satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction was confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert
Osmond was in love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of
them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him
by Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on Isabel's spirit by this criticism was that the
passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself
disjoined from every one she had ever known before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a
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dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having
chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she
was sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who would
certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who perhaps would not; from her aunt,
who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt;
and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for
a personal disappointment. Ralph apparently wished her not to marry at all--that was what it really
meant--because he was amused with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His
disappointment made him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was the more easy for her to believe
this because, as I say, she had now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and
accepted as an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Gilbert
Osmond as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of the sweets of this
preference, and they made her conscious, almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of
the charmed and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed virtue of
being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of
some one else.
The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Osmond, emitted meanwhile very little
smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the
most self-conscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made
him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten and dedicated state. He never
forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance-which
presented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was immensely
pleased with his young lady; Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable value. What
could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness
be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of superiority? What
could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and
reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced
literally-- that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be freshened in the reproduction
even as "words" by music. His egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this
lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a plate that he might heap up with
ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of
served dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Isabel; he could tap her imagination
with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union
enjoyed little favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so completely as an
independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to express regret for the attitude of her family.
Nevertheless, one morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. "It's the difference in our fortune they
don't like," he said. "They think I'm in love with your money."
"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?" Isabel asked. "How do you know what they think?"
"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Touchett the other day she never
answered my note. If they had been delighted I should have had some sign of it, and the fact of my
being poor and you rich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course when a
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poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. I don't mind them; I only care for
one thing--for your not having the shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask
nothing think--I'm not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so concerned myself,
God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself a compensation for
everything? I won't pretend I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's
yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to
meet. It seems to me, however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in
my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than most of the people
one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their business to suspect--that of your family; it's
proper on the whole they should. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter.
Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to be thankful for life and
love." "It has made me better, loving you," he said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser and
easier and--I won't pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great
many things before and to be angry I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told
you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have
morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I can't think of
anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and
suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and finding
nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see it's a delightful story.
My dear girl, I can't tell you how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer
afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day --with a golden haze, and the shadows just
lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my
life and which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've got
what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We've the faculty of admiration and several
capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're not mean, we're not under bonds to any kind of
ignorance or dreariness. You're remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my
poor child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's all soft and mellow--it has
the Italian colouring."
They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal of latitude; it was a matter
of course, however, that they should live for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met,
Italy had been a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy should be a party to their
happiness. Osmond had the attachment of old acquaintance and Isabel the stimulus of new, which
seemed to assure her a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for
unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense that life was vacant without some
private duty that might gather one's energies to a point. She had told Ralph she had "seen life" in a
year or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of that of observing. What
had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her independence
and her incipient conviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed in a
more primitive need-- a need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet
gratified infinite desires. It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the
light of the stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the fact that he
was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be of use to him. She could surrender to him
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with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was
giving.
He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine-- Pansy who was very little taller
than a year before, and not much older. That she would always be a child was the conviction
expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her
to go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Pansy wore a short dress and a long
coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short
steps, to the end of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for
approbation. Isabel approved in abundance, and the abundance had the personal touch that the
child's affectionate nature craved. She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended
on them--Pansy already so represented part of the service she could render, part of the
responsibility she could face. Her father took so the childish view of her that he had not yet
explained to her the new relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Archer. "She doesn't
know," he said to Isabel; "she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I should
come and walk here together simply as good friends. There seems to me something enchantingly
innocent in that; it's the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think; I've succeeded
in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've brought up my child, as I wished, in the old
way."
He was very fond, in all things, of the "old way"; that had struck Isabel as one of his fine, quiet,
sincere notes. "It occurs to me that you'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told
her," she said. "You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she may be
jealous."
"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I should like to leave her in the
dark a little longer --to see if it will come into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be."
Isabel was impressed by Osmond's artistic, the plastic view, as it somehow appeared, of Pansy's
innocence--her own appreciation of it being more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less
pleased when he told her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who
had made such a pretty little speech--"Oh, then I shall have a beautiful sister!" She was neither
surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he expected.
"Perhaps she had guessed it," said Isabel.
"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it would be just a little shock; but
the way she took it proves that her good manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You
shall see for yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person."
The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Countess Gemini's, whither Pansy had been
conducted by her father, who knew that Isabel was to come in the afternoon to return a visit made
her by the Countess on learning that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Touchett
the visitor had not found Isabel at home; but after our young woman had been ushered into the
Countess's drawing-room Pansy arrived to say that her aunt would presently appear. Pansy was
spending the day with that lady, who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in
company. It was Isabel's view that the little girl might have given lessons in deportment to her
relative, and nothing could have justified this conviction more than the manner in which Pansy
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acquitted herself while they waited together for the Countess. Her father's decision, the year
before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive the last graces, and Madame
Catherine had evidently carried out her theory that Pansy was to be fitted for the great world.
"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him," said this excellent woman's pupil.
"It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very well."
"You think I shall suit YOU?"
"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will suit each other. You're both
so quiet and so serious. You're not so quiet as he--or even as Madame Merle; but you're more quiet
than many others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's always in motion, in
agitation--to-day especially; you'll see when she comes in. They told us at the convent it was
wrong to judge our elders, but I suppose there's no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a
delightful companion for papa."
