LITMIR.BIZ

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two or three German professors. And if they had more knowledge than he it was he who had most perception and taste — being artistic through and through. Isabel remembered that her friend had spoken of him during their plunge, at Gardencourt, into the deeps of talk, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie binding these superior spirits. She felt that Madame Merle’s ties always somehow had histories, and such an impression was part of the interest created by this inordinate woman. As regards her relations with Mr. Osmond, however, she hinted at nothing but a long-established calm friendship. Isabel said she should be happy to know a person who had enjoyed so high a confidence for so many years. “You ought to see a great many men,” Madame Merle remarked; “you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them.”

      “Used to them?” Isabel repeated with that solemn stare which sometimes seemed to proclaim her deficient in the sense of comedy. “Why, I’m not afraid of them — I’m as used to them as the cook to the butcher-boys.”

      “Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That’s what one comes to with most of them. You’ll pick out, for your society, the few whom you don’t despise.”

      This was a note of cynicism that Madame Merle didn’t often allow herself to sound; but Isabel was not alarmed, for she had never supposed that as one saw more of the world the sentiment of respect became the most active of one’s emotions. It was excited, none the less, by the beautiful city of Florence, which pleased her not less than Madame Merle had promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able to gauge its charms she had clever companions as priests to the mystery. She was — in no want indeed of esthetic illumination, for Ralph found it a joy that renewed his own early passion to act as cicerone to his eager young kinswoman. Madame Merle remained at home; she had seen the treasures of Florence again and again and had always something else to do. But she talked of all things with remarkable vividness of memory — she recalled the right-hand corner of the large Perugino and the position of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the picture next to it. She had her opinions as to the character of many famous works of art, differing often from Ralph with great sharpness and defending her interpretations with as much ingenuity as good-humour. Isabel listened to the discussions taking place between the two with a sense that she might derive much benefit from them and that they were among the advantages she couldn’t have enjoyed for instance in Albany. In the clear May mornings before the formal breakfast — this repast at Mrs. Touchett’s was served at twelve o’clock — she wandered with her cousin through the narrow and sombre Florentine streets, resting a while in the thicker dusk of some historic church or the vaulted chambers of some dispeopled convent. She went to the galleries and palaces; she looked at the pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her, and exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation a presentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to Italy, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. But the return, every day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; the return into the wide, monumental court of the great house in which Mrs. Touchett, many years before, had established herself, and into the high, cool rooms where the carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the sixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the age of advertisement. Mrs. Touchett inhabited an historic building in a narrow street whose very name recalled the strife of medieval factions; and found compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the modicity of her rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked as archaic as the rugged architecture of the palace and which cleared and scented the rooms in regular use. To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.

      Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the young lady lurking at the other side of the room. Isabel took on this occasion little part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the others turned to her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and had paid even a large sum for her place. Mrs. Touchett was not present, and these two had it, for the effect of brilliancy, all their own way. They talked of the Florentine, the Roman, the cosmopolite world, and might have been distinguished performers figuring for a charity. It all had the rich readiness that would have come from rehearsal. Madame Merle appealed to her as if she had been on the stage, but she could ignore any learnt cue without spoiling the scene — though of course she thus put dreadfully in the wrong the friend who had told Mr. Osmond she could be depended on. This was no matter for once; even if more had been involved she could have made no attempt to shine. There was something in the visitor that checked her and held her in suspense — made it more important she should get an impression of him than that she should produce one herself. Besides, she had little skill in producing an impression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in general, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to glitter by arrangement. Mr. Osmond, to do him justice, had a well-bred air of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even the first show of his own wit. This was the more grateful as his face, his head, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was fine, as fine as one of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of the Uffizi. And his very voice was fine — the more strangely that, with its clearness, it yet somehow wasn’t sweet. This had had really to do with making her abstain from interference. His utterance was the vibration of glass, and if she had put out her finger she might have changed the pitch and spoiled the concert. Yet before he went she had to speak.

      “Madame Merle,” he said, “consents to come up to my hill-top some day next week and drink tea in my garden. It would give me much pleasure if you would come with her. It’s thought rather pretty — there’s what they call a general view. My daughter too would be so glad — or rather, for she’s too young to have strong emotions, I should be so glad — so very glad.” And Mr. Osmond paused with a slight air of embarrassment, leaving his sentence unfinished. “I should be so happy if you could know my daughter,” he went on a moment afterwards.

      Isabel replied that she should be delighted to see Miss Osmond and that if Madame Merle would show her the way to the hill-top she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave; after which Isabel fully expected her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to her surprise that lady, who indeed never fell into the mere matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments

      “You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you. You’re never disappointing.”

      A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more probable that Isabel would have taken it in good part; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the first feeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. “That’s more than I intended,” she answered coldly. “I’m under no obligation that I know of to charm Mr. Osmond.”

      Madame Merle perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit to retract. “My dear child, I didn’t speak for him, poor man; I spoke for yourself. It’s not of course a question as to his liking you; it matters little whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked HIM.”

      “I did,” said Isabel honestly. “But I don’t see what that matters either.”

      “Everything that concerns you matters to me,” Madame Merle returned with her weary nobleness; “especially when at the same time another old friend’s concerned.”

      Whatever Isabel’s obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to put to Ralph sundry questions about him. She thought Ralph’s judgements distorted by his trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowance for that.

      “Do I know him?” said her cousin. “Oh, yes, I ‘know’ him; not well, but on the whole enough. I’ve never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he, what is he? He’s a vague, unexplained American who has been living these thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don’t know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise;

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