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
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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.
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"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 antechamber, and Madame Merle got up, releasing the child.
Mr. Osmond came in and closed the door; then, without looking at Madame Merle, he pushed one
or two chairs back into their places. His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him as
he moved about. Then at last she said: "I hoped you'd have come to Rome. I thought it possible
you'd have wished 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.
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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, mignonne, and pluck a flower or two for Madame Merle," he went on in French.
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"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 fro, 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!"
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"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
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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