"For you too, I hope," Isabel said.
"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself think of you; I liked you from
the first. I admire you so much that I think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me.
You'll be my model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be very feeble. I'm very glad
for papa--he needed something more than me. Without you I don't see how he could have got it.
You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be cruel; but I don't
think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me. I'm not afraid at all."
"My good little Pansy," said Isabel gently, "I shall be ever so kind to you." A vague, inconsequent
vision of her coming in some odd way to need it had intervened with the effect of a chill.
"Very well then, I've nothing to fear," the child returned with her note of prepared promptitude.
What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she
dreaded!
Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Countess Gemini was further than ever
from having folded her wings. She entered the room with a flutter through the air and kissed Isabel
first on the forehead and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She
drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, began to talk very
much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches
to a composition of figures already sketched in. "If you expect me to congratulate you I must beg
you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care if I do or not; I believe you're supposed not to care-through
being so clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never tell
them unless there's something rather good to be gained. I don't see what's to be gained with you-especially
as you wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any more than I make paper
flowers or flouncey lampshades--I don't know how. My lampshades would be sure to take fire, my
roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very glad for my own sake that you're to marry
Osmond; but I won't pretend I'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way
you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and original, not banal; so it's a
good thing to have you in the family. Our family's very good, you know; Osmond will have told
you that; and my mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne. But we're
dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up. I've great confidence in you; there are ever
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so many things I want to talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they
ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Pansy oughtn't to hear all this;
but that's what she has come to me for --to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her
knowing what horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on
you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not to listen to him.
Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was
enchanted for myself; and after all I'm very selfish. By the way, you won't respect me, not one
little mite, and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the same,
we shall be better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and see you, though,
as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with Osmond. He's very fond of going to see pretty
women, but I'm not afraid of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you
won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he'll see
you're not his. Some day, if you can stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece
ought to go out of the room? Pansy, go and practise a little in my boudoir."
"Let her stay, please," said Isabel. "I would rather hear nothing that Pansy may not!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing appearance rang at
the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he
enquired for Madame Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a
lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his
name. "Mr. Edward Rosier," said the young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should
appear.
The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Rosier was an ornament of the American circle
in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent
a portion of several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might have
continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort. In the summer of 1876,
however, an incident befell him which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his
customary sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a
charming young girl. To this little person he began to pay, on the spot, particular attention: she
struck him as exactly the household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate,
he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it seemed to
him when they parted--the young lady to go down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva,
where he was under bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if he were
not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to Rome, where Miss
Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr. Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital
and reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the young man there
was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of
the Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the
brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no
cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted
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it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; she had
had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous meditation a
good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the
bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for
that manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of comparatively
frivolous periods would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle's
drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in
articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round;
and then "By Jove, she has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured. The room was
small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes
which might totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending
over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When
Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the
great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately, as if he
were smelling it.
"It's old Venetian," she said; "it's rather good."
"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it."
"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation."
"Ah, but I can't wear mine," smiled the visitor.
"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear."
His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. "You've some very good things."
"Yes, but I hate them."
"Do you want to get rid of them?" the young man quickly asked.
"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!"
"I love my things," said Mr. Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his recognitions. "But it's not
about them, nor about yours, that I came to talk to you." He paused a moment and then, with
greater softness: "I care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!"
Madame Merle opened wide eyes. "Did you come to tell me that?"
"I came to ask your advice."
She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large white hand. "A man in
love, you know, doesn't ask advice."
"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a man in love. I've been in love
before, and I know. But never so much as this time--really never so much. I should like
particularly to know what you think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Osmond I'm not--well,
a real collector's piece."
"Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms folded and her handsome
mouth drawn up to the left.
"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There will be no use in my
troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to believe her father will consent."
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"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in rather an off-hand way that I
think you a prize."
"You've been very kind to me," said the young man. "That's why I came."
"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare now, and there's no
telling what one may get by it." With which the left-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave
expression to the joke.
But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently strenuous. "Ah, I thought you
liked me for myself!"
"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me if I seem patronising, but I
think you a perfect little gentleman. I must tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of Pansy
Osmond."
"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her family, and I thought you might
have influence."
Madame Merle considered. "Whom do you call her family?"
"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere."
"Mr. Osmond's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed a member of her family.
Mrs. Osmond has nothing to do with marrying her."
"I'm sorry for that," said Rosier with an amiable sigh of good faith. "I think Mrs. Osmond would
favour me."
"Very likely--if her husband doesn't."
He raised his eyebrows. "Does she take the opposite line from him?"
"In everything. They think quite differently."
"Well," said Rosier, "I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business. She's very fond of Pansy."
"Yes, she's very fond of Pansy."
"And Pansy has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves her as if she were her own
mother."
"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor child," said Madame Merle.
"Have you declared your sentiments?"
"Never!" cried Rosier, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. "Never till I've assured myself of those of the
parents."
"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the proprieties."
"I think you're laughing at me," the young man murmured, dropping back in his chair and feeling
his small moustache. "I didn't expect that of you, Madame Merle."
She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them. "You don't do me
justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and the best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I
think."
"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for that," said Ned Rosier.
