บทที่ บทที่ 26 · Chapter XXVI

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 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 unmistakeable

blots were to be seen upon her surface. The Countess gave rise indeed to

some discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from

Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate

people by always agreeing with them) availed herself felicitously enough

of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely

as she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had declared it a piece of audacity

that this highly compromised character should have presented herself at

such a time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so

little as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini.

Isabel had been made acquainted with the estimate prevailing under that

roof: it represented Mr. Osmond’s sister as a lady who had so mismanaged

her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all--which

was at the least what one asked of such matters--and had become the mere

floating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social circulation.

She had been married by her mother--a more administrative person, with

an appreciation of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice,

had probably by this time thrown off--to an 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--she 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

to-morrow.”

“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.