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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
