Chương Chương 24 · Chapter XXIV

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 Ghirlandaio’s. I hope

you don’t object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I’ve an idea

you don’t. Perhaps you think that’s even worse. I assure you there’s

no want of respect in it, to either of you. You know 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 _à 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 shy 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 garden-like 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!”