I 
have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my pocket, and he can't say 
I'm poor!' the young man exclaimed defiantly.
'He'll say now that you're not wise,' said Isabel, as if Gilbert Osmond had 
never said this before.
Rosier gave her a sharp look. 'Do you mean that without my bibelots I'm 
nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That's what they 
told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn't seen 
her!'
'My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,' said Isabel very kindly.
'You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I shouldn't.' And 
he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had the 
air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and is full 
half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful suspicion 
that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons still have the 
perversity to think him diminutive. 'I know what happened here while I was 
away,' he went on. 'What does Mr Osmond expect after she has refused Lord 
Warburton?'
Isabel debated. 'That she'll marry another nobleman.'
'What other nobleman?'
'One that he'll pick out.'
Rosier slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket.
'You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at me.'
'I didn't mean to laugh,' said Isabel. 'I laugh very seldom. Now you had 
better go away.'
'I feel very safe!' Rosier declared without moving. This might be; but it 
evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather a loud 
voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and looking all 
round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Isabel 
saw him change colour; there was more of an audience than he had suspected. 
She turned and perceived that her two companions had returned from their 
excursion. 'You must really go away,' she said quickly.
'Ah, my dear lady, pity me!' Edward Rosier murmured in a voice strangely at 
variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then he added 
eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by a happy 
thought: 'Is that lady the Countess Gemini? I've a great desire to be 
presented to her.'
Isabel looked at him a moment. 'She has no influence with her brother.'
'Ah, what a monster you make him out!' And Rosier faced the Countess, who 
advanced, in front of Pansy, with an animation partly due perhaps to the 
fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in conversation 
with a very pretty young man.
'I'm glad you've kept your enamels!' Isabel called as she left him. She 
went straight to Pansy, who, on seeing Edward Rosier, had stopped short, 
with lowered eyes. 'We'll go back to the carriage,' she said gently.
'Yes, it's getting late,' Pansy returned more gently still. And she went on 
without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back.
Isabel, however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had 
immediately taken place between the Countess and Mr Rosier. He had removed 
his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself, 
while the Countess's expressive back displayed to Isabel's eye a gracious 
inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost to sight, for 
Isabel and Pansy took their places again in the carriage. Pansy, who faced 
her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her lap; then she raised 
them and rested them on Isabel's. There shone out of each of them a little 
melancholy ray-a spark of timid passion which touched Isabel to the heart. 
At the same time a wave of envy passed over her soul, as she compared the 
tremulous longing, the definite ideal of the child with her own dry 
despair. 'Poor little Pansy!' she affectionately said.
'Oh never mind!' Pansy answered in the tone of eager apology.
And then there was a silence; the Countess was a long time coming. 'Did you 
show your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?' Isabel asked at last.
'Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.'
'And you're not tired, I hope.'
'Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired.'
The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman to 
go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently returned 
with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not to wait-she 
would come home in a cab!'
About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves 
with Mr Rosier, Isabel, going rather late to dress for dinner, found Pansy 
sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her; she got up 
from her low chair. 'Pardon my taking the liberty,' she said in a small 
voice. 'It will be the last-for some time.'
Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited, 
frightened look. 'You're not going away!' Isabel exclaimed.
'I'm going to the convent.'
'To the convent?'
Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round Isabel 
and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment, perfectly 
still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver of her little 
body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel nevertheless 
pressed her. 'Why are you going to the convent?'
'Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now and 
then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the world, is 
very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little seclusion-a 
little reflection.' Pansy spoke in short detached sentences, as if she 
could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph of self-
control: 'I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world this 
winter.'
Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a 
larger meaning than the girl herself knew. 'When was this decided?' she 
asked. 'I've heard nothing of it.'
'Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be too 
much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a 
quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks. It's only for a few 
weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who 
used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being 
educated. I'm very fond of little girls,' said Pansy with an effect of 
diminutive grandeur. 'And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I shall 
be very quiet and think a great deal.'
Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck.
'Think of me sometimes.'
'Ah, come and see me soon!' cried Pansy; and the cry was very different 
from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.
Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how 
little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long, 
tender kiss.
Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had 
arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to the 
drawing-room before dinner she found the Countess Gemini alone, and this 
lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss of the 
head, 'En voila, ma chere, une pose!' But if it was an affectation she was 
at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could only dimly perceive 
that he had more traditions than she supposed. It had become her habit to 
be so careful as to what she said to him that, strange as it may appear, 
she hesitated, for several minutes after he had come in, to allude to his 
daughter's sudden departure: she spoke of it only after they were seated at 
table. But she had forbidden herself ever to ask Osmond a question. All she 
could do was to make a declaration, and there was one that came very 
naturally. 'I shall miss Pansy very much.'
He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of 
flowers in the middle of the table. 'Ah yes,' he said at last, 'I had 
thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I 
dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I 
can make you understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about 
it. That's why I had not spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter 
into it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part of the 
education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and fair; she 
should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present time she is 
liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy's a little dusty, a little 
dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing rabble 
that calls itself society-one should take her out of it occasionally. 
Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of 
her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among those tranquil 
virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several of them are 
noble. She will have her books and her drawing, she will have her piano. 
I've made the most liberal arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; 
there's just to be a certain little sense of sequestration. She'll have 
time to think, and there's something I want her to think about.' Osmond 
spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he 
were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man 
not so much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words-almost 
into pictures-to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the 
picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he went 
on: 'The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great 
institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an essential need in 
families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school of 
repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world,' he added; 
'I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This one's very 
well, as she should take it, and she may think of it as much as she likes. 
Only she must think of it in the right way.'
Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it indeed 
intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her husband's desire 
to be effective was capable of going-to the point of playing theoretic 
tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not understand 
his purpose, no-not wholly; but she understood it better than he supposed 
or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the whole proceeding was an 
elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and destined to act upon her 
imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden and arbitrary, something 
unexpected and refined; to mark the difference between his sympathies and 
her own, and show that if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of 
art it was natural he should be more and more careful about the finishing 
touches. If he wished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck 
a chill into Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood 
and had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who 
were very fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite 
hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the 
impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough. The 
old Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination, and as 
her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of her husband's 
genius-she sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowers-poor little 
Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond wished it to be known that he 
shrank from nothing, and his wife found it hard to pretend to eat her 
dinner. There was a certain relief presently, in hearing the high, strained 
voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess too, apparently, had been thinking 
the thing out, but had arrived at a different conclusion from Isabel.
'It's very absurd, my dear Osmond,' she said, 'to invent so many pretty 
reasons for poor Pansy's banishment. Why don't you say at once that you 
want to get her out of my way? Haven't you discovered that I think very 
well of Mr Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me simpaticissimo. He has made 
me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've made up your 
mind that with those convictions I'm dreadful company for Pansy.'
Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good humoured. 
'My dear Amy,' he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece of 
gallantry, 'I don't know anything about your convictions, but if I 
suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to banish 
you.'



Chapter 51

The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure of 
her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received a 
telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of Mrs 
Touchett's authorship. 'Ralph cannot last many days,' it ran, 'and if 
convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only 
if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good 
deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to see 
whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there's no other 
company.' Isabel was prepared for this news, having received from Henrietta 
Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England with her 
appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive, but she had 
managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which, 
as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She added 
that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one, inasmuch 
as Mr Goodwood, who had been of no earthly use, was quite as ailing, in a 
different way, as Mr Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she had been 
obliged to surrender the field to Mrs Touchett, who had just returned from 
America and had promptly given her to understand that she didn't wish any 
interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after 
Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical condition and 
suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs 
Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgement of this admonition, and the 
only further news Isabel received from her was the second telegram I have 
just quoted.
Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it 
into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband's study. Here 
she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went in. 
Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume before 
him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of 
small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been copying 
from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and fine 
brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of 
immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned 
toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.
'Excuse me for disturbing you,' she said.
'When I come to your room I always knock,' he answered, going on with his 
work.
'I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying.'
'Ah, I don't believe that,' said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a 
magnifying glass. 'He was dying when we married; he'll outlive us all.'
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism 
of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention: 
'My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.'
'Why must you go to Gardencourt?' Osmond asked in the tone of impartial 
curiosity.
'To see Ralph before he dies.'
To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his 
chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no 
negligence.
'I don't see the need of it,' he said at last. 'He came to see you here. 
didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I 
tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you 
tell me it's not to have been the last. Ah, you're not grateful!'
'What am I to be grateful for?'
Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from 
his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife. 'For 
my not having interfered while he was here.'
'Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you 
didn't like it. I was very glad when he went away.'
'Leave him alone then. Don't run after him.'
Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing. 
'I must go to England,' she said, with a full consciousness that her tone 
might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly obstinate.
'I shall not like it if you do,' Osmond remarked.
'Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing do 
or don't do. You pretend to think I lie.'
Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. 'That's why you must go 
then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.'
'I know nothing about revenge.'
'I do,' said Osmond. 'Don't give me an occasion.'
'You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit 
some folly.'
'I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.'
'If I disobeyed you?' said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of 
mildness.
'Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the most 
deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.'
'How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three 
minutes ago.'
'You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we 
should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.' And he stood there as if 
he expected to see her withdraw.
But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she still 
wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary degree, of 
making her feel this need. There was something in her imagination he could 
always appeal to against her judgement. 'You've no reason for such a wish,' 
said Isabel, 'and I've every reason for going. I can't tell you how unjust 
you seem to me. But I think you know. It's your own opposition that's 
calculated. It's malignant.'
She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the 
sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no 
surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed his 
wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to 
draw her out. 'It's all the more intense then,' he answered. And he added 
almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel: 'This is a very 
important matter.' She recognised that; she was fully conscious of the 
weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a 
crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on. 
'You say I've no reason? I have the very best. I dislike, from the bottom 
of my soul, what you intend to do. It's dishonourable; it's indelicate; 
it's indecent. Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I'm under no 
obligation to make concessions to him. I've already made the very 
handsomest. Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins and 
needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I expected him to 
go. I've never liked him and he has never liked me. That's why you like him-
because he hates me,' said Osmond with a quick, barely audible tremor in 
his voice. 'I've an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do. She 
should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to 
sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing 
to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about us, but I assure you 
that we, Mrs Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you 
appear to have found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're 
divorced or separated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to 
me than any human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable 
proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You don't 
like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing, because-
because-' And he paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say 
which would be very much to the point. 'Because I think we should accept 
the consequences of our actions, and what I value most in life is the 
honour of a thing!'
He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out 
of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick emotion; the 
resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a 
mesh of fine threads. His last words were not command, they constituted a 
kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his 
part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something 
transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one's 
country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious-the 
observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling 
as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet separated 
in act. Isabel had not changed; her old passion for justice still abode 
within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her husband's 
blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment 
promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to preserve 
appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was 
a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action-
a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been 
suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of 
Osmond's touch. If she must renounce, however, she would let him know she 
was a victim rather than a dupe. 'I know you're a master of the art of 
mockery,' she said. 'How can you speak of an indissoluble union-how can you 
speak of your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of 
falsity? Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous 
suspicion in your heart?'
'It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.'
'We don't live decently together!' cried Isabel.
'Indeed we don't if you go to England.'
'That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more.'
He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long 
enough in Italy to catch this trick. 'Ah, if you've come to threaten me I 
prefer my drawing.' And he walked back to his table, where he took up the 
sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it. 'I 
suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back,' said Isabel.
He turned quickly around, and she could see this movement at least was not 
designed. He looked at her a little, and then, 'Are you out of your mind?' 
he enquired.
'How can it be anything but a rupture?' she went on; 'especially if all you 
say is true?' She was unable to see how it could be anything but a rupture; 
she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.
He sat down before his table. 'I really can't argue with you on the 
hypothesis of your defying me,' he said. And he took up one of his little 
brushes again.
She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his 
whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she 
quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion, were all 
dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed 
her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any 
weakness. On her way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini 
standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a small 
collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had an 
open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page 
which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of Isabel's step 
she raised her head.
'Ah my dear,' she said, 'you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing 
book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness-! Do you think this would 
do me any good?'
Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without reading 
or understanding it. 'I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had bad news. My 
cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying.'
The Countess threw down her book. 'Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully 
sorry for you.'
'You would be sorrier still if you knew.'
'What is there to know? You look very badly,' the Countess added.
'You must have been with Osmond.'
Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an intimation 
that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her sister-in-law, 
and there can be no better proof of her present embarrassment than the fact 
that she almost clutched at this lady's fluttering attention. 'I've been 
with Osmond,' she said, while the Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
'I'm sure then he has been odious!' the Countess cried. 'Did he say he was 
glad poor Mr Touchett's dying?'
'He said it's impossible I should go to England.'
The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she 
already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to 
Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would go into mourning, and then 
there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a 
moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid, 
picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After 
all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had already 
overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Isabel's trouble 
to forget her own, and she saw that Isabel's trouble was deep. It seemed 
deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had no hesitation 
in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression of her sister-in-
law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous expectation, for if she 
had wished to see Osmond overtopped the conditions looked favourable now. 
Of course if Isabel should go to England she herself would immediately 
leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there with 
Osmond. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire to hear that Isabel would 
go to England.
'Nothing's impossible for you, my dear,' she said caressingly. 'Why else 
are you rich and clever and good?'
'Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.'
'Why does Osmond say it's impossible?' the Countess asked in a tone which 
sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.
From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew back; 
she disengaged her hand, which the Countess had affectionately taken. But 
she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. 'Because we're so happy 
together that we can't separate even for a fortnight.'
'Ah,' cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, 'when I want to make a 
journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!'
Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may 
appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is 
certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily to 
be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the great 
undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as this, when 
one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's husband. 'I'm 
afraid-yes, I'm afraid,' she said to herself more than once, stopping short 
in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her husband-his 
displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her own later 
judgement of her conduct-a consideration which had often held her in check; 
it was simply the violence there would be in going when Osmond wished her 
to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them, but nevertheless 
it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror to him that she 
should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he could feel an 
objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying 
to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage 
meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous 
vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank down on her sofa at last and 
buried her head in a pile of cushions.
When she raised her head again the Countess Gemini hovered before her. She 
had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin lips and 
her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She lived 
assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now she was 
leaning far out. 'I knocked,' she began, 'but you didn't answer me. So I 
ventured in. I've been looking at you for the last five minutes. You're 
very unhappy.'
'Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me.'
'Will you give me leave to try?' And the Countess sat down on the sofa 
beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something communicative 
and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have a deal to say, and it 
occurred to Isabel for the first time that her sister-in-law might say 
something really human. She made play with her glittering eyes, in which 
there was an unpleasant fascination. 'After all,' she soon resumed, 'I must 
tell you, to begin with, that I don't understand your state of mind. You 
seem to have so many scruples, so many reasons, so many ties. When I 
discovered, ten years ago, that my husband's dearest wish was to make me 
miserable of late he has simply let me alone-ah, it was a wonderful 
simplification! My poor Isabel, you're not simple enough.'
'No, I'm not simple enough,' said Isabel.
'There's something I want you to know,' the Countess declared-'because I 
think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you've guessed it. But 
if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you 
shouldn't do as you like.'
'What do you wish me to know?' Isabel felt a foreboding that made her heart 
beat faster. The Countess was about to justify herself, and this alone was 
portentous.
But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject. 'In 
your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really 
suspected?'
'I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know what you 
mean.
'That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman with 
such a pure mind!' cried the Countess.
Isabel slowly got up. 'You're going to tell me something horrible.'
'You can call it by whatever name you will!' And the Countess rose also, 
while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood a moment 
in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Isabel even then, of 
ugliness; after which she said: 'My first sister-in-law had no children.'
Isabel stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. 'Your first 
sister-in-law?'
'I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Osmond has been 
married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it mightn't 
be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have done so. 
The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died childless. It 
wasn't till after her death that Pansy arrived.'
Isabel's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale, 
vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to follow 
than she could see. 'Pansy's not my husband's child then?'
'Your husband's-in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one else's 
wife's. Ah, my good Isabel,' cried the Countess, 'with you one must dot 
one's i's!'
'I don't understand. Whose wife's?' Isabel asked.
'The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died-how long?-a dozen, more than 
fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Pansy, nor, knowing what he 
was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no reason why 
he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to fit on 
afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in childbirth, 
and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little girl from his 
sight for as long as possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife 
had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in quite another 
place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone, one August, 
because her health appeared to require the air, but where she was suddenly 
taken worse-fatally ill. The story passed, sufficiently; it was covered by 
the appearances so long as nobody heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. 
But of course I knew-without researches,' the Countess lucidly proceeded; 
'as also, you'll understand, without a word said between us-I mean between 
Osmond and me. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to 
settle it?-that is to settle me if I should say anything. I said nothing, 
right or left-never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of me: on 
my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all this time, 
as I've never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me, from the first, 
that the child was my niece-from the moment she was my brother's daughter. 
As for her veritable mother-!' But with this Pansy's wonderful aunt dropped 
involuntarily, from the impression of her sister-in-law's face, out of 
which more eyes might have seemed to look at her than she had ever had to 
meet.
She had spoken no name, yet Isabel could but check, on her own lips, an 
echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head.
'Why have you told me this?' she asked in a voice the Countess hardly 
recognised.
'Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been bored, 
frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this time 
I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't mind my saying so, the 
things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not knowing. It's 
a sort of assistance-aid to innocent ignorance-that I've always been a bad 
hand at rendering; and in this connection, that of keeping quiet for my 
brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found itself exhausted. It's not 
a black lie, moreover, you know,' the Countess inimitably added. 'The facts 
are exactly what I tell you.'
'I had no idea,' said Isabel presently; and looked up at her in a manner 
that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.
'So I believed-though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to you 
that he was for six or seven years her lover?'
'I don't know. Things have occurred to me, and perhaps that was what they 
all meant.'
'She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about Pansy!' 
the Countess, before all this view of it, cried.
'Oh, no idea, for me,' Isabel went on, 'ever definitely took that form.' 
She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn't. 
'And as it is-I don't understand.'
She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Countess seemed to have 
seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She had 
expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a spark.
Isabel showed as scarce more impressed than she might have been, as a young 
woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister passage of public 
history. 'Don't you recognise how the child could never pass for her 
husband's?-that is with M. Merle himself,' her companion resumed. 'They had 
been separated too long for that, and he had gone to some far country-I 
think to South America. If she had ever had children-which I'm not sure of-
she had lost them. The conditions happened to make it workable, under 
stress (I mean at so awkward a pinch), that Osmond should acknowledge the 
little girl. His wife was dead-very true; but she had not been dead too 
long to put a certain accommodation of dates out of the question-from the 
moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had to 
take care of. What was more natural than that poor Mrs Osmond, at a 
distance and for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left 
behind her, poverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her 
life? With the aid of a change of residence-Osmond had been living with her 
at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course left 
it for ever-the whole history was successfully set going. My poor sister-in-
law, in her grave, couldn't help herself, and the real mother, to save her 
skin, renounced all visible property in the child.'
'Ah, poor, poor woman!' cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It was 
a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction from 
weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the Countess Gemini 
found only another discomfiture.
'It's very kind of you to pity her!' she discordantly laughed. 'Yes indeed, 
you have a way of your own-!'
'He must have been false to his wife-and so very soon!' said Isabel with a 
sudden check.
'That's all that's wanting-that you should take up her cause!' the Countess 
went on. 'I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too soon.' 'But 
to me, to me-?' And Isabel hesitated as if she had not heard; as if her 
question-though it was sufficiently there in her eyes-were all for herself.
'To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you call 
faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another woman-
such a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their risks and their 
precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had passed away; 
the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her own, drawn 
back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances so intense that 
even Osmond himself had got bored with it. You may therefore imagine what 
it was-when he couldn't patch it on conveniently to any of those he goes in 
for! But the whole past was between them.'
'Yes,' Isabel mechanically echoed, 'the whole past is between them.'
'Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say, they 
had kept it up.'
She was silent a little. 'Why then did she want him to marry me?'
'Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because she 
believed you would be good to Pansy.'
'Poor woman-and Pansy who doesn't like her!' cried Isabel.
'That's the reason she wanted some one whom Pansy would like. She knows it; 
she knows everything.'
'Will she know that you've told me this?'
'That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for it, and do 
you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that I 
lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as 
it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little idiotic fibs, but 
they've never hurt any one but myself.'
Isabel sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantastic wares 
some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her feet. 'Why 
did Osmond never marry her?' she finally asked.
'Because she had no money.' The Countess had an answer for everything, and 
if she lied she lied well. 'No one knows, no one has ever known, what she 
lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I don't believe 
Osmond himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have married him.'
'How can she have loved him then?'
'She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I suppose, 
she would have married him; but at that time her husband was living. By the 
time M. Merle had rejoined-I won't say his ancestors, because he never had 
any-her relations with Osmond had changed, and she had grown more 
ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,' the Countess went on, 
leaving Isabel to wince for it so tragically afterwards-she had never had, 
what you might call any illusions of intelligence. She hoped she might 
marry a great man; that has always been her idea. She has waited and 
watched and plotted and prayed; but she has never succeeded. I don't call 
Madame Merle a success, you know. I don't know what she may accomplish yet, 
but at present she has very little to show. The only tangible result she 
has ever achieved-except, of course, getting to know every one and staying 
with them free of expense-has been her bringing you and Osmond together. 
Oh, she did that, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've 
watched them for years; I know everything-everything. I'm thought a great 
scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up those 
two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for ever 
defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she looks horrified 
and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She has been afraid 
of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false things 
people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd expose her, and she 
threatened me one day when Osmond began to pay his court to you. It was at 
his house in Florence; do you remember that afternoon when she brought you 
there and we had tea in the garden? She let me know then that if I should 
tell tales two could play at that game. She pretends there's a good deal 
more to tell about me than about her. It would be an interesting 
comparison! I don't care a fig 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 
irreproachable-a kind of full-blown lily-the incarnation of propriety. She 
has always worshipped that god. There should be no scandal about Caesar's 
wife, you know; and, as I say, she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That 
was one reason she wouldn't marry Osmond; the fear that on seeing her with 
Pansy people would put things together-would even see a resemblance. She 
has had a terror lest the mother should betray herself. She has been 
awfully careful; the mother has never done so.'
'Yes, yes, the mother has done so,' said Isabel, who had listened to all 
this with a face more and more wan. 'She betrayed herself to me the other 
day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a chance of 
Pansy's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not 
coming off she almost dropped the mask.'
'Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!' cried the Countess. 'She has failed 
so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it up.'
Isabel started at the words 'her daughter,' which her guest threw off so 
familiarly. 'It seems very wonderful,' she murmured; and in this 
bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally 
touched by the story.
'Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!' the Countess went 
on. 'She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself have 
liked Pansy; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she had 
become yours.'
'Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at 
seeing me-!' Isabel exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.
'I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed. 
Osmond's marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before that 
she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That you 
might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something for her. 
Osmond of course could never give her a portion. Osmond was really 
extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,' cried 
the Countess, 'why did you ever inherit money?' She stopped a moment as if 
she saw something singular in Isabel's face. 'Don't tell me now that you'll 
give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would refuse to believe it. 
Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and natural and nasty; feel a 
little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in your life!'
'It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry,' Isabel said. 
'I'm much obliged to you.'
'Yes, you seem to be!' cried the Countess with a mocking laugh. 'Perhaps 
you are-perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I should have thought.'
'How should I take it?' Isabel asked.
'Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of' Isabel made no 
answer to this; she only listened, and the Countess went on. 'They've 
always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke off-
or he did. But he has always been more for her than she has been for him. 
When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that each should 
give the other complete liberty, but that each should also do everything 
possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know such a thing as 
that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how much better women 
are than men! She has found a wife for Osmond, but Osmond has never lifted 
a little finger for her. She has worked for him, plotted for him, suffered 
for him; she has even more than once found money for him; and the end of it 
is that he's tired of her. She's an old habit; there are moments when he 
needs her, but on the whole he wouldn't miss her if she were removed. And, 
what's more, to-day she knows it. So you needn't be jealous!' the Countess 
added humorously.
Isabel rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath; her 
head was humming with new knowledge. 'I'm much obliged to you,' she 
repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: 'How do 
you know all this?'
This enquiry appeared to ruffle the Countess more than Isabel's expression 
of gratitude pleased her. She gave her companion a bold stare, with which, 
'Let us assume that I've invented it!' she cried. She too, however, 
suddenly changed her tone and, laying her hand on Isabel's arm, said with 
the penetration of her sharp bright smile: 'Now will you give up your 
journey?'
Isabel started a little; she turned away. But she felt weak and in a moment 
had to lay her arm upon the mantel-shelf for support. She stood a minute 
so, and then upon her arm she dropped her dizzy head, with closed eyes and 
pale lips.
'I've done wrong to speak-I've made you ill!' the Countess cried.
'Ah, I must see Ralph!' Isabel wailed; not in resentment, not in the quick 
passion her companion had looked for; but in a tone of far-reaching, 
infinite sadness.



Chapter 52

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 well-used garden had sun for 
winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, which affronted 
and almost frightened her; not for the world would she have spent a night 
there. It produced to-day more than before the impression of a well-
appointed prison; for it was not possible to pretend Pansy was free to 
leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a new and 
violent light, but the secondary effect of the relation was to make her 
reach out a hand.
The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she went 
to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The 
parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a large 
clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax flowers 
under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the 
walls. On the other occasion Isabel had thought it less like Rome than like 
Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflections; the apartment only seemed 
to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned at the end of 
some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got up, expecting to 
see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her extreme surprise found 
herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect was strange, for Madame 
Merle was already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh 
was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture move. 
Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her audacity, her ability, 
her probable suffering; and these dark things seemed to flash with a sudden 
light as she entered the room. Her being there at all had the character of 
ugly evidence, of handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced 
in court. It made Isabel feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on 
the spot she would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was 
distinct to her; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to 
say to Madame Merle. In one's relations with this lady, however, there were 
never any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off not only 
her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was different from 
usual: she came in slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel instantly 
perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. 
For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken to treat 
it by the light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar gravity; she 
pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw that she was more than 
ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the whole the wonderful woman 
had never been so natural. She looked at her young friend from head to 
foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness rather, and an 
absence of any air of allusion to their last meeting. It was as if she had 
wished to mark a distinction. She had been irritated then, she was 
reconciled now.
'You can leave us alone,' she said to the portress; 'in five minutes this 
lady will ring for you.' And then she turned to Isabel, who, after noting 
what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let her eyes 
wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished never to 
look at Madame Merle again. 'You're surprised to find me here, and I'm 
afraid you're not pleased,' this lady went on. 'You don't see why I should 
have come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've been rather 
indiscreet-I ought to have asked your permission.' There was none of the 
oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply and mildly; but 
Isabel, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could not have told herself 
with what intention it was uttered. 'But I've not been sitting long,' 
Madame Merle continued; 'that is I've not been long with Pansy. I came to 
see her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be rather 
lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good for a small 
girl; I know so little about small girls; I can't tell. At any rate it's a 
little dismal. Therefore I 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 woman-what's her name? Madame Catherine-made no 
objection whatever. I stayed twenty minutes with Pansy; she has a charming 
little room, not in the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has 
arranged it delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it's all none of 
my business, but I feel happier since I've seen her. She may even have a 
maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears a 
little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see Mother 
Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't find the poor 
sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most coquettish little 
toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-
Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Pansy; says it's a great happiness for 
them to have her. She's a little saint of heaven and a model to the oldest 
of them. just as I was leaving Madame Catherine the portress came to say to 
her that there was a lady for the signorina. Of course I knew it must be 
you, and I asked her to let me go and receive you in her place. She 
demurred greatly-I must tell you that-and said it was her duty to notify 
the Mother Superior; it was of such high importance that you should be 
treated with respect. I requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and 
asked her how she supposed I would treat you!'
So Madame Merle went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had 
long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases and 
gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Isabel's ear, 
though her eyes were absent from her companion's face. She had not 
proceeded far before Isabel noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse in 
her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle 
modulation marked a momentous discovery-the perception of an entirely new 
attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Merle had guessed in the space 
of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in the space of 
another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person who stood there 
was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a very different person-
a person who knew her secret. This discovery was tremendous, and from the 
moment she made it the most accomplished of women faltered and lost her 
courage. But only for that moment. Then the conscious stream of her perfect 
manner gathered itself again and flowed on as smoothly as might be to the 
end. But it was only because she had the end in view that she was able to 
proceed. She had been touched with a point that made her quiver, and she 
needed all the alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only 
safety was in her not betraying herself. She resisted this, but the 
startled quality of her voice refused to improve she couldn't help it while 
she heard herself say she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence 
ebbed, and she was able only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the 
bottom.
Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large 
clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have 
been a moment of triumph. That Madame Merle had lost her pluck and saw 
before her the phantom of exposure-this in itself was a revenge, this in 
itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a moment during 
which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with her back half-
turned, Isabel enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side of the window lay 
the garden of the convent; but this is not what she saw; she saw nothing of 
the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. She saw, in the crude light 
of that revelation which had already become a part of experience and to 
which the very frailty of the vessel in which it had been offered her only 
gave an intrinsic price, the dry staring fact that she had been an applied 
handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and 
iron. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it 
was as if she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment 
during which, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something 
that would hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous 
vision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world standing 
there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to think as the 
meanest. Isabel's only revenge was to be silent still-to leave Madame Merle 
in this unprecedented situation. She left her there for a period that must 
have seemed long to this lady, who at last seated herself with a movement 
which was in itself a confession of helplessness. Then Isabel turned slow 
eyes, looking down at her. Madame Merle was very pale; her own eyes covered 
Isabel's face. She might see what she would, but her danger was over. 
Isabel would never accuse her, never reproach her; perhaps because she 
never would give her the opportunity to defend herself.
'I'm come to bid Pansy good-bye,' our young woman said at last. 'I go to 
England to-night.'
'Go to England to-night!' Madame Merle repeated sitting there and looking 
up at her.
'I'm going to Gardencourt. Ralph Touchett's dying.'
'Ah, you'll feel that.' Madame Merle recovered herself; she had a chance to 
express sympathy. 'Do you go alone?'
'Yes; without my husband.'
Madame Merle gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the general 
sadness of things. 'Mr Touchett never liked me, but I'm sorry he's dying. 
Shall you see his mother?'
'Yes; she has returned from America.'
'She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have 
changed,' said Madame Merle with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a moment, 
then added: 'And you'll see dear old Gardencourt again!'
'I shall not enjoy it much,' Isabel answered.
'Naturally-in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the houses I know, 
and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I don't 
venture to send a message to the people,' Madame Merle added; 'but I should 
like to give my love to the place.'
Isabel turned away. 'I had better go to Pansy. I've not much time.'
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 recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she had 
already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss 
Osmond. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly 
and said: 'It will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her myself' 
Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Merle.
'Will you let me remain a little?' this lady asked. 'It's so good to be 
here.'
'You may remain always if you like!' And the good sister gave a knowing 
laugh.
She led Isabel out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long 
staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean; so, 
thought Isabel, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine gently 
pushed open the door of Pansy's room and ushered in the visitor; then stood 
smiling with folded hands while the two others met and embraced.
'She's glad to see you,' she repeated; 'it will do her good.' And she 
placed the best chair carefully for Isabel. But she made no movement to 
seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. 'How does this dear child look?' 
she asked of Isabel, lingering a moment.
'She looks pale,' Isabel answered.
'That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. Elle eclaire la 
maison,' said the good sister.
Pansy wore, as Madame Merle had said, a little black dress; it was perhaps 
this that made her look pale. 'They're very good to me-they think of 
everything!' she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to accommodate.
'We think of you always-you're a precious charge,' Madame Catherine 
remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and whose 
conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with a leaden 
weight on Isabel's ears; it seemed to represent the surrender of a 
personality, the authority of the Church.
When Madame Catherine had left them together Pansy kneeled down and hid her 
head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some moments, while Isabel 
gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and looking 
about the room. 'Don't you think I've arranged it well? I've everything I 
have at home.'
'It's very pretty; you're very comfortable.' Isabel scarcely knew what she 
could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her think she had come 
to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend to 
rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: 'I've come to bid you 
good-bye. I'm going to England.'
Pansy's white little face turned red. 'To England! Not to come back?'
'I don't know when I shall come back.'
'Ah, I'm sorry,' Pansy breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had no 
right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.
'My cousin, Mr Touchett, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see 
him,' Isabel said.
'Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa 
go?'
'No; I shall go alone.'
For a moment the girl said nothing. Isabel had often wondered what she 
thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never by 
a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed them 
deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflections, Isabel was sure; 
and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands and wives who 
were more intimate than that. But Pansy was not indiscreet even in thought; 
she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle stepmother as to 
criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have stood almost as still 
as it would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great picture 
in the convent-chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at each 
other. But as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity's sake) 
never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put away all knowledge of 
the secrets of larger lives than her own. 'You'll be very far away,' she 
presently went on.
'Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,' Isabel explained; 
'since so long as you're here I can't be called near you.'
'Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very often.'
'I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing with 
me. I can't amuse you.'
'I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes.'
'Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England.'
'You're not happy, Mrs Osmond,' said Pansy.
'Not very. But it doesn't matter.'
'That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to 
come out.'
'I wish indeed you might.'
'Don't leave me here,' Pansy went on gently.
Isabel said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. 'Will you come away 
with me now?' she asked.
Pansy looked at her pleadingly. 'Did papa tell you to bring me?'
'No; it's my own proposal.'
'I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?'
'I don't think he knew I was coming.'
'He thinks I've not had enough,' said Pansy. 'But I have. The ladies are 
very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some very 
little ones-such charming children. Then my room-you can see for yourself. 
All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished me to think a 
little-and I've thought a great deal.'
'What have you thought?'
'Well, that I must never displease papa.'
'You knew that before.'
'Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything-I'll do anything,' said Pansy. 
Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into her face. 
Isabel read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been vanquished. 
It was well that Mr Edward Rosier had kept his enamels! Isabel looked into 
her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated easily. She laid her 
hand on Pansy's as if to let her know that her look conveyed diminution of 
esteem; for the collapse of the girl's momentary resistance (mute and 
modest thought it had been) seemed only her tribute to the truth of things. 
She didn't presume to judge others, but she had judged herself; she had 
seen the reality. She had no vocation for struggling with combinations; in 
the solemnity of sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. 
She bowed her pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be 
merciful. Yes; it was very well that Edward Rosier had reserved a few 
articles!'
Isabel got up; her time was rapidly shortening. 'Good-bye then. I leave 
Rome to-night.'
Pansy took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's 
face. 'You look strange; you frighten me.'
'Oh, I'm very harmless,' said Isabel.
'Perhaps you won't come back?'
'Perhaps not. I can't tell.'
'Ah, Mrs Osmond, you won't leave me!'
Isabel now saw she had guessed everything. 'My dear child, what can I do 
for you?' she asked.
'I don't know-but I'm happier when I think of you.'
'You can always think of me.'
'Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid,' said Pansy.
'What are you afraid of?'
'Of papa-a little. And of Madame Merle. She has just been to see me.'
'You must not say that,' Isabel observed.
'Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it more 
easily.'
Isabel considered. 'I won't desert you,' she said at last. 'Good-bye, my 
child.'
Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two sisters; 
and afterwards Pansy walked along the corridor with her visitor to the top 
of the staircase. 'Madame Merle has been here,' she remarked as they went; 
and as Isabel answered nothing she added abruptly: 'I don't like Madame 
Merle!'
Isabel hesitated, then stopped. 'You must never say that-that you don't 
like Madame Merle.'
Pansy looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Pansy had never been a 
reason for non-compliance. 'I never will again,' she said with exquisite 
gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it 
appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which 
Pansy lived that she should not go down. Isabel descended, and when she 
reached the bottom the girl was standing above. 'You'll come back?' she 
called out in a voice that Isabel remembered afterwards.
'Yes-I'll come back.'
Madame Catherine met Mrs Osmond below and conducted her to the door of the 
parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. 'I won't go in,' 
said the good sister. 'Madame Merle's waiting for you.'
At this announcement Isabel stiffened; she was on the point of asking if 
there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment's reflection 
assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her 
desire to avoid Pansy's other friend. Her companion grasped her arm very 
gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said in French 
and almost familiarly: 'Eh, bien, chere Madame, qu'en pensez-vous?'
'About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.'
'We think it's enough,' Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she 
pushed open the door of the parlour.
Madame Merle was sitting just as Isabel had left her, like a woman so 
absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame 
Catherine closed the door she got up, and Isabel saw that she had been 
thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full 
possession of her resources. 'I found I wished to wait for you,' she said 
urbanely. 'But it's not to talk about Pansy.'
Isabel wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame 
Merle's declaration she answered after a moment: 'Madame Catherine says 
it's enough.'
'Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about 
poor Mr Touchett,' Madame Merle added. 'Have you reason to believe that 
he's really at his last?'
'I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a 
probability.'
'I'm going to ask you a strange question,' said Madame Merle. 'Are you very 
fond of your cousin?' And she gave a smile as strange as her utterance.
'Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you.'
She just hung fire. 'It's rather hard to explain. Something has occurred to 
me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit of my 
idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never guessed it?'
'He has done me many services.'
'Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.'
'He made me? Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on 
more triumphantly: 'He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required 
to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him you've to thank.' She 
stopped; there was something in Isabel's eyes.
'I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money.'
'Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He brought 
his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!'
Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by 
lurid flashes. 'I don't know why you say such things. I don't know what you 
know.'
'I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that.'
Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with 
her hand on the latch. Then she said-it was her only revenge: 'I believed 
it was you I had to thank!'
Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance. 
'You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so.'
'Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.'
Madame Merle raised her eyes. 'I shall go to America,' she quietly remarked 
while Isabel passed out.



Chapter 53

It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other 
circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel 
descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the arms, 
as it were-or at any rate into the hands-of Henrietta Stackpole. She had 
telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not definitely 
said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt her telegram 
would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from Rome her mind 
had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She 
performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little pleasure in the 
countries she traversed, decked out though they were in the richest 
freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their course through other 
countries-strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there 
was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual dreariness of 
winter. She had plenty to think about; but it was neither reflection 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 
to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the 
single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her 
starting point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary 
solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come back 
in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it would 
be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of 
rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up 
and not know anything more-this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool 
bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as good 
as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply 
with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that she 
recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the 
receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret now-that was all 
over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance was 
far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so-well, so 
unimaginable. just here her intelligence dropped, from literal inability to 
say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever it was it was for 
Madame Merle herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do so in 
America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Isabel no 
more; she only had an impression that she should never again see Madame 
Merle. This impression carried her into the future, of which from time to 
time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant years, 
still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live, and these 
intimations contradicted the spirit of the present hour. It might be 
desirable to get quite away, really away, further away than little grey-
green England, but this privilege was evidently to be denied her. Deep in 
her soul-deeper than any appetite for renunciation-was the sense that life 
would be her business for a long time to come. And at moments there was 
something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof 
of strength-it was a proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn't 
be she was to live only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a 
great many things might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer-only to 
feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged-it seemed to her she was too 
valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and 
stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be 
valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? 
Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It 
involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but 
Isabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of 
a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end. Then 
the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her 
indifference closed her in.
Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid 
she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd, 
looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished 
to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She 
rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an arrival in 
London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, the strange, 
livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous fear 
and made her put her arm into her friend's. She remembered she had once 
liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle in which there 
was something that touched her. She remembered how she walked away from 
Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, five years before. She 
could not have done that to-day, and the incident came before her as the 
deed of another person.
'It's too beautiful that you should have come,' said Henrietta, looking at 
her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the 
proposition. 'If you hadn't-if you hadn't; well, I don't know,' remarked 
Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.
Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another 
figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment she 
recognised the genial countenance of Mr Bantling. He stood a little apart, 
and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about him to make 
him yield an inch of the ground he had taken-that of abstracting himself 
discreetly while the two ladies performed their embraces.
'There's Mr Bantling,' said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring 
much now whether she should find her maid or not.
'Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr Bantling!' Henrietta 
exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile-a smile 
tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion.
'Isn't it lovely she has come?' Henrietta asked. 'He knows all about it,' 
she added; 'we had quite a discussion. He said you wouldn't, I said you 
would.'
'I thought you always agreed,' Isabel smiled in return. She felt she could 
smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr Bantling's brave eyes, that he 
had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to remember he was 
an old friend of her cousin-that he understood, that it was all right. 
Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a beautiful 
blameless knight.
'Oh, I always agree,' said Mr Bantling. 'But she doesn't, you know.'
'Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?' Henrietta enquired.
'Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.'
'I don't care,' said Isabel, looking at Mr Bantling, whom she had never 
found so interesting.
'Stay with her while I go and see,' Henrietta commanded, leaving the two 
for a moment together.
They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr Bantling asked Isabel how 
it had been on the Channel.
'Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,' she said, to her companion's 
obvious surprise. After which she added: 'You've been to Gardencourt, I 
know.'
'Now how do you know that?'
'I can't tell you-except that you look like a person who has been to 
Gardencourt.'
'Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you know.'
'I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,' said 
Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she should 
never again feel a superficial embarrassment.
Poor Mr Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed a 
good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue, and that 
when he was blue he was awfully fierce. 'You can ask Miss Stackpole, you 
know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.'
'Did you see my cousin?'
'Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been there 
the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he was in bed 
and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can't speak,' Mr Bantling 
pursued. 'He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He was just as 
clever as ever. It's awfully wretched.'
Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. 'Was that 
late in the day?'
'Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know.'
greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?'
'Ah, I don't think she'll let you go,' said Mr Bantling. 'She wants you to 
stop with her. I made Touchett's man promise to telegraph me to-day, and I 
found the telegram an hour ago at my club. 'Quiet and easy,' that's what it 
says, and it's dated two o'clock. So you see you can wait till tomorrow. 
You must be awfully tired.'
'Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again.'
'Oh,' said Mr Bantling, 'we were certain you would like the last news.' On 
which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to agree. 
Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel's maid, whom she had caught in the act 
of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of losing herself in 
the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress's luggage, so that the 
latter was now at liberty to leave the station. 'You know you're not to 
think of going to the country to-night,' Henrietta remarked to her. 'It 
doesn't matter whether there's a train or not. You're to come straight to 
me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a corner to be had in London, but I've 
got you one all the same. It isn't a Roman palace, but it will do for a 
night.'
'I'll do whatever you wish,' Isabel said.
'You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish.'
'She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs Osmond?' Mr
Bantling enquired jocosely.
Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. 'I see you're in a 
great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the Paddington Station to-morrow 
morning at ten.'
'Don't come for my sake, Mr Bantling,' said Isabel.
'He'll come for mine,' Henrietta declared as she ushered her friend into a 
cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street-to do her 
justice there had been dinner enough-she asked those questions to which she 
had alluded at the station. 'Did your husband make you a scene about your 
coming?' That was Miss Stackpole's first enquiry.
'No; I can't say he made a scene.'
'He didn't object then?'
'Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a scene.'
'What was it then?'
'It was a very quiet conversation.'
Henrietta for a moment regarded her guest. 'It must have been hellish,' she 
then remarked. And Isabel didn't deny that it had been hellish. But she 
confined herself to answering Henrietta's questions, which was easy, as 
they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no new 
information. 'Well,' said Miss Stackpole at last, 'I've only one criticism 
to make. I don't see why you promised little Miss Osmond to go back.'
'I'm not sure I myself see now,' Isabel replied. 'But I did then.'
'If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return.'
Isabel waited a moment. 'Perhaps I shall find another.'
'You'll certainly never find a good one.'
'In default of a better my having promised will do,' Isabel suggested.
'Yes; that's why I hate it.'
'Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a complication, 
but what will going back be?'
'You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!' said 
Henrietta with much intention.
'He will, though,' Isabel answered gravely. 'It won't be the scene of a 
moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.'
For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and then 
Miss Stackpole, to change the subject, as Isabel had requested, announced 
abruptly:
'I've been to stay with Lady Pensil!'
'Ah, the invitation came at last!'
'Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.'
'Naturally enough.'
'It was more natural than I think you know,' said Henrietta, who fixed her 
eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly: 'Isabel 
Archer, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I criticised you, 
and yet I've gone further than you. Mr Osmond, at least, was born on the 
other side!'
It was a moment before Isabel grasped her meaning; this sense was so 
modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Isabel's mind was not 
possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with a 
quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately 
recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity, 
'Henrietta Stackpole,' she asked, 'are you going to give up your country?'
'Yes, my poor Isabel, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact in 
the face. I'm going to marry Mr Bantling and locate right here in London.'
'It seems very strange,' said Isabel, smiling now.
'Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think I 
know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain.'
'One can't explain one's marriage,' Isabel answered. 'And yours doesn't 
need to be explained. Mr Bantling isn't a riddle.'
'No, he isn't a bad pun-or even a high flight of American humour. He has a 
beautiful nature,' Henrietta went on. 'I've studied him for many years and 
I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good prospectus. 
He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the other hand he 
doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in the United 
States.'
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever 
heard you say anything against your native land.'
'I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after 
all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I am changed; a woman has to change a good 
deal to marry.'
'I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last-over here-see something of 
the inner life.'
Henrietta gave a little significant sigh. 'That's the key to the mystery, I 
believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good a right as any 
one!' she added with artless elation.
Isabel was duly diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. 
Henrietta, after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta 
whom she had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. 
It was a disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she 
was subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr Bantling had 
not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her 
marrying him-there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to 
Isabel's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A 
little later indeed she reflected that Mr Bantling himself at least was 
original. But she didn't see how Henrietta could give up her country. She 
herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her country as it 
had been Henrietta's. She presently asked her if she had enjoyed her visit 
to Lady Pensil.
'Oh yes,' said Henrietta, 'she didn't know what to make of me.'
'And was that very enjoyable?'
'Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She thinks she 
knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman of my modern type. It 
would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better or a little 
worse. She's so puzzled; I believe she thinks it's my duty to go and do 
something immoral. She thinks it's immoral that I should marry her brother; 
but, after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll never understand my 
mixture-never!'
'She's not so intelligent as her brother then,' said Isabel. 'He appears to 
have understood.'
'Oh no, he hasn't!' cried Miss Stackpole with decision. 'I really believe 
that's what he wants to marry me for-just to find out the mystery and the 
proportions of it. That's a fixed idea-a kind of fascination.'
'It's very good in you to humour it.'
'Oh well,' said Henrietta, 'I've something to find out too!' And Isabel saw 
that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She was at 
last about to grapple in earnest with England.
Isabel also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington Station, 
where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company both of Miss 
Stackpole and Mr Bantling, that the gentleman bore his perplexities 
lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found out at least the 
great point-that Miss Stackpole would not be wanting in initiative. It was 
evident that in the selection of a wife he had been on his guard against 
this deficiency.
'Henrietta has told me, and I'm very glad,' Isabel said as she gave him her 
hand.
'I dare say you think it awfully odd,' Mr Bantling replied, resting on his 
neat umbrella.
'Yes, I think it awfully odd.'
'You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked 
striking out a line,' said Mr Bantling serenely.



Chapter 54

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 Isabel, instead 
of being conducted to her own apartment, was coldly shown into the drawing-
room, and left to wait while her name was carried up to her aunt. She 
waited a long time; Mrs Touchett appeared to be in no hurry to come to her. 
She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and even frightened. The day 
was dark and cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown 
rooms. The house was perfectly still - a stillness that Isabel remembered; 
it had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She 
left the drawing-room and wandered about - strolled into the library and 
along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep 
made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything that she had 
seen years before; it might have been only yesterday that she stood there. 
She reflected that things change but little, while people change so much, 
and she became aware that she was walking about as her aunt had done on the 
day that she came to see her in Albany. She was changed enough since then - 
that had been the beginning. It suddenly struck her that 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 today she might 
have been a happier woman. She stopped in the gallery in front of a small 
picture - a beautiful and valuable Bonington - upon which her eyes rested 
for a long time. But she was not looking at the picture; she was wondering 
whether if her aunt had not come that day in Albany she would have married 
Caspar Goodwood. 
Mrs Touchett appeared at last, just after Isabel had returned to the big 
uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as 
bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a repository of 
latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress, of the most undecorated 
fashion, and Isabel wondered, as she had wondered the first time, whether 
her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a 
jail. Her lips felt very thin indeed as Isabel kissed her. 
'I have kept you waiting because I have been sitting with Ralph,' Mrs 
Touchett said. 'The nurse had gone to her lunch and I had taken her place. 
He has a man who is supposed to look after him, but the man is good for 
nothing; he is always looking out of the window - as if there were anything 
to see! I didn't wish to move, because Ralph seemed to be sleeping, and I 
was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the nurse came back; 
I remembered that you knew the house.' 
'I find I know it better even than I thought; I have been walking,' Isabel 
answered. And then she asked whether Ralph slept much. 
'He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I am not sure that it's 
always sleep.' 
'Will he see me? Can he speak to me?' 
Mrs Touchett hesitated a moment. 'You can try him,' she said. 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 have brought 
much. Not that I care, however. I believe they have given you the same room 
you had before; when Ralph heard you were coming he said you must have that 
one.' 
'Did he say anything else?' 
'Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!' cried Mrs Touchett, as she 
preceded her niece up the staircase. 
It was the same room, and something told Isabel that it had not been slept 
in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there, and it was not voluminous; 
Mrs Touchett sat down a moment, with her eyes upon it. 
'Is there really no hope?' Isabel asked, standing before her aunt. 
'None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life.' 
'No - it has only been a beautiful one.' Isabel found herself already 
contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness. 
'I don't know what you mean by that; there is no beauty without health. 
That is a very odd dress to travel in.' 
Isabel glanced at her garment. 'I left Rome at an hour's notice; I took the 
first that came.' 
'Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to be 
their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them - but they seemed to 
have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black brocade.' 
'They think I am more brilliant than I am; I am afraid to tell them the 
truth,' said Isabel. 'Lily wrote me that you had dined with her.' 
'She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she 
should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been 
expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to 
America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure.' 
These were interesting items, but Mrs Touchett soon left her niece, whom 
she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. At this repast the two 
ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the melancholy dining-
room. Here, after a little, Isabel saw that her aunt was not 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. It seemed to her she would 
find it a blessing today to be able to indulge a regret. She wondered 
whether Mrs Touchett were not trying, whether she had not a desire for the 
recreation of grief. On the other hand, perhaps she was afraid; if she 
began to regret, it might take her too far. Isabel could perceive, however, 
that it had come over her that she had missed 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 as yet had 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 converse with Lord Warburton. She presently said to her aunt 
that he had been very kind to Ralph; she had seen something of that in 
Rome. 
'He has something else to think of now,' Mrs Touchett rejoined. And she 
paused, with a gaze like a gimlet. 
Isabel saw that she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant. 
But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster, and she wished to 
gain a moment. 'Ah yes - the House of Lords, and all that.' 
'He is not thinking of the Lords; he is thinking of the ladies. At least he 
is thinking of one of them; he told Ralph he was engaged to be married.' 
'Ah, to be married!' Isabel gently exclaimed. 
'Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Ralph would like to know. Poor 
Ralph can't go to the wedding, though I believe it is to take place very 
soon.' 
'And who is the young lady?' 'A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady 
Felicia - something of that sort.' 
'I am very glad,' Isabel said. 'It must be a sudden decision.' 
'Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just 
been made public.' 
'I am very glad,' Isabel repeated, with a larger emphasis. She knew her 
aunt was watching her - looking for the signs of some curious emotion, and 
the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this kind 
enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction - the tone, almost, 
of relief. Mrs Touchett of course followed the tradition that ladies, even 
married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as an offence to 
themselves. Isabel's first care therefore was to show that however that 
might be in general, she was not offended now. But meanwhile, as I say, her 
heart beat faster; and if she sat for some moments thoughtful - she 
presently forgot Mrs Touchett's observation - it was not because she had 
lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed half Europe; it halted, 
panting, and even trembling a little, in the city of Rome. She figured 
herself announcing to her husband that Lord Warburton was to lead a bride 
to the altar, and she was of course not aware how extremely sad she looked 
while she made this intellectual effort. But at last she collected herself, 
and said to her aunt - 'He was sure to do it some time or other.' 
Mrs Touchett was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the head. 
'Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!' she cried, suddenly. They went on with 
their luncheon in silence; Isabel felt as if she had heard of Lord 
Warburton's death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was all 
over. He was dead for poor Pansy; by Pansy he might have lived. A servant 
had been hovering about; at last Mrs Touchett requested him to leave them 
alone. She had finished her lunch; she sat with her hands folded on the 
edge of the table. 'I should like to ask you three questions,' she said to 
Isabel, when the servant had gone. 
'Three are a great many.' 
'I can't do with less; I have been thinking. They are all very good ones.' 
'That's what I am afraid of. The best questions are the worst,' Isabel 
answered. Mrs Touchett had pushed back her chair, and Isabel left the table 
and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows, while her aunt 
followed her with her eyes. 'Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Lord 
Warburton?' Mrs Touchett inquired. 
Isabel shook her head slowly, smiling. 'No, dear aunt.' 
'Good I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.' 
'Your believing me is an immense temptation,' Isabel replied, smiling 
still. 
'A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm 
misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to crow over 
you.' 
'It is my husband that doesn't get on with me,' said Isabel. 
'I could have told him that. I don't call that crowing over you,' Mrs 
Touchett added. 'Do you still like Serena Merle?' she went on. 
'Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she is going to America.' 
'To America? She must have done something very bad.' 
'Yes - very bad.' 
'May I ask what it is?' 
'She made a convenience of me.' 
'Ah,' cried Mrs Touchett, 'so she did of me! She does of every one.' 
'She will make a convenience of America,' said Isabel, smiling again, and 
glad that her aunt's questions were over. 
It was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been 
dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was 
there, but after a while he went away; the local doctor, who had attended 
his father, and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day; he was 
deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope, but he 
had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his mother to 
send word that 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 towards evening he raised himself and said he 
knew that she had come. How he knew it 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 that she might go - that she herself 
would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and 
recognised her, and had moved his hand, which lay very helpless beside him, 
so that she might take it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes 
again and remained perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She 
sat with him a long time - till the nurse came back; but he gave no further 
sign. He might have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the 
figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome, but this 
was worse; there was only 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 for three days in a kind of grateful 
silence. He recognised her, and at moments he seemed to wish to speak; but 
he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as if he too were waiting 
for something - for something that certainly would come. He was so 
absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming had already arrived; 
and yet she never lost the sense that they were still together. But they 
were not always together; there were other hours that she passed in 
wandering through the empty house and listening for a voice that was not 
poor Ralph's. She had a constant fear; she thought it possible her husband 
would write to her. But he remained silent, and she only got a letter from 
Florence from the Countess Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last, on 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 effort - not to tire himself. 
His face was of necessity serious - it was incapable of the muscular play 
of a smile; but its owner apparently had not lost a perception of 
incongruities. 'What does it matter if I am tired, when I have all eternity 
to rest?' he asked. 'There is no harm in making an effort when it is the 
very last. Don't people always feel better just before the end? I have 
often heard of that; it's what I was waiting for. Ever since you have been 
here, I thought it would come I tried two or three times; I was afraid you 
would 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 IsabeI, and his large unwinking eyes open into 
her own. 'It was very good of you to come,' he went on. 'I thought you 
would; but I wasn't sure.' 
'I was not sure either, till I came,' said Isabel. 
'You have been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talked about the 
angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You have been like that; as 
if you were waiting for me.' 
'I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for - for this. This is 
not death, dear Ralph.' 
'Not for you - no. There is nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see 
others die. That's the sensation of life - the sense that we remain. I have 
had it - even I. But now I am 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 could not 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 is it you 
have done for me?' 
'What is it you did for me?' she cried, her now extreme agitation half 
smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide 
things. Now he might know; she wished him to know, for it brought them 
supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. 'You did something 
once - you know it. Oh, Ralph, you have been everything! What have I done 
for you - what 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 own, and full of tears and anguish. 
'You won't lose me - you will keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be 
nearer to you than I have ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in 
life there is love. Death is good - but there is no love.' 
'I never thanked you - I never spoke - I never was what I should be!' 
Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse herself, 
to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment, became 
single and melted together into this present pain. 'What must you have 
thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I only know today 
because there are people less stupid than I.' 
'Don't mind people,' said Ralph. 'I think I am glad to leave people.' 
She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to pray 
to him. 
'Is it true - is it true?' she asked. 
'True that you have been stupid? Oh no,' said Ralph, with a sensible 
intention of wit. 
'That you made me rich - that all I have is yours?' 
He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last: 'Ah, 
don't speak of that - that was not happy.' Slowly he moved his face toward 
her again, and they once more saw each other. 'But for that - but for that 
- ' And he paused. 'I believe I ruined you,' he added softly. 
She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he seemed 
already so little of this world. But even if she had not had it she would 
still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only knowledge that was 
not pure anguish - the knowledge that they were looking at the truth 
together. 
'He married me for my money,' she said. 
She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die before she had 
done so. 
He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered 
their lids. But he raised them in a moment, and then: 'He was greatly in 
love with you,' he answered. 
'Yes, he was in love with me. But he would not have married me if I had 
been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you to 
understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that's all 
over.' 
'I always understood,' said Ralph. 
'I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it.' 
'You don't hurt me - you make me very happy.' And as Ralph said this there 
was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again, and 
pressed her lips to the back of his hand. 'I always understood,' he 
continued, 'though it was so strange - so pitiful. You wanted to look at 
life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your 
wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!' 
'Oh yes, I have been punished,' Isabel sobbed. He listened to her a little, 
and then continued: 'Was he very bad about your coming?' 
'He made it very hard for me. But I don't care.' 
'It is all over, then, between you?' 
'Oh no; I don't think anything is over.' 
'Are you going back to him?' Ralph stammered. 
'I don't know - I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't 
want to think - I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and 
that is enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my 
knees, with you dying in my arms, I am happier than I have been for a long 
time. And I want you to be happy - not to think of anything sad; only to 
feel that I am near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such 
hours as this what have we to do with pain? That is not the deepest thing; 
there is something deeper.' 
Ralph evidently found, from moment to moment, greater difficulty in 
speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared to 
make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then he 
murmured simply: 'You must stay here.' 
'I should like to stay, as long as seems right.' 
'As seems right - as seems right?' He repeated her words. 'Yes, you think a 
great deal about that.' 
'Of course one must. You are very tired,' said Isabel. 
'I am very tired. You said just now that pain is not the deepest thing. No-
no. But it is very deep. If I could stay-' 
'For me you will 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 are very young.' 
'I feel very old,' said Isabel. 
'You will grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe - I don't 
believe-' And he stopped again; his strength failed him. 
She begged him to be quiet now. 'We needn't speak to understand each 
other,' she said. 
'I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for 
more than a little.' 'Oh, Ralph, I am very happy now,' she cried, through 
her tears. 'And remember this,' he continued, 'that if you have been hated, 
you have also been loved.' 
'Ah, my brother!' she cried, with a movement of still deeper prostration.



Chapter 55

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 moming, in the cold, faint dawn, she knew 
that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down without 
undressing, for it was 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 Ralph was standing there - a dim, hovering figure in the dimness of 
the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face - his kind eyes; then 
she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only sure. She went 
out of her room, and in her certainty passed through dark corridors and 
down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the vague light of a hall-
window. Outside of 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 
nurse was 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 
round her; and Mrs Touchett, who as a general thing neither invited nor 
enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this one, rising, as it were, 
to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed; her acute white face was 
terrible. 
'Poor Aunt Lydia,' Isabel murmured. 
'Go and thank God you have no child,' said Mrs Touchett, disengaging 
herself. 
Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, in the 
height of the London 'season,' to take a morning train down to a quiet 
station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church, which 
stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this edifice 
that Mrs Touchett consigned her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge 
of the grave, and Isabel stood beside her; the sexton himself had not a 
more practical interest in the scene than Mrs Touchett. It was a solemn 
occasion, but it was not a disagreeable one; there was a certain geniality 
in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one 
of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air 
had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to 
think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had 
no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything had 
been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they 
were not tears that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the 
day, the splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, 
the bowed heads of good friends. Lord Warburton was there, and a group of 
gentlemen unknown to Isabel, several of whom, as she afterwards learned, 
were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she knew. Miss 
Stackpole was among the first, with honest Mr Bantling beside her; and 
Caspar Goodwood, lifting his head higher than the rest - bowing it rather 
less. During much of the time Isabel was conscious of Mr Goodwood's gaze; 
he looked at her somewhat harder than he usually looked in public, while 
the others had fixed their eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let 
him see that she saw him; she thought of him only to wonder that he was 
still in England. She found that she had taken for granted that after 
accompanying Ralph to Gardencourt he had gone away; she remembered that it 
was not 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 would not meet his eyes, though there was doubtless 
sympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the 
little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to her - 
though several spoke to Mrs Touchett - was Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta 
had been crying. 
Ralph had said to Isabel that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt, and 
she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself that 
it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was fortunate 
she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been greatly in want of 
one. Her errand was over; she had done what she left her husband for. 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 deadly sadness in the 
thought, 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 he 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 satisfaction. This consisted in the reflection 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; for the worst 
of dying was, to Mrs Touchett's mind, that it exposed one to be taken 
advantage of. For herself, she was on the spot; there was nothing so good 
as that. She made known to Isabel very punctually - it was the evening her 
son was buried - several of Ralph's testamentary arrangements. He had told 
her everything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money; 
of course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of 
Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books, and the use of the place 
for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by the sale 
was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons suffering 
from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the will Lord 
Warburton was appointed executor. The rest of his property, which was to be 
withdrawn from the bank was disposed of in various bequests, several of 
them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his father had already been so 
bountiful. Then there were a number of small legacies. 
'Some of them are extremely peculiar,' said Mrs Touchett; 'he has left 
considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I 
asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at 
various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't like 
him, for he has not left you a penny. It was his opinion that you were 
handsomely treated by his father, which I am bound to say I think you were 
- though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The pictures 
are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one by one, as little 
keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Lord Warburton. And 
what do you think he has done with his library? It sounds like a practical 
joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Stackpole - 'in recognition of her 
services to literature.' Does he mean her following him up from Rome? Was 
that a service to literature? It contains a great many rare and valuable 
books, and as she can't carry it about the world in her trunk, he 
recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course at 
Christie's, and with the proceeds she will set up a newspaper. Will that be 
a service to literature?' 
This question Isabel forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little 
interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her 
arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than 
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 a little; 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 upon Mrs 
Touchett. It was of course Mrs Touchett that he had come to see, and not 
Mrs Osmond; and to prove to herself the validity of this theory, 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 time she would have drawn 
back, behind one of the great trees. But she saw that 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 is the eminently amenable nobleman whom 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, he greeted her without a smile. Even 
in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile. He looked 
extremely self-conscious. 
'Lord Warburton has been so good as to come out to see me,' said Mrs 
Touchett. 'He tells me he didn't know you were still here I know he's an 
old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house, I brought 
him out to see for himself.' 
'Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6:40, that would get me back in time 
for dinner,' Mrs Touchett's companion explained, rather irrelevantly. 'I am 
so glad to find you have not gone.' 
'I am not here for long, you know,' Isabel said, with a certain eagerness. 
'I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England sooner 
than - a - than you thought?' 
'Yes, I came very suddenly.' 
Mrs Touchett turned away, as if she were looking at the condition of the 
grounds, which indeed was not what it should be; while Lord Warburton 
hesitated a little. Isabel fancied he had been on the point of asking about 
her husband - rather confusedly - and then had checked himself. He 
continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a 
place over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If he 
was conscious of personal reasons, it was very fortunate that he had the 
cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Isabel thought 
of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was another matter; 
but it was strangely inexpressive. 
'My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were 
still here - if they had thought you would see them,' Lord Warburton went 
on. 'Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.' 
'It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of 
them.' 
'I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two? You 
know there is always that old promise.' And his lordship blushed 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 are not 
thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters 
are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for three days; and if you could come 
then - as you say you are not to be very long in England - I would see that 
there should be literally no one else.' 
Isabel wondered whether not even the young lady he was to marry would be 
there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea. 'Thank you 
extremely,' she contented herself with saying; 'I'm afraid I hardly know 
about Whitsuntide.' 
'But I have your promise - haven't I? - for some other time.' 
There was an interrogation in this; but Isabel let it pass. She looked at 
her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was that - as 
had happened before - she felt sorry for him. 'Take care you don't miss 
your train,' she said. And then she added, 'I wish you every happiness.' 
He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. 
'Ah yes, 6:40; I haven't much time, but I have a fly at the door. Thank you 
very much.' It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having 
reminded him of his train, or to the more sentimental remark. 'Good-bye, 
Mrs Osmond; good-bye.' He shook hands with her, without meeting her eye, 
and then he turned to Mrs Touchett, who had wandered back to them. With her 
his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him move 
with long steps across the lawn. 
'Are you very sure he is to be married?' Isabel asked of her aunt. 
'I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and he 
accepted it.' 
'Ah,' said Isabel, 'I give it up!' - while her aunt returned to the house 
and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted. 
She gave it up, but she still thought of it - thought of it while she 
strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the acres 
of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a rustic bench, 
which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object 
recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor even that 
she had sat upon it; it was that in this spot something important had 
happened to her - that the place had an air of association. Then she 
remembered that she had been sitting there six years before, when a servant 
brought her from the house the letter in which Gaspar Goodwood informed her 
that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had read that 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 would not 
sit down on it now - she felt rather afraid of it. She only stood before 
it, and while she stood, the past came back to her in one of those rushing 
waves of emotion by which people 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 admitted 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 feet 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 that he was seen he started 
forward. She had had time only to rise, when with a motion that looked like 
violence, but felt like - she knew not what - he grasped her by the wrist 
and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had not hurt 
her, it was only a touch that 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 today it was worse. He said nothing 
at first; she only felt him close to her. It almost seemed to her that no 
one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took but a 
moment, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes 
upon her visitant. 
'You have frightened me,' she said. 
'I didn't mean to,' he answered, 'but if I did a little, no matter. I came 
from London awhile 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 
have been waiting and walking about. I have 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 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 awful in his 
persistency. Isabel gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each 
knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed to 
darken around them. 'I want to speak to you,' he repeated; 'I have 
something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you - as I did the 
other day, in Rome. That was no use; it only distressed you. I couldn't 
help it; I knew I was wrong. But I am 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 no use for me 
to speak to you then; but now I can help you.' 
She could not have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or 
because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she 
listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep 
into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and it 
was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. 
'How can you help me?' she asked, in a low tone; as if she were taking what 
he had said seriously enough to make the inquiry in confidence. 
'By inducing you to trust me. Now I know - today I know. Do you remember 
what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I know 
on good authority; everything is clear to me today. It was a good thing, 
when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good fellow - he was 
a noble fellow - he told me how the case stands. He explained everything; 
he guessed what I thought of you. He was a member of your family, and he 
left you - so long as you should be in England - to my care,' said 
Goodwood, as if he were making a great point. 'Do you know what he said to 
me the last time I saw him - as he lay there where he died? He said - "Do 
everything you can for her; do everything she will let you".' 
Isabel suddenly got up. 'You had no business to talk about me!' 
'Why not - why not, when we talked in that way?' he demanded, following her 
fast. 'And he was dying - when a man's dying it's different.' She checked 
the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more than ever; 
it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That had been 
aimless, fruitless passion; but at present he had an idea. Isabel scented 
his idea in all her being. 'But it doesn't matter!' he exclaimed, pressing 
her close, 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 is so 
honest with you. You are the most unhappy of women, and your husband's a 
devil!' 
She turned on him as if he had struck her. 'Are you mad?' she cried. 
'I have 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 will 
speak only of you,' Goodwood added, quickly. 'How can you pretend you are 
not heartbroken? You don't know what to do - you don't know where to turn. 
It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you in Rome? 
Touchett knew all about it - and I knew it too - what it would cost you to 
come here. It will cost you your life? When I know 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 
point again. 'I would sooner have been shot than let another man say those 
things to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It 
was after he got home - when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I 
understand all about it: you are afraid to go back. You are perfectly 
alone; you don't know where to turn. Now it is that I want you to think of 
me.' 
'To think of you?' Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The idea 
of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed large. 
She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had been a 
comet in the sky. 
'You don't know where to turn; turn to me! I want to persuade you to trust 
me,' Goodwood repeated. And then he paused a moment, with his shining eyes. 
'Why should you go back - why should you go through that ghastly form?' 
'To get away from you!' she answered. But this expressed only a little of 
what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. It 
wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet. 
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 that he was sane, that he had reasoned it all 
out. 'I wish to prevent that, and I think I may, if you will only listen to 
me. It's too monstrous to think of sinking back into that misery. It's you 
that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why 
shouldn't we be happy - when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I am 
yours forever - forever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. What 
have you to care about? You have no children; that perhaps would be an 
obstacle. As it is, you have nothing to consider. You must save what you 
can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you have 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 have nothing to do with all that; we are quite out of it; we look 
at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next is 
nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman 
deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life - in going 
down into the streets, if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and 
that's why I am here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under the 
sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us - what is it that has the 
smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a question is 
between ourselves - and to say that is to settle it! Were we born to rot in 
our misery - were we born to be afraid? I never knew you afraid! If you 
only trust me, how little you will be disappointed! The world is all before 
us - and the world is very large. 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 is 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 that he said; 
but she believed that to let him take her in his arms would be the next 
best thing to dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in 
which she felt herself sinking and sinking. In the movement she seemed to 
beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest 
on. 
'Ah, be mine as I am yours!' she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly 
given up argument, and his voice seemed to come through a confusion of 
sound. 
This, however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the metaphysicians 
say; the confusion, the noise of waters, and all the rest of it were in her 
own head. In an instant she became aware of this. 'Do me the greatest 
kindness of all,' she said. 'I beseech you to go away!' 
'Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!' he cried. 
She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. 
'As you love me, as you pity me, leave me alone!' 
He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt 
his arms about her, and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like a flash 
of lightning; when it was dark again she was free. She never looked about 
her; she only darted away from the spot. There were lights in the windows 
of the house; they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short 
time - for the distance was considerable - she had moved through the 
darkness (for she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. 
She looked all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on 
the latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a 
very straight path. 
Two days afterwards, Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in 
Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings. He 
had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened, and 
Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her bonnet and jacket; 
she was on the point of going out. 'Oh, good morning,' he said, 'I was in 
hope I should find Mrs Osmond.' 
Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good 
deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent. 
'Pray what led you to suppose she was here?' 
'I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she had 
come to London. He believed she was to come to you.' 
Again Miss Stackpole held him - with an intention of perfect kindness - in 
suspense. 
'She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this morning she started 
for Rome.' 
Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the 
doorstep. 
'Oh, she started-' he stammered. And without finishing his phrase, or 
looking up, he turned away. 
Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out 
her hand and grasped his arm. 
'Look here, Mr Goodwood,' she said; 'just you wait!' 
On which he looked up at her - but only to guess, from her face, with a 
revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him 
with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his 
life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now 
the key to patience.